The focus of this thesis is the conception of work and the relation between work, economic growth and welfare in today?s Sweden in the editorial of Dagens Nyheter (DN), which is the main morning paper in Sweden.As the theoretical foundation of this thesis is social constructionism and the method being used is critical discourse analysis, the language is considered as an important source for the construction of value and meaning of work. In that context it is important to investigate how DN, by certain ways of representing reality, preserves a certain view of the human being, the society and the economy. Which ideological ideas underlie the conception of work that emerges in DN? What social consequences will these ideas have?The thesis discusses the ?truths? that the editorialists mediate concerning for example the view of the human being as guided by rational choice and the view of economic growth as the main goal for social life.One of the conclusions is that DN considers work as a means for economic growth as economic growth is regarded fundamental for the survival of the welfare state..

The main purpose of this study was to examine how preschool teachers are working to promote each child's language development and whether they can ensure that they do that. Therefore I wanted to find out what a good language development implies for each teacher, how they work to promote each child's language development in daily practice, how they measure the actual language development and also what conditions the teachers have, to engage in a language development way to work. For the study, I chose a qualitative method, with structured interviews and all together I interviewed six preschool teachers, within the same organization in a suburb close to Stockholm.  The results showed that there is an ambiguity, among the preschool teachers, in what a good language development means, but it can be stated that they do have a language development way to work even if it needs to be developed. Further on, it has emerged that the teachers have the tools to measure children's language development, although they do not have the conditions yet to use the method to the fullest. About the preschool teachers own conditions in order to operate in a language development way to work, I concluded that they have a strong foundation to build on, but they still have much work ahead of them.

The general purpose of this work is to study how social welfare offices organization affect accessibility for those seeking immediate financial assistance in the municipality of Stockholm. Accessibility in this study is principally defined by Swedish Law. The study is based on an empowerment perspective. Data was collected by qualitative interviews of officials in eight social welfare offices. Search path to reach the officials was registered by participant observations.

The North-American sociologist Michael Lipsky has characterized social workers as street-level bureaucrats with a substantial discretion in the relationship between the welfare state and its citizens. Within Lipsky´s theoretical framework social workers appear as a powerful group that socializes the citizens to uphold certain expectations towards the welfare state and its (re)distributional programs. From this point of view, it is important to learn more about social workers and the attitudes they express towards the welfare state. The aim of this study is to analyze how the welfare-political attitudes of future social workers are affected by their social background (e.g. class background and ancestral homeland).

Many children are being abused by daily basis. Mostely they are abused by a parent or another person that is close to the child. Mostely the child abuse never is reported to the social services or to the police, and even if the perpertrator is known, only a few cases are brought to prosecution. If a case allthough is drawn before the court of law, there are still too many of the perpetrators that are being acquitted. In other words, the legal security for the abused children is way too low.When suspiscions arise that a child is exposed to child abuse there are several inquiries that starts at the same time.

Animal welfare is of increasing concern in present society. In commercial pig farming, animal welfare problems are common. One of the causes for these problems is the barren environment in which pigs are housed, which can cause oral manipulation of pen mates. Providing straw might be one solution to this problem. Another solution could be reached through genetic selection.

The purpose of this study was to examine divergences in assessments of social assistance in one big and one small social welfare office in the municipalities of Malmö. To examine this we used a qualitative method. We held interviews with social workers and their superiors. At the end of the interviews with the social workers we presented two vignettes, describing different cases of first time applications of social assistance. The social workers was asked to assess whether the application should be granted or not, and motivate their decisions.

The aim of the study was to examine collaboration and professional perspectives on the best interest of the child in regards to working with unaccompanied asylum seeking children. Firstly, our result show that counselling is available for the unaccompanied children from case workers, staff, school counsellors and emergency psychiatric care. All of the participants in this study describe the need for long-term counselling for unaccompanied children, however, providing the long-term counselling is not the primary purpose of the organisations in question. Therefore an additional service-provider working with counselling is a necessity. Secondly, the study explores the participants? professional perspectives on the best interest of the child.

In many of the disputes concerning custody, residence and visitation determined by the court, some form of violence has been performed. The consequence of a child who has witnessed violence in their homes is a problem that is sometimes overlooked. It is not unusual that the violence will continue even after a separation. The law shows that the child´s need of both parents is to be met. This has according to previous studies resulted in the fact that courts do not always see visitation with a violent parent as a risk for the child.

Social workers ideas about what domestic violence is influence their ability to recognize vio-lence in cases where this occurs. Social workers awareness and understanding of domestic violence can also influence the handling of these cases. Education on the subject domestic violence can increase social workers knowledge about, awareness and handling of violence. The present study aims to investigate how social workers in child protection investigations understand, recognize and interpret domestic violence and which interventions the social workers suggest. This is a qualitative vignette study in which semi-structured interviews was carried out with social workers working with child protection investigations.

The purpose of this study was to investigate how social services workers describe, the risk of being exposed to threats and violence in their profession. Six social services workers were interviewed, four from the Welfare Office in a major city and two from the Child and Family Services in a minor city. Results showed that the majority of social services workers consider themselves exposed in their profession, meaning that they feel there's a risk of a violent or threatening situation occurring in their work situation. All interviewees had experiences from some sort of threat or violence in a work related context and they attested that non-personal assaults, such as threats made through telephone, email and answering machines are more common than verbal assaults made in personal meetings. Being prepared and listening to ones intuition is a way of dealing with exposure when meeting with a client.

Title: Notification of animal welfareAuthor: Helen ÖhlundThe purpose of this study was to examine the routines of the county administrations in Sweden when it comes to receiving notification from the public about the welfare of animals. According to Jordbruksverket at least 50 % of the screening of animal welfare should be based on routine controls on existing farmers. Today the routine controls only reach a 43 % average for the whole country. A big part of today?s result depends on the amount of time it takes the administrators of animal welfare to process the notifications from the public.

This qualitative study aimed to examine which discourses can be found within the Child and Adolescent Psychiatry (BUP) and women?s shelters against domestic violence, concerning children that have experienced violence within the family, from two perspectives: the child?s need of father and of protection from violence. The study also aimed to examine which discourses can be found within the organisations concerning children?s well-being, how they define their mission concerning domestic violence and how this can affect the practical work with children that have experienced violence and their parents. The questions that the study aimed to answer were which discourses can be distinguished within BUP and the women?s shelters against domestic violence and how they can affect the different agencies? view of the child?s need and well-being.

The Swedish legislation (Socialtjänstlagen, SoL 5 kap 1§ 6 st.) state that the social welfare committee is particularly responsible for those children whom are in need of support and help after an adoption or custody matter has been decided. "Adoption - but at what price?" SOU 2003:49 is a state report with the purpose to investigate different aspects around international adoptions, which brings up and discusses what supports there is for adoptive families in Sweden. With this background and a special attention towards adoptive children's health conditions when arriving to their new country we decided to study the subject adoption. By interviewing different professionals and volunteers that work with adoptive families in Sweden the aim with this study was to acknowledge how they look upon the support the Swedish community offers for adoptive parents and also how they consider the knowledge about adoption among those who in their line of work can meet adoptive children is.

In Sweden everyone has the possibility to report deficiencies in animal welfare they encounter. They report this to the county administration in their county and such a report is called a complaint case. Complaint cases are normally handled with animal welfare inspections, carried out by animal welfare inspectors from the county administration in the county where the animal keeper with reported deficiencies lives. The county administrations in Sweden receive a lot of complaint cases that differ in grade of how severe the deficiency is. The complaint cases are given priority by how severe the deficiency seems to be.