AbstractThe aim of this thesis is to examine Interreg as an instrument for regional policy in the European Union. Interreg is an initiative designed to strengthen economic and social cohesion throughout the European Union by fostering balanced development through cross-border, transnational and interregional cooperation. But how does it work in practise? Three main questions are asked to answer this:How well does the implementation in the programmes work?How does the programme management look and how well does it work?What degree of efficiency does Interreg show in financial and physical effectiveness?With evaluation and implementation as theories the questions are answered together with a qualitative method. The conclusions that can be drawn is that Interreg strengthen European unions economic and social cohesion in form of integration and regional development that in many ways make it easier to travel and trade over the borders.

More and more preschools are choosing to reduce the sugar consumption. The reason is, inter alia, the increase of weight in the community, but there is also research showing that sugar is harmful to children. The discussions on sugar and children are also a hot media topic.I have chosen to use a qualitative method, interviews, to gather material for the essay. I have interviewed a teacher and a cook in three different preschools, in different municipalities. I have also looked at their various nutrition policies to see how the guidelines for their work on diet and health look like.

The aim of this study was to reach a deeper understanding of the process that occurs within the social services after receiving a notification according to Chapter 14, section 1, The Social Services Act. More specifically the focus of this study was to illustrate how social secretaries reason about children?s participation in the process, as well as to examine whether the legislative change, Chapter 11, section 1 a, The Social Services Act, has affected the process in any way. The study?s results reflect interviews with five social secretaries who are active in four different municipalities in southern Sweden.

Children at the age of six, has since 1991 been allowed to start their tuition in the Swedish school system. Studies reveal that; the first school year (preschool) can be a stressful task dueto the new environment, new friendships and higher expectations.The purpose of this study is to describe and analyze how the teachers perceive their own role in the transitioning process from preschool to school. This purpose required a method of qualitative complexion and therefore qualitative interviews were used. The material is based on four interviews with four different teachers. The teachers were asked the same question considering; the transition from preschool to school from a pupil point of view, their own role in that transition and their opinions on different educational tools.

Children, who grow up in families, where their parents have decided to take care of a foster child on a commission of the social welfare services, are not often given the possibility to tell about their experience of having foster siblings, in research and other studies. The aim of this study was to give biological children, in these families, a chance to tell their narratives of growing up with foster siblings, creating opportunities for families, who might have plans to take care of foster children in the future. They can get a picture of how it could be for the family´s own children. The biological children got the opportunity to tell their narrative stories including the relationships in their families and how they were looking forward into their own future and family life. The used theory takes part in systemic thinking, looking at the family as an organization and how identities are created in relationships and in communication.

This essay examines the policy process of specialist medical training in three Swedish counties. The essay will first describe the policy process. Secondly the politicians parti-cipating in the process is examined. Thirdly, it is tested whether it is possible to analyze the policy process based on Ostrom's theories of cooperation around a common pool resource. In this case, the common pool resource is specialized medical practitioners skills that the Swedish county councils must collaborate on to competence should be sufficient for the county council needs, something that is not the case today.One conclusion of the study is that the health care law is not clear enough when it comes to who is responsible for providing a sufficient number of specialists.

Mothers and fathers in Sweden receive an earnings-related benefit of 80 percent of their income when they take parental leave. There exists a ceiling in the allowance though, meaning that some people with high earnings don?t receive fully 80 percent of their ordinary salary. The length of the parental leave varies between women and men and also among men and women. Various reasons are used to explain this; one of them is economical.

AbstractThe project "Sound and Play" have been implemented in collaboration with the toy company BRIO in Malmo. The purpose of the project was to examine whether and how BRIO in the future could develop toys around sound for Toddlers.The problem formulations that would be answered after completion of the project was "How could BRIO broaden its product range with the help of audio toys?", "How can you combine toys and sounds in an interesting way for children?", "How do you create a toy with sound that is fun for the child, but not annoying for parents?". Currently BRIO only has two toys with sound in this age group.The expression of the toy was going to be a mix of classic and cool and the overall feeling of the toy was going to be explorative and arouse curiosity in the child. This feeling would be communicated through simplicity and joy.

The purpose of this thesis is, from a self directed learning perspective, to investigate the support of public libraries and genealogy associations of genealogists' own research, i.e. their search for ancestors as well as their possibilities to broaden their history outlook. Accordingly, five public librarians and five genealogy representatives in the west of Sweden have been interviewed regarding the support that can be offered to genealogists. The investigated support to genealogists in their own research is about working environment, literature and material, activities and the cooperation between public libraries and genealogy associations. In this thesis conclusions are merely drawn from a self-directed learning perspective, a perspective where also different forms of support are being recommended by scientists.

AbstractThe aim of this study was to describe the anesthesia nurses experiences of pediatric anesthesia in two surgical wards, a general surgery department and a day surgery surgical department at two hospitals in central Sweden. The study had a descriptive design with a qualitative approach, in which ten anesthetic nurses with more or less experience in children's anesthesia participated. Data were collected using semi-structured interview questions and were analyzed using qualitative content analysis. The results were reported based on a theme, three sub themes and nine categories. The theme When skills, tactfulness and interpersonal skills come to a head, with three sub themes Being prepared and ready, Interacts and open for participation   and Emotional tension.

In the beginning of 2002 a new kind of debate started inside the Swedish trade unions that also were published in the newspapers. The debate was about if the Swedish trade unionshould organize the undocumented workforce or not. In this thesis I will deal with this issue and also investigate what kind of solutions the trade unions in Sweden use on this newphenomenon, a phenomenon that recently have become a social and political problem during the last years. This is a new subject within political science and there is limited research made before. Because of that, this thesis will be empirical, inductive and exploring by its nature.

This essay deals with the social services cooperation with the private sector relating to foster care. The aim was to examine whether and what the causes may be that the social service transfer tasks of authority to private actors. Furthermore, we have examined and discussed if such a working procedure can lead to consequences for the individual child and how / if the children's legal security is affected. Survey methodology is qualitative in nature where we conducted semi-structured interviews with three persons who work in different ways to be involved in work with a foster family. We have also made use of questionnaires sent to social workers around the country.The result has been interpreted on the basis inter alia, legal texts, legislative history, and two theories which have their origin in organization theory.

Different forms of relaxing methods can be used in rehabilitation for individuals with tinnitus and Ménièré?s disease. Research continues to find convincing proof of effects from the different methods. This study presents methods of relaxing, massage and Mindfulness, as possible complementary rehabilitation tools.The purpose of this study was to investigate opinions about relaxing from professionals working with hearing care. A qualitative approach with phenomenological influence was chosen for the study.

The purpose of this essay is to review the Swedish international development cooperation carried out by Sida to control whether the implementation of the international aid is compatible with the policy. There are a lot of different ways to implement the economic aid that are being used by the donors today. The Swedish method has since the 1960s mainly been focused on attempting to diminish the poverty in the world. In the latest time another goal has been added, that is a focus on supporting the civil rights. This essay will be concentrated to aim on what kind of countries receiving aid from Sweden, and exactly why these countries are being chosen.The main question of this essay is: What countries are receiving the international developing aid, and how can this distribution be understood? To answer the main question there are two themes in the essay:? What kind of countries is supposed to receive developing aid from Sweden according to the policy?? What kind of countries is receiving the aid, and how can this be understood?This essay is mainly based on quantitative data obtained from Sida, together with index of corruption and poverty will the different types of Swedish cooperation countries be described.The conclusions of this essay are that there are two objectives of the policy: to fight poverty, and to strengthen the civil rights.

This study has been carried out in cooperation with Unilever and partly with the EC founded project, Smartdoc IST-2000-28137. In areas of statistics and image processing, both the amount of data and the dimensions are increasing rapidly and an interactive visualization tool that lets the user perform real-time analysis can save valuable time. Real-time cropping and drill-down considerably facilitate the analysis process and yield more accurate decisions. In the Smartdoc project, there has been a request for a component used for smart filtering in multidimensional data sets. As the Smartdoc project aims to develop smart, interactive components to be used on low-end systems, the implementation of the self-organizing map algorithm proposes which dimensions to visualize.