Welfare crime has emerged as a growing challenge for Swedish welfare institutions, yet little is known about its impact on everyday eldercare practice. This paper explores how needs assessors (NAs) within social work experience and respond to welfare crime and welfare fraud in Swedish eldercare, and what these experiences reveal about contemporary welfare governance.

The study contributes to research on welfare crime by examining how criminal activities become embedded in routine welfare work and affect frontline professionals. The analysis draws on situational vulnerability and criminal opportunity structures to understand both older persons’ vulnerability and the organisational conditions that enable welfare fraud.

Empirically, the paper is based on a qualitative case study conducted in a socioeconomically disadvantaged urban district in Stockholm. The data consist of interviews with NAs and managers and observations of work meetings and discussions at the needs assessment unit, collected through a long-term participatory research project and analysed using thematic analysis.

The findings show that welfare crime has become an increasingly integrated aspect of everyday eldercare practice. NAs described expanding responsibilities for monitoring, verification, and fraud detection, alongside persistent organisational constraints that limit their ability to prevent and stop welfare crime. The study highlights how welfare crime emerges through the interaction of vulnerable welfare service users, fragmented governance structures, and opportunities for criminal exploitation, with important implications for professional practice, welfare integrity, and public trust.