‘Control or support?’ Professional roles and judgements in problem solving in adult social work team conferences

The purpose of this paper is to explore how care managers in team conferences jointly solve problems related to difficult cases involving clients with cognitive decline, focusing specifically on their professional roles and judgements. Team conferences in a Swedish social work setting mean that social workers assess and interpret previously collected information and discuss how to proceed with cases. We use conversation analysis to study two case sequences from 137 audio-recorded cases, focussing on professional judgements and accomplishing agreement. We show how care managers make use of different conversational practices, such as hypothetical talk and shared authority as a 'we' when conveying institutional routines, as well as when providing support to care managers. We also show how the care managers make use of expanding techniques that challenge their manager's advice. This paper offers new perspectives on how organisational norms are reproduced and how shared professional judgements are accomplished.