The concept of crisis refers to a threat to a prevailing order, requiring people to adjust or reevaluate their behavior. Although crisis helplines by definition manage crises, a major part of this voluntary social work entails emotional and social support, not de-escalation of a crisis. The relative low-frequency of crisis calls, coupled with their high-stakes, therefore represent a challenge for call-takers. In the current paper, we contribute to the small but growing body of conversation analytic studies of crisis communication (see Haddington & Stokoe 2022) by examining how people talk about crises as a reason for calling and what resources call-takers employ to deescalate an ongoing crisis. Drawing on recorded calls from three helplines we show how callers and call-takers establish whether the caller’s problems should be understood with reference to the callers’ internal emotional state or to external causes of distress. Resources for managing a crisis include empathic responses that also treat the crisis as passing as well as normalizing callers’ extreme reactions by connecting them to the external events. The focus on external circumstances accentuates the interactional challenge of balancing empathy and advice. By showing how the effectiveness of resources for responding to a crisis depends on an agreement about the caller’s problems as internal or external, we contribute to conversation analytic research on crisis talk as well as studies in discursive psychology about object-subject relations.

References
Haddington, P. & Stokoe, L. (2023) Social interaction in high stakes crisis communication. Journal of Pragmatics 208, 91–98.

In spite of being formulated as a central and necessary condition for doing social work, the concept of rapport is poorly defined (Prior, 2018). Existing definitions and descriptions vary widely and tend to include characteristics of the social worker, client, or the relationship between them, as well as vague descriptions of practices thought necessary to build rapport. We lack clear descriptions of how such characteristics or practices might be interactionally achieved in the potentially challenging communicative environment that the pursuit of social work agendas represents. To address this lack, I use conversation analysis to analyze social work interviews with fathers suspected of perpetrating violence against their children. These interviews constitute a setting where social work agendas of managing risk and motivating treatment may challenge the relationship between the social worker and client, thus accentuating the complexities involved in accomplishing rapport in a social work institutional setting. Specifically, I look at how the conversation analytic terms of (mis)alignment and (dis)affiliation (Steensig, 2020) can help us understand the fine-tuned work of eliciting, supporting and resisting talk about violence perpetration. The analysis thus contributes new knowledge to the field of social work research and practice by providing an empirically grounded conceptualization of the social worker-client relationship.



PRIOR, M. T. 2018. Accomplishing “rapport” in qualitative research interviews: Empathic moments in interaction. Applied Linguistics Review, 9, 487-511.
STEENSIG, J. 2020. Conversation analysis and affiliation and alignment. The concise encyclopedia of applied linguistics, 248-253.

Children’s right to have their voices recognized is a fundamental principle in social work. Extensive research on forensic interviews (e.g. Brown & Lamb, 2015) has led to recommendations that professionals should use open-ended questions. However, the focus on professionals risks positioning the child as a passive participant (Andrén & Nelson, 2022). Shifting the perspective to the child as an active agent, this paper investigates the ways in which children contribute to shaping their participation in interviews. Using conversation analysis (e.g. Flinkfeldt et al., 2022) of audio-recorded child welfare interviews, the study investigates the sequential organization of children’s initiative-taking and the social workers’ responses. The analysis reveals that children initiate new topics, point out inconsistencies in social workers’ questions, and thereby influence the progression of the conversation. The study contributes to the knowledge about children’s participation in conversations, offering a perspective that foregrounds children as active agents rather than merely recipients of professionals’ questions and support. Methodologically, the study demonstrates that a detailed, turn-by-turn analysis of participants’ actions can enhance our understanding of how children’s participation is expressed.

References
Andrén, M., & Nelson, K. Z. (2022). Att lyssna på barn. Om lyssnandets teori och etik. Barn, 40(3), 101–118.
Brown, D. A., & Lamb, M. E. (2015). Can children be useful witnesses? It depends how they are questioned. Child Development Perspectives, 9(4), 250–255.
Flinkfeldt, M., Iversen, C., Jørgensen, S. E., Monteiro, D., & Wilkins, D. (2022). Conversation analysis in social work research: a scoping review. Qualitative Social Work, 21(6), 1011-1042.

In community social work with current and former inmates, social workers and volunteers regularly face situations in which users recount experiences of frustrating or unfair treatment by institutional authorities, such as police, prison staff, or social services. In conversation analysis (CA), reports that convey a negative stance toward a conduct that affects the speaker (or others) and that someone or something is perceived as being at fault for are typically labelled complaining (Drew, 1998; Pino, 2022; Schegloff, 2005).
Responding to these complaints pose a complex interactional dilemma in community social work. While affiliating responses such as agreements, matching assessments, or expressions of sympathy may foster relational closeness, they risk undermining professional neutrality by appearing to side against collaborators in the criminal justice system. Conversely, withholding affiliation may damage the worker-client relationship, potentially intensifying users’ perceptions of systemic injustice.
This study explores how community social workers and volunteers manage this delicate balance. We show how professionals and volunteers navigate pressure from users to acknowledge systemic wrongdoings through morally upgraded impact formulations (acknowledging emotional impact while subtly endorsing complaint legitimacy) and morally mitigated negative assessments (downgraded evaluations of complaint targets or their actions).
Drew, P. (1998). Complaints About Transgressions and Misconduct. Research on Language and Social Interaction, 31(3–4), 295–325.
Pino, M. (2022). Hurting and Blaming: Two Components in the Action Formation of Complaints About Absent Parties. Research on Language and Social Interaction, 55(3), 260–278.
Schegloff, E. A. (2005). On complainability. Social Problems, 52(4), 449–476.

Intimate Partner Violence (IPV) is a serious social problem that is difficult to identify, especially since experience of violence is a sensitive topic. In Sweden and elsewhere, welfare organizations are therefore increasingly expected to ask about IPV when encountering clients. While previous research suggests that both professionals and clients find conversations about IPV challenging, few studies have examined how such interactions are played out (e.g. Tegler et al. 2023).

Focusing on the Swedish Social Insurance Agency (SSIA), this study illuminates how conditions for investigating IPV occurrence are shaped within institutional contexts with a different main institutional goal. The data consist of 100 recorded phone calls between case officers and clients about maintenance support for separated parents. In these calls, IPV occurrence is sometimes discussed as it can constitute grounds for eligibility.

We use conversation analysis and membership categorization analysis to examine how IPV is handled in these interactions. Specifically, we focus on how questions about violence are asked and responded to, showing how participants treat this as an inapposite activity. In addition, the analysis indicates that questions and tellings about IPV occur in sequential contexts where clients bring up communication problems, and shows how parents’ accounts of past violence experience tend to be treated as irrelevant for the ongoing case.

References
Tegler, H., Fernqvist, S., & Flinkfeldt, M. (2023). Challenges in recognizing and facilitating disclosures of intimate partner violence in customer service calls about maintenance support. Discourse Studies, 25(5), 641–663.

Easy and low-threshold access is considered to be a major advantage of online services. In Sweden, social services in several municipalities strive to increase their accessibility by responding to anonymous users online. This paper raises the question about the nature of accessibility that the online social services entail. Two online platforms were studied: synchronous online chats and asynchronous Internet question forms. Online chat logs and question form exchanges were closely analyzed using conversation analysis. The accessibility of online social services was approached through the concept of boundary work: the focus was on how social workers touch upon and navigate the constraints of what they can and cannot do when responding to anonymous users online. The analysis showed that the users were signposted to in-person social services when they sought personalized advice or requested immediate interventions. When re-directing users to seek help elsewhere social workers could bring restrictions on their online role to account for not providing the requested help. The findings are discussed in terms of unmet expectations of online users due to limitations in the mandate of online social workers. While online facilities made social workers technically accessible for a contact, the range of services available online was restricted to providing information and general guidance.