ABSTRACT
This chapter describes how some social workers and clients talk with each other in social welfare offices in Finnish municipalities, and what can be said on the basis of this about the encounters between these professional helpers and those coming to them for help. It explains that observations about the talk-in-interaction in social welfare-office are interpreted in the larger context of participants' activities and communicative work. The chapter discusses that findings are from the point of view of implementing social welfare as a micropolicy of face-to-face-interaction. In many cases a conversational topic, which seemed to have nothing to do with applying for money, could be introduced. Under the constraints of social welfare bureaucracy, as well as those of professional goals of social work, social workers and their clients in Finnish social welfare offices seem to have constructed rather different types of encounters. The chapter draws attention to the everyday-life capabilities of the participants in interaction.
