Signposting to offline services in Swedish social services’ online counselling

This paper examines the practice of signposting in online counselling provided by the social services in Sweden. Specifically, it focuses on cases where online users are steered to seek offline help. The data corpus consists of 68 online chat logs (quasi-synchronous interactions) and 200 Internet question form exchanges (asynchronous interactions). The data were examined using the approach of conversation analysis. The findings suggest that social workers signpost online users to offline services in the context of managing the limits of their professional mandate and setting administrative boundaries within the social services (i.e. which tasks are processed online and which offline). Signposting poses a challenge as it implies rejecting the user’s immediate request. Social workers deal with this challenge by coupling signposting with other actions, such as providing general information, offering guidance on how to make offline contact, and addressing users’ frustration regarding previous contact with the social services. At the same time, social workers account for the rejection by invoking restrictions on their role as online counsellor, thereby orienting to their own actions as problematic. The findings are discussed in terms of the boundary work performed by the social workers and its implications for the accessibility of the social services when operating online.