Different reports imply that the Roma are an excluded group in numerous areas of both Sweden and Europe. Efforts have been done through the centuries without given intentional results. The past 12 years as a Swedish national minority have not diminished the gap between the Roma and the majority society. How does Sweden create and operate its minority policy especially towards the Roma? We have studied international and national minority policy to see how it is described and implemented in the municipality work.

The aim of this paper is to research and discuss the role the cultural politics play for the Swedish employment office (Arbetsförmedlingen) and the meaning culture politics have within the labour market policy. A research has shown that Arbetsförmedlingen evaluates unemployed cultural workers differently than regular registered jobseekers. From an instrumental perspective on political implementation this can be considered as an anomali. Arbetsförmedlingen?s mandate derives from the government and its authority is a tool for carrying out state policy.

The purpose of the study was to increase the understanding of, and extend the knowledge about realization of mediations and its consequences on family law divisions and family centres. Within this area, organisational, methodical, relational and social preventative aspects of mediations were illustrated. This scope was judged to be of major importance, as recent studies show that children often suffer psychologically due to parents? lack of cooperation. Mediations are considered as a way of getting parents to agree.

This thesis is a case study that examines what political decisions have been taken and how these policies have been implemented. Further this thesis discusses how legitimacy of local policy makers and implementors is affected. The subject studied have been the social service of Jönköping municipality and the intervention of safe-housing aimed at women who have been, or are subject to violence by person close to them. In our study we have examined local policy within the territory of the intervention and how this policy is implemented. A qualitative method with semi-structured interviews was used in combination with quantitative methods to examine protocols from the social welfare board and an action program named "Skydd och stöd för misshandlade kvinnor och deras barn? [Protection and support for abused women and their children].The purpose of this study has been to highlight how the social services implemented the local policy of safe-house accommodation in Jönköping municipality from the legitimacy and discretion perspectives.

The social dimension in the EU, explored through the document texts of the Treaty of Rome, the Lisbon Strategy, the Social Policy Agenda and the Swedish Strategy ReportThis paper explores the social dimension of EU social policy, except the aspects of the economic and labour market. The EU documents reveal an underlying line of thought stemming from the alignment of the six founding countries, spearheaded by France, with the conservative corporatist welfare model. As one of four European welfare models, the conservative corporatist model emphasises labour market issues, corporate social responsibility and the subsidiarity principle in EU social policy. It also influences how the texts define the terms social, social policy and social exclusion. The definitions determine how policymakers combat problems such as social exclusion and identify the policy issues to be included in EU social policy.The Swedish Strategy shows how the country is responding to the objectives that it has been assigned by the EU and how it plans to attain them.

The Swedish alcohol policy has by tradition a restrictive composition, with high taxes and the Swedish Alcohol Retailing Monopoly as important elements. The Moderate Party has been powerful critics of the alcohol policy and has advocated a reformation. However, today the Moderate Party seems to have changed the attitude towards the alcohol policy and it even supports the Swedish initiative to create cooperation about alcohol matters at the EU level.This thesis examines why the Moderate Party has changed its attitude towards the restrictive alcohol policy. Three aspects have been considered: the rise of a European public policy, strategic choice, and the influence of the political environment. The paper discusses the problem from a strategic perspective, which means that the political change is viewed as a result of strategic considerations.The party has indeed been affected by all of the three aspects, although to different extent.

When a child is diagnosed with diabetes the whole family is affected. The effect of the illness often means drastically changes to their daily life. The aim of this study has been to describe the experiences of the parents´ having a child fallen ill with diabetes. The study has been done as a general literature study. The procedure has been to systematically search, critically investigate and summarise results from different studies made on the chosen area of subject.

The Motor Group of the European Council was commissioned in the autumn of 1997 to prepare a proposal for a new European Bus and Coach Directive. In the beginning, most of the Member States did not have the accessibility requirements as their main concern; still a smaller network with actors from the National delegations from Britain, Germany and Sweden would influence the other National delegations in the Council group to finally agree to retain the requirement of accessibility of the Directive. Within the EU decision process, the European Disability movement acted as a strong player during the whole negotiation process using the proposal to a new Bus and Coach Directive as a tool to influence key actors to go towards a Directive with a strong approach for accessibility.Policy Transfer and Policy Transfer Network are used as analytical tools to understand and structure the transfer of the question of accessibility during the negotiation process. Actors understanding how the bureaucratic process works within the EU decision system have a chance to contributing for the changes in the directions they wishes for within a range of policy areas. The principal aim of the Directive was to guarantee the safety of passengers and to provide technical prescription in particular to wheelchair users.

This paper examines in what way the heterosexual matrix is challenged by Stephenie Meyer in Breaking dawn (Så länge vi båda andas). By doing a thematic study on the various family constellations appearing in the novel, I search for the queer elements in it. I discuss incest, family building and motherhood, and find that there are numerous queer elements associated with the themes I have chosen. I conclude that the Cullen family challenges the heterosexual matrix, despite not being typical queer vampire characters. I also find that building a successful family is not based on gender or constellation otherwise, but is instead dependant on democracy and equality.

This master?s paper first presents some of the principal theories and concepts developed by the poverty researchers Rowntree, Titmuss, Townsend, Sen and Lister. These theoretical frameworks are then related to two documents from the EU and Sweden concerning combating poverty and social exclusion, bearing on the establishment of the ?Year 2010 against Poverty?. Finally, I discuss the value in practice of these theories and policy documents, as regards reducing poverty in Europe.It has become clear in this investigation that the theories and concepts from earlier research are still relevant to the formulation of contemporary policy programmes, and that earlier research helps us to avoid old traps in fighting poverty.

ÖREBRO UNIVERSITYDepartment of Behavioural, Social and Legal SciencesProgram of social workSocial Work CC-essay in Social Work, 15 creditsAutumn term 2013The family is the only way back home? A qualitative study on staff?s view on family involvement in the treatment of adolescentsAuthors: Cakici, Nahrin and Claesson, SandraAbstractThe aim of this study is to investigate how the staff at residential treatment centers works to involve the family and the social network in youth?s treatment and how they experience that the involvement affects the young person. The aim is also to study the difficulties the staff experience in their work to involve the family and the social network. In this study, staff from two residential treatment centers in Sweden participated. The study is conducted based in on qualitative method in which four semi-structured telephone interviews and one group interview have been conducted.

The aim of our study was to increase the awareness of the importance of implementation when a policy document is widely introduced. We wanted to examine how a political decision was implemented on different levels in a social care administration. We also wanted to examine the discretion related to the decision on different levels in the organisation, and if the work is followed up. The theoretical frame of reference in our study is Vedung?s implementation model and Lipsky?s theory about street-level bureaucrats.

Since the introduction of the European citizenship in the Maastricht treaty, social rights havetaken a back seat to the economic and political elements. Nevertheless, over the past yearssocial issues have been increasingly included on the agenda following the universalrecognition of challenges resulting from further economic integration and demographicchange. The extensive research on European social policy so far tend to focus on initiativesput forward by the European Commission, and offers little to explain the multitude of lines ofreasoning on how far EU social policy should be taken or why it still remains one of the leastdeveloped policy areas. By examining plenary debates in the European Parliament concerningFamily policy, this Bachelor thesis aims to describe the complex of problems connected to afurther development of the social dimension of the European citizenship.The analysis finds that the most imminent problems impeding an expansion of the EU familypolicy lie not only in the many clashes of opinions between advocates of the various existingwelfare models, but also in the conflicts of interests and the different levels of ambitionbetween EU institutions - most notably the Commission and the European Parliament..

This thesis is a comparative analysis of language policy in the Post-Soviet states Ukraine and Kazakhstan, wherein the states are seen as rational actors using language as an instrument in the nation-building process. With a take-off point in an underframe of theories on the nation, national identity, instrumentalism, power and the particular role of language in the nation-building process, this thesis shows that language is a key instrument used by the two states.The Ukrainian and Kazakhian language policies create and put across a certain image of the nation, by emphasising the titular languages as symbols of the new states. The line of argument in the language policy is a balance act between large-scale promotion of titular languages and a careful and inclusive attitude towards the Russian language. The biggest differences are that Ukraine, compared to Kazakhstan, has a more comprehensive and consequent language policy with a deeply rooted historic rhetoric. The most obvious instruments of the states in language policy is censuses, corpus-planning and the state choosing one official language..

This Bachelor's thesis examines and describes the ideas and ideological traits surrounding the public library within the governmental cultural policy. The Bachelor's thesis demonstrates how the public library ? even though its relevance in the modern society has shifted over time ? has maintained a connection to the governmental cultural policy and has therefore been shaped by the ideological changes in the political sphere as a whole. The main issues are: Which ideas concerning the public library's functions are expressed in the governmental cultural policy? Which ideological tendencies can be identified in the national cultural policy? Which ideas concerning the public library can be extracted through the found ideological tendencies? The method used in order to study the governmental bill is an ideology analysis based on a framework created by Dorte Skot-Hansen.