The study aims to describe, compare, and analyze how managers and basic staff in disability care reflects on education and competence in the organization and from an organizational context explain how the professionalization efforts can be understood at different levels of disability care. Highlighting these questions can stimulate discussion within this field when it comes to the evaluation of competence and skills of staff working with people with various disabilities, which is also sought after in society even more today. The study is qualitative and the result is based on five semi-structured interviews with managers and basic staff in disability care. The interview questions were categorized according to the concepts that are central in this essay: competence, training, professionalism and organization.

The results show that there is some doubt about what a higher competence of personnel in direct contact with the users would mean. Among the basic staff uncertainty seems to be highest. Three different ways of relating to education and competence issues in the organization emerges: advocates of formal knowledge, advocate of practical knowledge and advocate of dialectical knowledge. The study shows some differences among managers and basic staffs attitude where basic staff seem to evaluate the practical knowledge, or dialectical, to a greater extent, while the managers seem to appreciate the theoretical knowledge to a greater extent.