Introduction

“Legitimisation of professional social work in a comparative perspective” (“Legpro”) is a research project funded by Norwegian Research Council. Legpro was initiated and developed by a research-group at Bodö Regional University in cooperation with scholars in Australia, Canada, Russia and USA. The project started in Autumn 2000 and will be finished at the end of 2003. The current report is a collection of national cases focusing the research questions elaborated and conducted by the participants in the project. The participants are as follows:

• Project leader: Associate professor (Dr.) Rolv Lyngstad, Bodö Regional University, Norway
• Professor Elena Iarskaia-Smirnova, Saratov State Technic University, Russia
• Professor Elaine Carey Belanger Laval University, Quebec, Canada
• Dr. Karen Healy, The University of Sydney, Australia
• Professor (Dr) Pamela Brown
• Associate professor Gunn Strand Hutchinson, Bodö Regional University, Norway
• Assistent professor Lisbet Lund, Bodö Regional University, Norway
• Associate professor (Dr) Siv Oltedal, Bodö Regional University, Norway

The main purpose of the project is to understand better how professional social workers - working with poverty within different educational and professional contexts and welfare systems - make their work legitimate. The different contextual pictures we expect to grasp will guide and deepen our reflections about similarities and differences in social work practice between the five involved countries. The project’s significance lies in the development of comparative research based on contextual social work practice by focusing legitimisation challenges encountering the profession in different countries. Expected outcomes:

• We expect the comparative approach to enlighten the importance of different socio-political, professional and educational contexts in explaining the societal position of the social work profession in different countries. 
• We expect to explore how social workers account for and legitimise their professionalism in working with poverty as social problem, ethical dilemmas and issues in contested areas. 
• We expect that our findings would be useful in education of social workers. The articles and reports deriving from this project will be written with the curriculum of social work studies in mind. The project will strengthen teaching and research co-operation ventures between social work institutes in different countries. 

We have been using qualitative methods both for data collection and analysing. Our data are from these sources:

• Literature study regarding relevant topics.

• Collection of secondary data related to professional, educational and social policy context for social work in Australia, Canada, Norway, Russia and USA (see Social work in five countries (HBO-report 25/2001)
• Theme focused interviews from each country, between a social worker and a user of the “lowest security net” (sole mothers). 
• Theme focused interviews from each country, between a researcher and the social worker that participated in the conversation with the user.
• A case-report from each country based on the empirical data mentioned above but also on additional relevant research

 The coming report (December 2004) will be a collection of the national cases written to make comparisons possible. The national cases have a little different structure, though the ground themes are mainly the same. These themes are as follows

• Organisational features
• Information related to single parents
• Short and illuminating stories of the clients
• Social work with poor and poverty
• The ethical social worker
• Social work in grey areas
• Legitimisation of social work