In the aftermath of three high-profile honor killings the social service administrators became strongly criticized for their lack of skills and knowledge when it comes to dealing with honorrelated cases. In order to fix this lack of knowledge and to respond to the criticism from the society, the Swedish government allocated resources to train administrators in social services to improve their knowledge of honor-related violence and know how to handle clients who are victims of honor-related crimes.The aim of this study is to examine how social service administrators perceive their professional knowledge regarding to their work in honor-related cases. How they perceive their competence and Discretion in relation to the work of honor-related problems and their perception of what resources the organization has to provide training and skill development in this area. The study shows that the social service administrators experience that there has been a development of knowledge in some areas regarding their work with honor-related cases but that there still exists an uneven distribution in terms of knowledge between small and large communities in Sweden..

The rural development programme is a tool for promoting sustainable development in the Swedish countryside. The master plan should, for example, give directions for the national interest and describe how it will follow up national and regional targets such as the EU's environmental quality standards. Because the municipality has considerable freedom to formulate the plan in its sole Discretion, and that it contains the municipality's political vision, it is also feasible to make a discourse analysis of the plan text.In discourse analysis, including articles and documents written by Rural Network Working Group on land use planning to be included. The purpose of discourse analysis is to see if there are differences in the way rural areas are described and if there are any flaws in how the designer interprets the rural development programme. Furthermore, the analysis result in tools that are adapted to the standards we create and choose.The standards we have are being designed based on our values, which differ.

The aim of this essay was to gain a deeper understanding about how school employees interpret and practice school law regarding cyber-bullying that occurs between pupils on the internet. To examine this we used a qualitative method. We completed eight interviews with five teachers, one headmaster, one school welfare officer and one special educationist. These eight school employees were from four different high schools. In our interviews we found that the school employees thought it was difficult to define different concepts within the school law such as in association with the occupation and offensive behaviour which prohibits them from interpreting the school law in the same way.

Placed in an institution, what happens next? A study concerning how social workers handle the after-care of adolescents who earlier has been placed in an institution is written by Therese Wester and Sanna Sjölander Wirlöf. The purpose of the study is to understand and explain how social workers handle the after-care. This study is based on an organizational perspective since the after-care has been studied in relation to the structure of the organization and the laws and guidelines that the organization has to relate to. The method that has been used is semi-structured interviews with six social workers in different municipalities in Stockholm.

Ridterapi har på senare tid börjat användas som en komplettarande behandlingsmetod för psykosocial problematik. I dagsläget finns ännu inte mycket forskning inom ämnet och behandlingsmetoden är vare sig speciellt känd eller etablerad. I denna uppsats görs en kartläggning av socialsekreterares uppfattning och kännedom om ridterapi. Undersökningen var i form av en enkät och genomfördes i Uppsala län där socialsekreterare som arbetar med placeringar på HVB-hem medverkade. Vi ville se om olika faktorer som exempelvis ett eget djurintresse, kunskap om behandlingsmetoden, kön och ålder kunde påverka deras inställning till ridterapi.

This thesis examines the effects of the Swedish school reforms that took place in the early 1990?s. Theories such as Principal-Agent, Stewardship and Lipsky?s street-level bureaucracy are discussed as well as New Public Management (NPM). These reforms were heavily influenced by NPM, causing an increased level of street-level bureaucracy, and according to Principal-Agent theory some outcomes could have been predicted.

During 2010, 1446 people committed suicide in Sweden. Research shows that groups that are less favored in society have an increased risk of suicide. Social services often encounter groups of people that have a high risk of suicide, for instance welfare recipients or substance abusers. The purpose of this study was to shed light on how social workers talk about suicide and how this might affect interactions with suicidal clients. The study is based on qualitative interviews with five social workers in Stockholm.

Goodwill accounting has for a long time been, and with the implementation of IFRS in 2005, has become an even bigger issue. Critics mean that reporting of goodwill impairments is subject to Discretion that can be used by the managers. We have applied a study made by Carlin and Finch (2009) on Nasdaq OMX Stockholm during 2006-2012. Our study contains 50 of the 255 public companies at 2012-12-31. The purpose of the study is to investigate if companies use an opportunistic discount rate when testing for impairment in goodwill and if the relation between goodwill and net profit before taxes, goodwill intensity, is an incentive for opportunism.

The thesis had its starting point in the first paragraph of the eleventh chapter in the Swedish social services act, which discusses the immediate risk assessments that has to be made when the social services receive a report about a child. The thesis highlights an area that has received a lot of attention in media since the spring of 2014, when an eight year old girl was fatally abused by her legal guardians. The social services had at the time received a report about the girl but it was left unread. This tragic case has brought attention to the routines used by the social services for dealing with reports and risk assessments. This thesis was conducted through individual interviews with social workers working with children and families in the social services, with the aim to acquire an enhanced understanding of how social workers perform immediate risk assessments and what these assessments are based on.

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 purpose of this thesis has been to examine preventing child sexual abuse in four elementary schools in Stockholm, Sweden. The study is based on qualitative interviews with school counselors. The aim of this thesis was to find out how and if elementary schools in Sweden work with preventing child sexual abuse. The aim was also to examine how the school counselors reason about the schools efforts to prevent child sexual abuse. Their statements was analysed with Foucault?s theory about sexual history to get a deeper understanding for why people reason the way they do when it comes to issues like this.

The purpose of this essay was to describe and analyse the tension/conflict between external demands and actual conditions, as experienced (and told in interviews) by employees at two social insurance offices in Scania, concerning their roles in the process of working life rehabilitation. The theoretical starting point is the theory of street-level bureaucrats, as defined by Lipsky. The comprehension among the employees were that working life rehabilitation services are approved less today compared to a few years ago. The Discretion, i.e. the position to choose among competing alternatives; about what to do, how to do it etc., characteristic of street-level bureaucrats, according to the employees is less prominent, as the routines of handling cases and decision making are regulated.

The aim of this study was to explore how social workers interpret the part of the Swedish social services act that regulates each municipality?s responsibility of the people staying in it. The study?s general methodological approach connects to sociology of law. The research questions were: (1) What factors are considered important by the social workers in assessments of responsible municipality? (2) Are there variations in the assessments of responsible municipality and in that case; how can the variations be explained? (3) What Discretion do the social workers consider that they have in assessments of responsible municipality? Previous studies have found considerable differences in professional social work assessments in Sweden.

Syftet med denna kvalitativa intervjustudie var att få förståelse för hur socialsekreterarnas handlingsutrymme och kunskap används vid placeringsöverväganden av barn och unga i samhällsvård. Med hjälp av våra frågeställningar ville vi få svar på, dels hur socialsekreterarna beskriver sitt handlingsutrymme vid placeringsöverväganden, dels hur socialsekreterarna förhåller sig till kunskap vid dessa bedömningar. Studiens intervjupersoner var socialsekreterare som har arbetat eller arbetar med att placera barn och unga. Utifrån det våra intervjupersoner har berättat är vår slutsats att socialsekreterarnas bedömningar påverkas av flera faktorer. Dessa faktorer var bland annat resursbrist, lagstiftning samt vägledning av arbetsledning.

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).