The academic underachievement of looked after children is well known. By involving foster carers in a Paired Reading intervention a Swedish project tried to address this issue, replicating a successful British trial. The aim of my thesis was to study the variations in the foster carers? experiences of this literacy intervention. Reading reports from 100 children were collected and qualitative interviews with 15 foster parents were analyzed using concepts from motivational psychology.

The purpose of this study was to give a picture of how some adults, who earlier was placed in foster homecare, experience that their childhood have affected them during their life. I also wanted to see how the relationship to the biological family has been and developed during the placement. The study has also purposed to receive a deeper knowledge of how it could be to grow up in foster care. To make the purpose of this study complete I chose to use qualitative interviews as a research method. Four adults who earlier were placed in foster homecare have participated in this study.

Focusing of what´s best for the child has been a keyword in social work for a long time. That seems obvious for many people, but sometimes it lacks in the care of the children and the child may be taken in to care. The purpose was to find circumstances of success that can contribute to a successful placement of the child according to social workers and foster families. In which way does the cooperation between social worker, foster family and the origin family affect the placement? The study is based upon a qualitative method in form of interviews intending to get the respondents own knowledge and experience of foster care.

The purpose of this study was to examine how some child welfare case workers say they go about to give children in foster homes the opportunity to be heard. The idea was also to examine how much weight is given to the children?s views and if the respondents believe that the childrens right to be heard has improved over the time they have been working with Foster children and if so, how? The study was conducted by using qualitative research method and the analysis of the results was made using Shier?s model of childrens participation. The results have also been tied to previous research in the area. The conclusions of this study was that according to the respondents it?s important that they get to know the children well so that the children can have confidence enough to speak their minds.

This essay is about what considerations foster home secretary may face in their profession and how they use themselves as a tool. We were interested in the family home secretaries as a profession and we found that this area is relatively unexplored. The essay is based on semi-structured interviews with ten family home secretaries from seven different municipalities. To interpret our results, we used Mead's theory of "Mind, Self and Society". Our paper shows that family secretaries are faced with a variety of considerations in the selection of foster homes.

The educational underachievement of children in foster care has been known for a long time. This study aimed to compile and analyze the current knowledge about interventions, intended to improve Foster children?s school achievements. The method used was a systematically undertaken narrative review. Despite a comprehensive searching strategy, only ten relevant studies were found, indicating that little has been done to improve the educational outcomes for children in public care.

The purpose of this study was to gain knowledge and a picture of how foster parents perceive their task, the role of the placed children and their biological parents.  Even how they perceived their family have been affected by the mandates removal. Consistently showed the most positive experiences with strong ties to the children placed. However, there are experiences of the need for additional guidance, support, education and contact with the client to enhance a sense of competence in the task and prevent collapse. Burnout experienced often based in the placed child's difficulties in integration.

The aim of this study is to examine social workers? experiences of how the ADHD-diagnosis affects their work with children and youths living in foster care and how it affects the individuals and families themselves. The study is built upon five qualitative interviews and the results are analyzed through a theoretical framework that constitutes ADHD as not only the symptoms and the medical disorder but also as a social phenomenon where the disorder is socially constructed by the current society, norms, and knowledge. The study shows that the social workers? do not rely on the sole ADHD-diagnosis in the understanding and guidance of the children and their foster parents, but rather see the individual needs of each children.

The aim of this study is to describe and understand the reasons to why people choose to become foster parents. By using the theory of action we wanted to investigate their intentions rather than their motives. The questions we wanted to answer where: How do the foster parents describe their reasons for becoming a foster home? What reasons do they give fore keeping on being foster parents? How do they comprehend their task and the fulfilling of it? The study was performed by utilizing qualitative interviews with five foster parents, four women and one man. In the analysis we used the theory of action as a theoretical perspective.

This is a study of foster homes. The focus is at the methods, used at foster homes evaluations and at guidance/support the foster homes are offered.En questionnaire is made in Skåne, on this theme.Except that, it contains a fairly lot of useful information for families who are interested in becoming foster home.The questionnaire is made among public and private participants who evaluates new foster homes and places children (under 18 years) in Skåne.Because of the low answer frequency, we can?t generalize the result of the questionnaire. But the result we have obtained indicates that Kälvestens evaluation method is used frequently.In the subject of support/guidance we can?t see any specific methods used.

The purpose of this study has been to investigate which factors are important with foster home placing, to achieve a positive result for the child. The questions that we have focused on is the importance of the child's earlier experiences and relations, the foster homes attitude and approach, the social service organization and the cooperation between these concerned parties. We have also looked at the importance that the relation between the biological family, the child and the foster home can have. This study has been carried out using qualitative interviews with several foster homes, social welfare secretaries and a researcher in the area. We have also chosen to separate the foster homes on the basis of two foster homes only accepting teenagers while other accepting younger children.The theoretical concepts we have chosen to use are connected to attachment theory and the ecology of human development point of view.

Placing children in foster care is today considered the best alternative for children unable to stay in their biological environment. A nuclear family consisting of a father, a mother and a child is the most common family structure within foster care today. The purpose of this thesis is to gain insight on the family norms that control the foster care system. It's a qualitative study based on interviews with six professional social workers within the field of foster care. This method gave us empirical material, that was later analyzed from two main theories and one theoretical concept.

Children are said to be the future of our society. Hence, how we take care of our children is a cause of concern. This is evident in much of the social work that is carried out in Sweden. One of the times when we find children to be the most vulnerable is when they, for different reasons, are separated from their biological families and placed in foster care. Based on the fact that Sweden over the last century has experienced an increased immigration intake we wanted to take a closer look on how this change of the population dynamics has influenced foster care in the country.

The aim of the study is to describe social workers discretion when it comes to the relation between children placed away from home and their biological parents.The study describes how the social worker designs the contacts with the biological parents, for instance the extension for the actual meeting. The results are based on six interviews conducted with social workers who work with Foster children. They have responded to questions related to the contact between children and their biological parent. The questions are based on eight vignettes. The contents of the vignettes show different conditions that affect the contact, for example age and foster care attitudes The results of the study have been compared to other previous research in discretion of the social worker and contacts between children and their biological parents.In summary the study shows that there is  high degree of independence for the social workers designing their work and that their level of discretion.

The purpose of this essay was to examine and compare what attitudes Swedish and Belgian social workers may have towards residential care and foster care for children and young people. To answer the purpose eight qualitative interviews with four Swedish and four Belgian social workers were made. The results were analyzed by theory of organization and professional acting space. The results of the study show that the social workers in both countries preferred foster care, especially for small children, and that the Swedish social workers had a more negative attitude towards residential care than the Belgian social workers. Even though the Belgian social workers preferred foster care, they found themselves forced to choose residential care due to lack of available foster care facilities, something that did not seem to affect the Swedish social workers.