”Det är klart de vet vad uppgivenhet betyder”: Kommunikation och språk i vård- och omsorgsutbildning på komvux

This article concerns the role of teachers as street level bureaucrats in Swedish vocational healthcare education for adult students. At the centre of the analysis are the challenges related to policy implementation when many of the students are second language speakers and language and communication play a role. Policy documents provide the analysis with a normative framework. Interviews with teachers give the analysis its standpoint. As a societal context, the field of elderly care suffers from labour shortages with difficulties recruiting trained staff. Policy stakeholders place high expectation on adult care education to both supply the labour market with trained staff, and to contribute to a smooth integration of migrants into society. As a matter of fact, half of the students in Swedish adult vocational healthcare education are migrants and the majority of those who complete the education get employment within elderly care. Thus, healthcare teachers are incremental to the implementation of policies. In their role as street level bureaucrats, they use different strategies to handle the press transferring sometimes contradictory policies into practice in the direct encounters with students. The results stress the importance of communication and language in healthcare education – and in elderly care practice.