answer as to what their practice actually entails. In the next part the dissonance between Balay’s actually practice and how they talk about it will further explored. Also the activities being used by the social workers will here be discussed. Payne’s model will be referred back to here as well, as a way of reflecting upon the different methods used by Balay. After that other aspects of their actual work will be touched upon, aspects that to a larger extent than their formal methods, seems to be better able at capturing the key components of what constitutes their practice. 5.1.1 The practice of Balay on different system levels As mentioned in the introduction, Balay argues that their overall approach is psychosocial, which in a basic form means that the social worker acknowledge that human experience is created in an interplay between the individual’s psychological conditions and the social environment (Howe 2009: 137). This understanding seems to be accurate . They do work with the understanding that the life trajectories, experience being imprisoned as well as the psychological wellbeing of the partners are all connected, which will be emphasized later in this section. However as also mentioned, one of the findings, analyzing the empirical data, was the dissonance between how Balay talks about their practice and what they actually do. During in-house discussions when describing what their psychosocial approach entails, terms such as psycho-education, psychodynamic theory were often used. Especially Erikson, and his psychodynamic developing theory regarding how subjects goes through eight stages from birth to death (Oltedal and Hutchinson 2006: 52) have been used when talking about their partners. When observing the practice of Balay it becomes clear that how they make use of theoretical knowledge is not easily defined. It is not the argument in this study that it is not used. It is not a smokescreen that has
answer as to what their practice actually entails. In the next part the dissonance between Balay’s actually practice and how they talk about it will further explored. Also the activities being used by the social workers will here be discussed. Payne’s model will be referred back to here as well, as a way of reflecting upon the different methods used by Balay. After that other aspects of their actual work will be touched upon, aspects that to a larger extent than their formal methods, seems to be better able at capturing the key components of what constitutes their practice. 5.1.1 The practice of Balay on different system levels As mentioned in the introduction, Balay argues that their overall approach is psychosocial, which in a basic form means that the social worker acknowledge that human experience is created in an interplay between the individual’s psychological conditions and the social environment (Howe 2009: 137). This understanding seems to be accurate . They do work with the understanding that the life trajectories, experience being imprisoned as well as the psychological wellbeing of the partners are all connected, which will be emphasized later in this section. However as also mentioned, one of the findings, analyzing the empirical data, was the dissonance between how Balay talks about their practice and what they actually do. During in-house discussions when describing what their psychosocial approach entails, terms such as psycho-education, psychodynamic theory were often used. Especially Erikson, and his psychodynamic developing theory regarding how subjects goes through eight stages from birth to death (Oltedal and Hutchinson 2006: 52) have been used when talking about their partners. When observing the practice of Balay it becomes clear that how they make use of theoretical knowledge is not easily defined. It is not the argument in this study that it is not used. It is not a smokescreen that has