System change in social services: perspectives and lessons from quality development

The delivery and management of social services in Sweden is undergoing a historic reform with the introduction of the new Social Services Act (SoL), June 2025. The Act promotes a more preventive, accessible, and knowledge-based approach to social services. Meeting the goals of this reform requires a systems transformation that impacts all levels within municipalities, from the political level to the everyday life of employees and residents. Research in quality development demonstrates that realizing sustainable system change is complex and depends on a careful balance between organizational structures and professional culture.

This project aims to identify, describe, and explain how system change can be achieved through a quality development perspective, in accordance with the intentions of the new Social Services Act. Act. This goal is achieved by by studying the conditions required to monitor, make visible, and evaluate the transition that the organization needs to undergo in order to comply with the new Social Services Act.

The expected result is new knowledge about what a system change means in practice for a municipal operation and how system change can be followed up and further developed in the long term.