For many years, the number of citizens awarded disability pension has increased. To break this trend the Danish Government adopted a reform of early retirement in 2012. This reform intends to limit the number of citizens awarded early retirement in the future. A key part of this reform deals with the new rehabilitation teams whose function is to ensure a coordinated effort across agencies, administration and professional groups.
Surveys and responses from the consulted expert parties in the field of early retirement points out that several problems exist related to the way in which rehabilitation teams should be organized. The criticisms about the organization of the rehabilitation team indicate a disagreement on how the framework for social work in these rehabilitation team should be organized.
Given these disagreements, the desire of this thesis is to map the considerations of the various political stakeholders in regard to the organization of rehabilitation teams, and examine the impact which these considerations ultimately have had on the law adopted in the field.
The methodology of the thesis is based on a qualitative research method where the explorative approach has provided a theoretical framework for analysis. The aim of the analysis is to highlight the considerations of the political stakeholders on the organization of rehabilitation teams and the importance recitals have had for the organization of rehabilitation teams.
This study shows that the political stakeholders represent many different considerations depending on their political origins. Likewise, the study reveals that the macro policy level, namely the government and the opposition politicians have had the greatest impact on the outcome of the final bill. It appears that the micro-political level consisting of consulting parties and their considerations has been irrelevant to the final bill. Consequently it appears that if the micro-political stakeholders want to make their considerations applied, it should be done either through cooperation among the consulting parties or through local government.
Therefore this thesis propose to investigate further how the micro-political level will respond to their lack of political influence on the organization of rehabilitation teams, and thereby provide insight into the relationship between policy and practice.