Laila Tingvold

Background: Care administrators in long-term care (LTC) are ‘gatekeepers’ to the services and handle applications, investigate care needs, and decide if, what and how much services applicants are entitled to receive. Various models of service allocation have been in operation in the Nordic countries since the inception of LTC services in the 1970s. The main drivers of the development of allocation models have been concerns about service inequality among users, quality of care, patient safety, and the overall efficiency within healthcare settings. While care administrators have several laws and guidelines to aid their decision-making, the use of professional discretion is known to be widespread but less investigated. In the context of Norway, this article seeks to explore: What guides care administrators in reaching decisions? How and in which circumstances is the use of discretion needed in making decisions? Method: Qualitative in-depth interviews with 5 managers in care administration and 13 care administrators in 5 Norwegian municipalities. The material was analysed using thematic analysis. Results: Two main themes were identified. These are Negotiating standards with discretion and collegial discussion, and Complexities in deciding needs and services. Conclusion: Care administrators hold significant responsibility in ensuring fair service allocation. Discretion is a necessary and valuable tool that can strengthen the integrity and trustworthiness of care services. However, increased reforms and standardisation place heavy pressure on administrators, limiting their discretion through stricter allocation criteria. This may reduce their ability to act in the best interests of service applicants in line with the fiduciary principle.

Background: This article explores how adults with intellectual disabilities and a corresponding parent group experience residential transitions to and within co‐located supported housing in Norway. Method: We conducted 12 semi‐structured interviews and a supplementary focus group interview and analysed the data using reflexive thematic analysis. Results: Two overarching themes were developed, (1) First, find a place: a long and uncertain search marked by scarce options, opaque entitlements, and unclear responsibilities. (2) Settling in(to) a constructed home: evolving negotiation around role and agency, negotiations over who has to adjust to whom, and coping with aspirations and limitations related to future mobility amid the immersive potential of co‐located supported housing. Conclusion: Residential transitions shape more than a single move. They influence perspectives on future residential mobility and aspirations for living arrangements. Improved communication about rights, eligibility thresholds, and realistic timelines may reduce disillusionment and improve experiences with transitions.

Theoretically grounded in Public Service Logic (PSL), this study investigates frontline care staff's experiences with value‐creation negotiations across residential transition processes for service users with intellectual disabilities to and within co‐located supported housing in a Norwegian municipal setting. Through a qualitative case study based on 11 in‐depth interviews and two focus group interviews, three themes: independence—dependency, self‐determination—family power, and home—workplace were developed, along with the concept of tension lines of value co‐creation. The findings illustrate that frontline care staff frequently face divergent values, grapple with the question of value‐for‐whom, and make concessions across the individual elements.

Volunteering is associated with health-promoting benefits for both recipients and volunteers and may contribute to a more inclusive society. However, studies have shown a persistent pattern of social inequality among those who volunteer, and immigrants participate as volunteers less than the majority population. To date, approaches for recruiting immigrant populations have not been sufficiently examined, even though multicultural societies are becoming increasingly diverse. This study investigates how recruitment is carried out in voluntary organizations and how volunteers who are involved in recruitment reflect on the inclusion of citizens with immigrant backgrounds. Qualitative interviews were conducted with 18 volunteers and three employees with recruitment responsibility at five voluntary organizations engaged in welfare and community-related activities in a semirural district in Norway. Our findings show that different structural factors and individual aspects of the recruiter influence the recruitment of immigrants as volunteers. Large-scale organizations are more professionalized and more directed by fundings and frameworks and demand more qualifications due to their volunteer tasks. This might make inclusive recruitment more challenging. Small-scale organizations have more flexibility and less professionalized volunteer activities, making recruitment more inclusive. In addition, if the small-scale organizations are minority driven, it seems to positively influence the recruitment of immigrants through increased diversity sensitivity and more connections with immigrants through their social network.

Theoretically rooted in public service logic (PSL), this article explores managers’ experiences constructing value propositions and facilitating the value creation process in a public sector environment. It reports on a qualitative study from a Norwegian municipal setting based on individual and focus group interviews supported by participant observations and relevant documents. The data were analyzed according to the guidelines of stepwise-deductive inductive analysis (SDI). The findings substantiate changes in the utilized supported housing forms and highlight urgency’s pervasive effect on transition processes to supported housing for individuals with intellectual disabilities and the need for around-the-clock support. This study contributes to public management research by examining the process of constructing value propositions and the managers’ efforts to contribute to the formation of more realistic expectations towards the municipality’s scope and level of service among prospective service users and their families. The article contributes to the PSL discourse by providing the complementary concept of expectation–reality mitigation as a particular form of expectation management suited for the complexities and constraints of value creation in public service settings.

Over the last decade, authorities in several Western countries have stated their ambitions to increase the share of volunteers contributing alongside professionals in the future long-term care (LTC) sector, but the introduction of volunteers as co-producers of care services is sparsely investigated. This article is based on an empirical case study in Norway and investigates how co-production is translated into practice in diverse settings. Our findings demonstrate that understandings of voluntary work were fragmented. Co-production appears as a fragile partnership with an unclear understanding of the roles, expectations, and opportunities among the various parties who had different purposes/agendas and limited knowledge. To successfully provide added value in coproducing care, agents need to understand the whole picture and context, and build a common understanding of ‘why’ coproduce.

The health- and care services are constantly evolving. Research and policy directives accompanied by financial incentives encourage municipalities to strengthen or develop some services, while othe...

During the outbreak of the COVID-19 pandemic, Norwegian health authorities introduced social distancing measures in nursing homes. The aim was to protect vulnerable residents from contracting the potentially deadly infection. Drawing on individual interviews with nursing home managers and physicians, and focus groups with nursing staff, we explore and describe consequences the social distancing measures had on nursing home residents’ health and wellbeing. The analysis indicates that most residents became socially deprived, while some became calmer during the nursing home lockdown. Nursing home staff, physicians and managers witnessed that residents’ health and functional capacity declined when services to maintain health, such as physiotherapy, were put on hold. In conclusion, we argue that although Norwegian health authorities managed to keep the infection rates low in nursing homes, this came at a high price for the residents however, as the social distancing measures also negatively impacted their health and wellbeing.

Background: The Norwegian government’s increased expectations that volunteering can be used as a means of integration and the scarce research regarding refugees’ experiences with volunteering is taken as the background for this study. Our purpose is to adopt a salutogenic perspective to investigate whether and how formal volunteering contributes to developing a sense of social inclusion and well-being among refugees in Norway. Methods: Qualitative in-depth interviews were conducted with 12 volunteers with refugee backgrounds in a semi-rural district in Norway. Stepwise deductive induction was used for analysis. Results: Three themes were identified as a result of the analysis: (1) feeling safer due to increased knowledge regarding cultures, values, and systems and achieving mutual acceptance; (2) feeling more confident when communicating in Norwegian and contributing to society, and (3) feeling more connected via social relations. Conclusions: Our study indicates that participation in volunteering may contribute to social inclusion and that the participants’ resources and volunteering experiences may have a health-promotive impact under certain conditions.