Abstract

This article discusses how new kinds of individual needs develop parallel to the changes in the welfare state. From a study of Victim Service in Sweden it is shown how this organisation has grown parallel to the changes in the welfare state. In the empirical material it is also shown that the need of support often comes from secondary victimisation. Those who are helped by Victim Support are often people with loose bonds to society and people of low class. As victims they can get help from Victim Support, but the need derives from lacking service in the welfare state. NGOs have come to complement and strengthen organisations in the public sector when the welfare state has weakened. At the same time as the neo-liberal conception of crime, threats and risk has replaced the social democratic ideas of social security.

1 Victim Support in a Changing Welfare State

The category ‘victim’ has gone from being the forgotten actors to ‘the heart of criminal justice consideration for policy reform’ (Goodey 2005, 4). Criminal Justice Systems throughout the world are changing towards more and more victim focussed interventions (Dignan 2005). Victims’ role in contemporary society and criminal justice is central and interventions made are said to be inclusive (Williams 2005). Paul Rock (2004) has analysed how the political idea of victims’ rights has developed and several books has been published about victims’ role in the contemporary criminal justice system (Dignan 2005; Goodey 2005; Williams 2005).

In many legal systems the needs and rights of the victims are highlighted and organisations for service for victims have been established. The question of help for crime victims is on the agenda and organisations are being established throughout the world. The first organisations in Britain came in the 1970s, and during the 1990s the idea of organising victim support was widely spread. These organisations were on the one hand built on dissatisfaction with the state and on the other hand the growth appeared parallel to changes in the welfare state. The British organisation has served as a model for other countries (National Audit Office 2002). The UN adopted a Declaration of Basic Principles of Justice for Victims of Crime in 1985. In 1999 a Guide for Policymakers on the Implementation of the Declaration was adopted, along with a Handbook on Justice for Victims (Waller 2003).

The base for organising help to victims is that the criminal justice system is said to ignore the victim and therefore there is a need for these new organisations. When they are establishing, organisations for supporting victims are said to complement existing organisations (Mawby and Gill 1987; Larsson and Stub 1998). Even if the arguments for victim support organisation are that the victims receive no attention in the criminal justice system, this is no explanation for the establishment of the organisations at this specific time. Why does this need of a complementing organisation occur at this specific point? Which role do this organisation play? In order to identify how the need of victim support organisations emerged and how they affect social perceptions of social problems, we have to acknowledge their context.

This article takes its starting point in these questions and presents an example of how the changes in the welfare state can affect individuals and organisations and how this is reflected in terms of “needs”. The purpose of this article is to discuss how structural changes leave traces in everyday life for people, as well as producing new forms of organisations. I will do this by presenting results from a study of Victim Support in Sweden.

2 Methodology

The study was conducted as part of a research project on victim support as social work. This project was financed by the Swedish National Crime Victim Compensation and Support Authority and was mainly carried out in Sweden during 2002 and 2003. It aimed at understanding how victim support is carried out, how it was possible to establish this new organisation and how the relationship between helper and helped develops. It was based on four main sources: (1) a survey of the 105 victim support organisations in Sweden on how they organise their work; (2) 28 interviews with victims, volunteers, employees in victim support organisations and in cooperating authorities on how they describe the work done; (3) a smaller vignette study of how the volunteers regard the victims, where 34 volunteers assessed short stories about victimisation (4) a study of governmental records of the debate on victim issues in 1993 (Svensson 2002; 2003; 2006).

The survey created a base for understanding victim support organisations. In the survey data were collected about how many volunteers there were engaged in each local organisation, what activities they had and some basic information about the volunteers, as age, sex and profession. In the vignettes it was shown that volunteers in victim support mainly percieved victims as what Nils Christie (1986) has called ideal victims. Individuals described as living a morally unquestioned life were to a higher degree regarded as in need, and therefore more likely to be helped (Svensson 2006). In this article the survey and the vignette study is more of a background. Here, the presentation is mainly based on material from political records and from the interviews. The latter were carried out in order to understand how people involved described what they are doing in victim support and why people turn to this organisation for help.Together, the different studies formed a picture of victim support, both as an organisation in an organisational field and as a practice were help is given.

The total material was analysed with a relational perspective and a starting point in Charles Tilly’s (1999) argument that inequality is durable. Although structures seem to change, earlier categorical differences are transformed into the new structure and thereby the inequality between categories remains. He states that social interventions are carried out in relations and should be studied by relational analysis. Relations exist between individuals, but also between individuals and organisations, and between organisations. Relationships are institutionalised, they define the categories involved and they form structures. When we want to understand an organisation and its practice, one way is to study relationsships within the organisation as well as between this and other organisations. The relations in focus here is on the one hand the relationship between the victim support organisation and the welfare state, and on the other hand the relationship between victims of crime and the welfare state.

When we listen to people’s narratives about phenomena or when we read records from organisations, we can find what Tilly (1999) calls “standard stories”. These are stories produced by their context and therefore they tell us something about the context. These stories tell us about the relation between the actors as well as about the possible interpretations of the action, all in the frame of the structural setting. Therefore, when we listen to, or read, stories told about a practice, we can learn about the structure and we can understand the changes the practice has undergone.

I will present some of the results from the project by using some of the empirical material and its stories told about victim support. Through these stories we can understand how our contemporary society is understanding exclusion in new ways, and how a need for new organisations is argued. Before we go into the stories told, I will give a brief picture of the groth of victimological ideas as well as a contextualisation of how victim support established in Sweden.

3 Victimology as neo-liberal ideology

In the 1940s criminologists and other researchers started to focus not only on the offender, but also on the victim as a way to gain an interactive perspective on crime (Fattah 1992a). This could have been developed into a deeper understanding of crime, but instead it became an ideological issue for liberals and conservatives. Social exclusion in society has turned into a question for the criminal justice system; a matter that is taken care of by the state in cooperation with the civil society (Young 1999, Wacquant 2002).

Scientific victimology started with victim surveys to understand where, when and against whom crime was committed. These surveys showed that the victims had the same categorical facts that had previously been stated for offenders. When age, sex, marital status, unemployment, race and ethnicity were studied it was found that young, unmarried and unemployed males from ethnic minority groups were overrepresented, as victims as well as offenders. The only evident difference between the groups were that women more frequent than among offenders, even if they were in minority in both groups (Mawby and Gill 1987, Fattah 1992b).

Society has changed since these first victim surveys; the conceptualisation of criminality has changed from being a problem explained by social facts, to a problem that is explained as an individualised self-expression (Young 1999). Meanwhile, the victim issue, which ought to be a social democratic question since it is mainly a problem for the lower classes, has been transferred to a neo-liberal question with a strong rhetoric that does not really match the facts from the victim surveys. In the mid 1960s victimology came on the political agenda in the United States. In the 1970s liberals and conservatives united in a neo-liberal policy that did not question society, and Ronald Reagan became the victims’ spokesman (Elias 1992).

The ideal of the state changed into a proactive and preventive welfare state when liberal ideas of individuality changed the relationship between the state and the individual. Crime became more and more common and turned into an experience of everyday life and therefore it became more a question of calculated risk than a question of justice (Young 1999). In this setting, victimology went from an academic scientific discipline to a political ideology and the focus shifted from victims’ needs to victims’ rights (Cressey 1992; Fattah 1992a). Now the victim is regarded more or less as a consumer of criminal justice, a consumer that should be empowered, so that he or she can demand a consumer-centred criminal justice (Rock 2004). This rhetoric has swept around the world and influenced most western countries.

4 Changes in the Swedish welfare state

In order to understand the local development of Victim Support in Sweden we have to recognize the niche that was created when the Swedish welfare state changed (Svensson 2006). Tilly (1999) describes a niche as a space where interest groups can hoard opportunities or interests can be exploited. Opportunity hoarding is, as well as exploitation, a way for groups and individuals to develop in an area. The difference is that the elite exploits, while non-elitistic groups hoard opportunities. When the welfare state changed, neo-liberal ideas could develop since there were persons ready to spread them and thereby victim support organisations could developed. We can see initiatives from both elististic and non-elitistic groups, which means that the niche that was created gave space for both exploitation and opportunity hoarding.

How did this happen? We cannot understand the need of victim support organisations in Sweden in relation to crime rate. It had increased since the Second World War, but during the 1980s they had stabilised (Estrada and Nilsson 2001). It is argued that the interest in victims came from a combination of the fact that we conceptualise society as a risk society, that the debate became more open to women’s issues and that the amount of traffic accidents increased (Österberg 2002). We are at a certain point in the development of civilisation when we are less and less inclined to accept violence and people are more and more regarded individually. People become more isolated and fears, such as fear of crime, increase (Tham 2001). The status of being a victim then becomes a possible way of gaining attention. This status also gains support in media, in politics and in interest groups (Dignan 2005). As a political issue, victims of crime unite all parties; from the left to the right everyone uses victims’ interest as an argument for changes in the criminal justice system.

In the early 1990s the Swedish welfare state started to become more and more selective and simultaneously fear increased in a society conceptualised as a risk society. The Swedish welfare state has changed from a general, insurance-based welfare towards a welfare system where needs are subject to means tests (Walker and Walker 1998). In several areas, institutions that used to give general assistance now are turned in to selective and needs-testing institutions. In the early 1990’s Sweden, as many other countries, had its deepest recession since the 30’s. Unemployment rates were extremely high during these years, as well as the number of people needing assistance of different kinds.

At this time, during three years 1991-94, Sweden had a conservative government, a shift from the strong social democratic tradition. These three years several laws in the social sector were changed and benefits of different kinds were cut down. When the financial situation turned better, the changes in the welfare state remained. There had been a shift in the Swedish social policy and the welfare state that now came to be managed by a Social democratic government. The shift were no longer a political question, it was a lasting trend. The Swedish welfare state has become more and more selective and heterogenic (Sunesson et al. 1998; Kumlin and Rothstein 2005). The former Swedish welfare state was based on solidarity and it has been criticised for lacking personal responsibility, being paternalistic and incompatible with contemporary lifestyle, where individuals are supposed to perceive their lives as unique projects (Bergmark et al. 2000).

The debate about victims of crime were more about individuals unique life projects, than about groups in society. Factors on many levels interacted and made the development of victim support organisations possible. The organisations had existed in a few places even during the 1980s, but in the 1990s it was spread throughout the country. When both victimised persons, politicians and the victim movement showed interest in the question, is came on the agenda. From being an issue for a few enthusiasts, victim support organisation became an organisation with eight thousands members and approximately thousand active volunteers.

The changes in the welfare state and the changed view of society coincided with the development of these organisations, but it does not say anything about the role of the organisation. We therefore also have to regard the role of this specific organisation in relation to the general role of NGOs in Sweden in order to understand “the new” in this organisation.

5 NGO’s in Sweden and the victim issue

In the Swedish welfare state, non-governmental organisations has always played an important role. The welfare state during the 20th century was an alliance between social and political movements and the state. NGOs made the social democratic welfare state possible, and when the state took over their tasks, the organisations complemented the state. In the 1990s, when the changes were remarkable, a debate about civil society arose (Meeuwisse 1999). The relationship between the state and the NGOs became more explicit and the NGOs acquired more explicit tasks. They went from being pressure groups that influenced public opinion to be performers of political ambitions. Both their tasks and their identity changed (Lundström 2004; Lundström and Svedberg 1998). The same process has been seen elsewhere, for example Powell (2000) has argued that the UK now has a pluralism of associational life when civil society is emphasised. But, as he also says, there is not much new in the “new ideas” of a third way. A combination of the public and private civil society is not new; it is in many ways old ideas. With this, he points in the same direction as Tilly (1999) does when he says that inequality is durable. Although organisations changes, structures remain.

When the victim issue appeared on the political agenda, it became an important aspect of the criminal policy. During the 1980s the trust in criminal justice had become weaker and it was obvious that the victims’ needs were not met in court or in police investigations. This led to strong demands for law and justice, which made the criminal justice system look even weaker. Tham (2001) says that the response from the state was to abandon the responsibility, and let private initiative take care of the victim issue. This is not the whole truth. The state did get involved in the victim issue even if the time was right for civil society. The Ministry of Justice stated in 1993 that the criminal justice authorities have to show power to help the victims and punish the offender. They declared that if the state cannot give the citizens the idea that they are on the victims’ side against the criminal, then the state has failed in one of its basic tasks (Justitiedepartementet 1993).

Several commissions published reports on matters concerning the state’s role for victims. In 1993 the victim issue was discussed in parliament; the main issue then was whether a new authority should be created for victims’ rights. In this discussion all parties agreed that it was the state’s responsibility to arrange for financial support and knowledge development for victims. In the debate, politicians from all parties argued for victims’ rights, and declared that their party had argued for victims’ rights in earlier debates. This way there was a political consensus, the questions discussed concerned merely details in how, when and where this authority should be arranged. In the end, the parliament decided to establish a Crime Victim Compensation Authority and a fund for financing it (prot. 1993/94:106). The fund is built on payment from persons who are convicted of a crime where prison is a possible punishment. This way, the state did not have to pay. But it became an important contribution to the discussion and an indication that the forgotten victim had been given attention by the state, an important symbol.

Supporting victims or organising Victim Support, on the other hand, was never discussed. It was mentioned by some of the discussants, but only by the way, and in statements like: “As late as this weekend, I have met people who work in victim support organisations, they have the opinion that something more is needed. Therefore they look forward to this new authority” (prot. 1993/94:106, anf. 142). None of the discussants said anything about the possibility to make the support into a task for an authority; the NGOs that were establishing throughout the country were already taken for granted.

The public control of victim compensation and the political approval of the NGOs sent signals that the state was responsible, but in everyday practice, the work was to be done in civil society, by the growing NGOs.

6 Victim Support practice

Now there are local victim support organisations throughout Sweden. They started to be established in the 1980s, with the British organisations as the main model. Later, organisations have been established in the other Scandinavian countries with Sweden as a model (Clausen 2004). Most often the Swedish organisations are arranged to cover the same geographical area as a police district. In the local organisation, volunteers work with counselling and support for victims of crime. The local organisations have a national organisation for coordination, education and development (Larsson and Stub 1998; Svensson 2002).

The local organisations are funded through resources from the local government and authorities, from churches, private donations and from funds that are granted from the National Crime Victim Compensation and Support Authority after application. The state has a part in the support as well. In 1998 the Social Service Act was changed so that it states that the social services should provide help for women and children that are victims of violence. In 2002 the Act was changed to say that the social services should provide help for victims of crime, especially for women and children who are victims of violence. This could be seen as a way for the state to take responsibility for the support too, but as shown in a survey 2004, nothing much happened (Ljungwald 2004). A widespread solution for the social services to provide this help is to give contributions to an NGO and then refer the victims to that organisation (Svensson 2002). This is a way of handling the fact that the social services find it hard to give help to crime victims since they percieve victims as a category that does not really fit in to the social services (Ljungwald and Svensson 2007).

This kind of organisation is new on the Swedish arena. From a Swedish perspective it is a new form of organisation in two senses, on the one hand an organisation that has not been there before and on the other hand a new kind of organisation. In the earlier Swedish welfare state, NGO’s did not play this role. When the welfare state was strong and universal, the NGO’s were weaker and primarily played a role as self-help groups or interest groups where persons with a mutual interest organised themselves (Sunesson et al. 1998). Victim Support Service organisations organise volunteers who help persons who are different from themselves, who have other life experiences. These kinds of interventions were earlier made by skilled professionals in governmental organisations.

NGO’s like Victim Support rely on their volunteers and the volunteers are persons with a wide variety of experiences. A wide variety of professions were represented among the volunteers, although professions from social work and care are highly represented, as well as teachers and professionals from the criminal justice system. About two third of the volunteers are women and the age of the volunteers are high. Since the data given from the organisations is not exact, exact figures cannot be given, but in about half of the local organisations, the youngest volunteer is over 40 years old. In about a fourth of all local organisations the youngest is over 50 and in about 5 % the youngest volunteer was over 60 (Svensson 2002). A mapping of the volunteers showed that they have their background in a wide variety of professions. Even if there is a wide variety, there is a core of professions from social work and health care. Next to them persons with professional experience from the justice system and from schools also are very frequent as volunteers in Victim Support (Svensson 2002).

Mainly the cases they meet are referred through the police, even if some victims take contact themselves. The level vary between local organisations and there is a tendency that more and more victims make contact themselves, but still far more than half of the victims are referred through the police. When a volunteer gets a message from the police they sometimes start by writing a letter with information about the Victim Support Service. After the letter, or sometimes instead of writing a letter, the volunteer phones the victim. In this first call, information about Victim Support Service and the justice system is given. The volunteer also asks the victim if there is something he or she would like to talk about. Most often this first conversation is sufficient, but if there is a need for more counselling, support or information, the victim is informed how to phone back and that this volunteer is at his or her service. Who then are the victims that want and need this help?

7 The needy victim

Winkel and Vrij (1998) concluded that in every country there is a large discrepancy between the amount of persons victimised and the number of persons helped by any support organisation. In a study of Danish victim support organisations Clausen (2004) found that very few of the reported crimes led to any contact with a support organisation. The highest rate concerns attempted murder, assault and robbery, and even then the rate is only 2.4 to 4.1 percent. Davis, Lurigio and Skogan (1999) have shown similar figures from the United States. As we know, the characteristics of the victims are much the same as those of the offenders: they primarily come from underprivileged groups in society.

Which cases are then most likely to be referred to the Victim Support? It is said that the service should mainly focus on those whose personal integrity has been harmed by the crime. This is assessed by the referring police. It makes them gatekeepers for the support, but they lack clear guidelines in deciding who is harmed enough to be referred to Victim Support. A study conducted by the national Victim Support Service in Sweden stated that the police regarded about 10 percent of the victims as being in need of support, but only 3 percent accepted a referral from the police to Victim Support (BOJ 2004). Winkel and Vrij (1998) believe that the answer would be easily found by asking a simple question: How are you generally doing in life? Those who are doing generally fine would probably handle the victimisation, those who are having general problems in life need more qualified help and those in between are the ones who could be helped by victim support.

Bard and Sangrey (1986) argue that there is an obvious difference between victims’ needs depending on their social and economic resources. Persons who are well established in society most often have the necessary resources. They can compensate for their losses and they can find the information they need. Further, they often have a network for personal and emotional support. Mawby and Gill (1987) also stated that victims’ needs differ depending on how they experienced the crime and how their social and personal situation in general is. In my interviews, the informants were asked whether the victims who were in contact with the support organisation had anything in common. They all told me about persons with loose bonds to society and people of low class. They said: “they are never from upper class” or “it is never established people”.

It showed that the stories told focussed that it was not usually the crime itself that created the need for support from this organisation. Most victims were told to have turned to other authorities or organisations before they came to Victim Support. The need for victim support could therefore be discussed in relation to the rejection by the organisations they first turned to for help. The stories revealed the need for this new organisation as deriving from the changed welfare state. One volunteer talked about the kind of situations the victims she helps have experienced:

”Most of them have been treated badly, they have not been listened to… and yes… it is hard, because they are critical. You have to be careful, no one has listened to them, and no one has cared about them.”

She talks about them as persons who already are weak in society, but who believe in the welfare state. The stories told in my interviews point at the fact that those who need victim support are described as those who believe that the welfare state is there and can help them. When they experience crime victimisation and seek help in the welfare state, they experience secondary victimisation, as they find out that it does not work as they expect it to.

8 Secondary victimisation

When victims of crime turn to the police, to a hospital or to any other organisation, they expect certain things to happen. The logical chain of what will happen derives from the understanding of the welfare state, where the authorities’ power and possibilities were taken for granted. They expect that the criminal justice system will work so that the police investigate the crime, find the offender and then the prosecutor presses charges and the court gives the offender a punishment. In the meantime they themselves are treated with respect, their stories are listened to and taken seriously, and if they need help they will get it from the authorities. This is a picture of a belief in a strong welfare state. It is the ideal understanding of what will happen, but in real life this is not what will happen.

In real life a lot of crime will not be investigated, a lot of offenders will not be found and a lot of reported crime will never come to court. Nor does health care work the way the victims expect. One of my informants told about his need for professional treatment for the severe problems the crime had caused him. He spent some months in hospital, in somatic care, but he did not have the opportunity to make contact with anyone that could help him with the psychological problems the crime had caused.

Person after person told their stories about how they had turned to the police, to the hospital or to someone else in order to get help, and when they did they found out that their problems were not regarded as severe enough for them to receive help, that it was a long time to wait, or that their right to claim to be victims was questioned. Several said, “it is what comes after the crime that is worst”. The examples came from different areas. One person said that it took him three months to get money from the health insurance and during that period “there was a lot of paper that had to be filled in”. Another one said that it took two years until his case was tried in court, “but I suppose it was because the police made a mistake and forgot it”. A third thought that everything had worked fine, until she came to court and felt harassed by the questions she had to answer:

”When I said I had been working all the time, they said it could not have been so hard, but my work was my only way to escape, and now they thought that I should have been weaker to be believed.”

In the stories told in my interviews, the informants talked about their expectations of support by the welfare state and their resignation when they found out that the state did not function as they expected. One person after the other told stories about police who did not have the time to make a proper report or give information, long queues for psychiatric or medical help, problems finding the right person to talk to and so on. All the time the story starts with a description of the crime and then they say: “But that was not the worst thing, the worst thing was when I turned to …” and then they start talking about the secondary victimisation.

Those who are victimised by the crime are victimised once again when they try to get help and when they cannot get that help. The secondary victimisation occurs because of their belief in the state and the authorities, and it occurs when their expectations should be turned into action. These are the ones who need victim support and therefore the need is produced by the changed welfare state.

There is a need for the organisation in society because of the changed welfare state. The organisation also becomes possible because of the changed welfare state, since these changes make space for this new organisation. It is parallel processes where individuals’ needs of help and structural changes develop simultaneously and thereby the new organisation meets the demands that used to be dealt with by governmental organisations. Civil society this way tends to stabilise the changes in the welfare state.

9 New state, new forms of exclusion

In this article I have raised the question whether victim support is a new organisation and if it is needed because of a new form of exclusion. Charles Tilly (1999) argue that inequality is durable, because when we create new solutions we bring in old structures. At first, I asked questions as: Why does this need of a complementing organisation occur at this specific point? Which role do this organisation play? I argue that there is an interesting connection between the rise of victim support and the changes in the welfare state. This connection becomes even more interesting when it is clear that the practice in Victim Support is to deal with individuals’ disappointments in their encounter with the welfare state, after being victimised. Thereby we can se a paralell process where new organisations are formed when the welfare state changes. Through these organisations, new forms of help are offered. Or maybe is it old forms of help? The help given is nothing new; it is mainly supportive talk and information about how justice and social service system work. What is new is that this is as a compensation for the help the needy victims expected from the welfare state, and that much help concerns how to deal with the welfare state. A welfare state that does not act and react as expected. Thereby, an NGO has grown to support the justice system as well as the social services, through helping individuals. In order to understand the way structural changes leaves traces in everyday life for people we can discuss it in how exclusion is conceptualised.

Our understanding of exclusion has a different character today than during the uniform welfare state. Then, it was connected to work and discussed in terms of economic, social and cultural aspects. Today, it is a question of lifestyle, individual choices and individual defects. Diversity is tolerated and it is possible to be normal in very many ways, but it is also possible to be excluded in many ways. In contemporary society, whether we call it the penal state, the risk society or we talk about late modernity, there are multiple ways of exclusion. You can be excluded as a criminal as well as a victim. Both categories are unattractive, but they are unattractive in different ways. New issues have become more important to social work than poverty (Pierson 1998).

Stability was important in the modern welfare state, but now it has become a negative sign. Status and rights are no longer connected to stability, but to flexibility. To be flexible is a starting point for being successful and to fail is taboo. To fail is to be not good enough in the competitive culture (Sennett 1999; Wacquant 2002). To be victimised could be seen as a failure to protect one self, to have exposed one self to risk.

Fear and weakness or criminalisation – the penal state emphasises new forms of exclusion. With these new forms of exclusion and new distinctions, the experiences and problems of the excluded are different. Therefore, the need for new organisations has appeared parallel to the changes of the welfare state. As Kumlien and Rothstein (2005) have shown, the welfare state both makes and breaks security and trust.

In this article I have discussed the role of victim support in society and for individuals. When we regard the social work in Victim Support we can see that victims needs, the means to meet these needs and the organisation have developed in a parallel process when the welfare state has changed in the late 20th century.

While the political issue concerns victims’ rights and especially vulnerable victims, the everyday practice of volunteers in Victim Support Service shows that it is still the same groups that suffer most. Earlier they were definied by poverty, work or unemployment, now they are defined through crime. Their need for help derives from the social changes, but the efforts made focus on individual help. They want help because of disappointment with the welfare state, not only because of the victimisation. Therefore, the individualised society where crime and risk are important issues can be verified through victims’ needs, through the organisations for meeting those needs and through the new social work that is established. Paralell the individual needs can be fulfilled through the new organisation by being categorised as a victim. The individual needs and the state changes in parallel processes, in interaction with each other.

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Author´s Address:
Kerstin Svensson
Lund University
School of Social Work
Box 23
SE-221 00 LUND
Tel.: ++46 46 222 04 61
Fax: ++46 46 222 94 12
E-mail: kerstin.svensson@soch.lu.se

urn:nbn:de:0009-11-12889