Values and norms like legal security and democracy, which are some of the values in the public sphere, must be the basis for public administrations. Because of that, it is important that the organisation of public administrations allows the street-level bureaucrat to take moral considerations. In the essay I look into how the organisation of geriatric care in one local authority influences street-level bureaucrats possibilities for moral considerations.

Consequentley, the question asked in the essay is: How does the organisation of the public administration affect the street-level bureaucrats possibilities to take moral considerations in decisions ?

The street-level bureaucrat must take public administrations ethics into consideration when they meet citizens in their work, i.e. they must treat the citizen morally correct. The care of the elderly shall proceed from an individual perspective. Therefore, to fulfill this, the street-level bureaucrats need the opportunity to take the individual citizens perspective into account when taking decisions. The theoretic framework is a definition of the word ethic, the street-level bureaucrats role in public administrations, the public administrations organisation variables and Gunilla Silfverbergs proposal for ethical actions in geriatric care. Silfverbergs proposal is used to judge the organisation from the question asked in the essay and the public administrations organisation variables helped me to examine the organisation accurately without ending up on sidetracks. The goal was to examine if the organisations goals ensures opportunities for the street-level bureaucrats to take moral considerations into account and if the geriatric care investigated here enables such considerations. The essay also contains an analysis of the street-level bureaucrats autonomy. Autonomy is an important condition if street-level bureaucrats shall be able to take moral considerations into account. If geriatric care based on individual needs of the citizen should be implemented, the street-level bureaucrats need to be able to take individual decisions based on the context of the situation. This essay is a qualitative case studie.

The material analysed in the essay shows that the goals of the public administration advocate an organisation wich allows street-level bureaucrats to take moral considerations. But the goals didn´t match the organisation capabilities and the street-level bureaucrats wasn´t always able to make such considerations in their day-to-day work. The street-level bureaucrats didn´t have enough resources or enough time available to take moral considerations