The aim of the present study is to describe and analyse how an inter-cultural perspective presents itself in the didactic considerations and in the practice of preschool teachers on a multiethnic preschool.The theoretical perspective upon which the study is founded is social constructivism, but in addition to this Ingegerd Municio?s idea of two existing discourses present within the institutions in the Swedish educational system, as well as René León?s concept of a diversified normality, has been used as theoretical tools and points of departure.The empirical investigation consists of a qualitative field study at a multi-ethnic preschool, where participating observation and group interviews have been used to collect data. In these teachers from the preschool have participated.The results and the analysis of the data show that an inter-cultural perspective surfaces in the didactic considerations and in the practice of the preschool teachers in their construction of a diversified normality. The diversified normality thus constructed is constituted through different social processes. I have here identified the following ones: the preschool teachers emphasize differences among the children in general, they allow that the children behave differently and they allow them to be different; they recognize ?cultural? differences, differences in origin, and frames of reference, and they recognize that the children at the preschool are bilingual..

This thesis has focused on the construction of homosexual parenthood in Swedish law and preparatory work. The purpose was to describe the norms about legal parenthood and examine if and how homosexual parenthood was included in the normative parenthood. The study was jurisprudential and based on methods such as sociology with a juridical focus and critical discourse analysis of the juridical texts. The theoretical framework was the critical discourse analysis as well as a queer perspective, both influenced by social constructionism and a poststructional theory. The conclusion of the study is that parenthood is described from what is presumably best for the child, which is two parents of different sexes and biological origin.

Förskola och skola kan upptäcka om ett barn far illa och anmäler till socialtjänsten som utreder fallet. Studiens syfte var att med kvalitativ metod i form av intervjuer undersöka hur samarbetet mellan dessa instanser upplevs, samt vilka möjligheter och hinder som upplevs för att hjälpa barnet. Tio personer från de olika instanserna intervjuades. Studien visade att (1) möjligheter finns att hjälpa familjerna, (2) det är svårt då föräldrar inte samarbetar samt då samarbetet mellan förskola, skola och socialtjänst begränsas genom socialtjänstens tystnadsplikt och (3) samarbetet mellan instanserna är bra men kan förbättras med mer insikt i varandras arbete. Det framkom att ett behov av bättre samarbete behöver utvecklas.

This study is about conception in the evaluation of financial assistance within the social services. The aim of this study is to describe and understand how social workers reason about variation, conception and local norms and its significance in the evaluation process. To reach this purpose we have conducted semi-structured interviews with eight social workers in which different themes were discussed and reasoned about. In order to understand and analyze our results we have studied/used the knowledge about tacit knowledge and street-level bureaucracy. Our results showed, as previous research states, that social workers do have conceptions about clients.

With this study, our purpose has been to achieve profounded knowledge and understanding regarding the use of discretion among social workers specialized in social allowance issues. The Social Services Act, structured as a framework law in the Swedish context, provides the social worker with a certain degree of discretion, in order to enable accommodated decisions depending on client case specifics. This study problematizes these aspects of legal security, and our intention has been to examine which factors impact the assessments social workers carry out in statutory decisions of social allowance applications. To attain this, we narrowed down our intention into a number of distinct and delimitated research questions: (1) Which elements of the client case impact the social worker?s assessment? (2) Which external aspects influence the social worker?s assessments and decisions? (3) How do social workers decide the client?s credibility? In order to establish answers to our research questions, we have utilized a qualitative approach of research by exerting qualitative interviews in addition to a vignette study.

Background: Anxiety with children before surgery is well known. From the 1950s there are various assessment instruments. Despite that most day surgery units offer preparation for children and parents, there are many children who exhibit a strong anxiety the day of surgery, which can lead to postoperative behavioral changes. Today the nurse estimates the anxiety of a child on personal experience and knowledge, forming the basis for estimation whether the child is in need of sedation or not. The purpose: of this study was to evaluate instruments that the nurse can use in measuring the degree of anxiety of children before fast clinical settings, such as day surgery.

The purpose of this study is to find out how the non-governmental shelters for battered women identify themselves in context of their dependence and cooperation with the municipality. Their legitimacy is also investigated which is based on, along with identity, key concepts of the neoinstitutional organization theory. The mutual dependency between these two actors is problematized along with the question of who is responsible for assisting the battered women, and who takes on the responsibilities for them. The empirical result that is analyzed was gathered through three qualitative semi structured interviews with employed personnel at three different battered women?s shelters in three different municipalities in Sweden.

Using interviews conducted within the municipality of Nam Dich, Vietnam, this qualitative study explores how ethnic minority parents and children navigate around the state's supervision in order to preserve their traditional practices of child marriages. Moreover, the research explores the roles and expectations between individuals within an ethnic minority family as a collective unit. Using governmentality supported by the concept of state evasion, culture bearers and empowerment, I argue that understanding child marriage as a phenomenon requires analysis of cultural context. The paper starts with an introduction of the ongoing relation between the Vietnamese state and ethnic minority traditions related to child marriage. While the Vietnamese state ?s modernization projects aim to empower individuals by creating more freedom within the process of marriage and increasing the opportunity for education and work, certain ethnic minority groups want to uphold their cultural ways of marriage when parental arrangement occurs from an early age.

The aim of this paper was to examine how social workers' comprehension of the need of financial aid exists in, and is influated by, the organisation they work in. To investigate this, we asked ourself questions concerning how the social worker view the way that the finicial aid-system and work surrounding it is formed, whether the social worker's understanding of the need of financial aid co-exists with the percieved common understanding of the work place (do the understandings coincide, do the social worker adjust his or her understanding or is it possible to have a separate understanding), whether the social worker feel that he or she have discretion to influence the organisation and how possible conflicts between different views are handled. We felt that a qualitative method would best help us answer these questions. We therefore interviewed seven social workers working in the same organisation. We then looked at our material from an organisational theory perspective, focusing on the individual in the organisation.We found that the social workers were socialised into the organisation and adapted the norms and values that existed there.

The EU Services Directive has caused an intense debate across Europe. Its purpose is to remove obstacles to trade and to open up the public sector to increased competition. The Swedish labour movement has been deeply involved in the policy process, and union leaders have proclaimed the compromise reached in the European Parliament in April 2006 as a success.In the paper two major aspects have been considered: the meaning of the Swedish model and the process of Europeanization. The Swedish model previously allowed for a strong labour movement, through a social democratic hegemony, but the EU membership has implied new conditions for union influence. The paper examines how this change has affected the strategic choices of the Swedish labour movement, and how it has been manifested in the union's work with the Services Directive.

The aim of this qualitative study was to explore which inner conceptions about the abused older women the professional social workers had and how they experienced the enconter of an abused old woman in an intimate partner relation. The theoretical background is social construction by Berger and Luckmann. This theory was uset to analyze the transcribed interviews. This study is based on nine interviews with five professionals in social services, three volunteers from the voluntary sector and one social worker who worked in a community based support group for abused older women. The result of this study shows that older women were often abused, by a relative they were dependent on, in their home.

The main purpose of this study was to establish to what extent undergraduate students use reference services, what knowledge they have about those services and what their views of them are.The survey took place at Lund University Library, UB1, the main library responsible for collections in social sciences, humanities, theology and law. A total of 476 undergraduate students were asked to fill in a questionnaire, 273 accepted. The study is quantitative and was carried out during the autumn semester, 1996.The results show that the service used most frequently by undergraduate students is the reference collection. The least used service is the Internet, more than 50 percent of the students never use Internet at the University Library. In general, students are very pleased with the service given by the reference librarians, and with the collection of reference books.

The aim of this thesis was to study how social workers in social services in several municipalities perceive that they interpret the concept of domestic violence and how they believe they would act when it comes to different types of domestic violence. The thesis has focused on three types of violence; physical, psychological and economical. Seven social workers were interviewed with a thematised interview guide and six vignettes. The theoretical perspectives applied in the analysis were the process of normalization and the continuum of violence. The results showed that the social workers did not interpret domestic violence unanimous, and they had different ideas of how they would act in the vignettes.

The aim of this master?s thesis is to examine the virtual reference service Ask the Library [Bibblan svarar] from a postmodern perspective. Ask the Library is a Swedish online reference service that is run by the country?s public libraries. The postmodern theories of Jean-François Lyotard are used to study how information is managed and transmitted within the service.

The overall purpose of this essay was to provide a better understanding of the importance of discretion for social workers in direct social services. To answer the purpose three questions were formulated: (1) How do social workers define and describe their discretion and their ability to independently accomplish their work? (2) How do social workers experience that workplace organization, policies and economic conditions interact with their discretion and (3) How do social workers experience that the interaction with the client can affect how they use their discretion in the individual case? The method used was qualitative interviews. The theoretical framework was Michael Lipskys (1980) Street-level bureaucracy and the four themes organization, professional role, skills and interaction.The results showed that the respondents, although they did not consider themselves to be affected by the economy still adapted to budget restrictions when they said that they were cost conscious in their work. This adjustment to budget framework could possibly be what made them not feel limited in their work.