This study aims to examine attitudes and conceptions of staff who work with Mentally disabled persons, concerning normalization and gender. Six qualitative interviews with such professionals were performed and subsequently analyzed. Since the method of this study is qualitative, no claim of generalizability is made. The interview material has been categorized into themes by means of coding. The result of the study is presented according to those themes.

This study aims to examine attitudes and conceptions of staff who work with Mentally disabled persons, concerning normalization and gender. Six qualitative interviews with such professionals were performed and subsequently analyzed. Since the method of this study is qualitative, no claim of generalizability is made. The interview material has been categorized into themes by means of coding. The result of the study is presented according to those themes.

This qualitative study investigates the conditions on the labour market for disabled people by examining which factors and processes contribute to disabled peoples inclusion to, or exclusion from the open labour market. Stigmatisation is also used as an analytical tool to better understand the exclusion of disabled people from the open labour market. The material to this study is drawn from qualitative interviews with the employees of the Swedish Employment Agency which specialises in supporting disabled people to find employment.  In conclusion, disabled people face several barriers which makes them more susceptible to become excluded from the open labour market. Such excluding barriers include a demand for high efficiency and productivity from employers, bigger cooperation?s and public organisations unwillingness to employ disabled people and prejudices from employers, especially against people with psychiatric disabilities. The employees of the Swedish Employment Agency suggest that they would be able to work more efficiently to help disabled people find employment if they had to do less administrative work, and would be able to work with fewer clients per employee.

AbstractGrowing up with a functionally disabled sibling can bring joy and positive experiences, but also complications. The purpose of this paper is to describe the experience of growing up with a functionally disabled sibling. I have chosen to focus the examination on how individuals with functionally disabled siblings believe they have been affected by their relationship to their functional disabled sibling and whether it has continued to affect them in adulthood.The examination was qualitative and conducted through interviews. The results showed that siblings of functionally disabled individuals tend to grow up with strong feelings of responsibility and anxiety that continue to affect them into adulthood. The investigation further showed that all interviewed chose occupations in care, and that they give great attention to relationships to others.

The aim of this master thesis is to discuss the access to literature and reading by mentally retarded persons, and how this is affected by library and care taking staffs awareness of mentally retarded persons needs of literature and reading. The reason why we decided to choose this essay topic, is that there is a lack of research about mentally retarded persons relationship with libraries, literature and reading in the field of library- and information science. This groups needs must be brought to sight, so that they can take part in the literature just as anyone else, on their own conditions. Our study involves interviews with four librarians, three reading representatives and a co-ordinator at the Easy-to-Read Foundation. We can establish that all of our informants prove to have significant knowledge about mentally retarded persons and their needs of literature and reading.

Aim. The aim of this study is to analyze the living conditions of physically disabled people from the viewpoint of sexuality issues with regards to personal assistance services, identity and attitudes in society on disability and sexuality. Background. Not much research is done on sexuality issues for physically disabled people. Even though we live in a society where sexuality takes up a lot of space in the media, the culture and is acknowledged to be of great importance for every person?s wellbeing, the sexuality of disabled people is often not recognized and discussed.

AbstractDuring my university trip to South Africa I visit a black township called Lingehlile. There I examined the life situation and education for children and youth with mentally disabilities. I was interested in knowing more about what basic condition they have, period of school and what kind of support they get outside the school. The subjects that I have handled are a school for all, support for the person with mentally disabilities and their family, the opinion of the society, education and life after school. I got my result by two interviews.

Abstract The 1st of January 2009 there will be a new discrimination law in Sweden. That means that the Parliament finally will interpret three EC-directives in there entirety. The new law means that the present discrimination laws will be merged to one law. The situation for disabled persons on the labour market has improved, since the discrimination law was founded in 1999. The Labour Court got some cases to judge and media has attracted attention to disabled persons rights.

The aim of this study was to gain a greater understanding of what social workers perceive to be mentally demanding and emotionally challenging work, and which strategies they use to handle it. I chose to interview six social workers, three of them had long experience of social work, and three of them had worked for less than a year. The justification for this choice wasthat I wanted to interview people with different experience of social work over time, to be able to see possible differences in what was perceived as mentally demanding and emotionally challenging work, and how it was handled. The social workers were interviewed with a semi structured interview manual.The results showed that the organization of the social service is not fitted to the work that social workers execute. This means that what is perceived as mentally demanding and emotionally challenging work largely depends on this.

The aim of this study is to investigate how different organizations and authorities work and collaborate to make children of mentally ill parents more visible. The question formulations, which are used in our research, are:- How do different organizations and authorities work to make children of mentally ill parents more visible and how can this work be improved?- How do laws and guidelines affect the organizations and authorities work to make children of mentally ill parents more visible? - Is there any collaboration between the different organizations and authorities concerning work with children of mentally ill parents, and how does that work appear? A qualitative method strategy was chosen to gather an in-depth understanding of the informant?s experiences and to collect descriptive information. Six organizations and authorities were selected from the comprehension that they could be important in giving support and because it is possible for them to pay attention to these children. Interviews were performed by using a half- structured interview guide.

The study has answered the questions to what extent people with disabilities are involved in SVT- and TV4- news reports and how people with disabilities are represented in news reports. The material is based on 140 news items.The study has demonstrated that news reports SVT and TV4 have different grades of misconceptions about disabled people. Disabled people are constantly being reinforced by negative disabling terms, the disability being of central importance for the news broadcast and they still occur in stereotypical depictions. Through the image of disabled people forms the bed-rock on which the attitudes towards, assumptions and expectations of disabled people are based on. They are fundamental to discrimination and exploitation that people with disabilities face on a daily basis, and contributes significantly to their systematic exclusion from mainstream society.

As a soccer coach for youths with disabilities and as active soccer players, our thoughts regarding the basic principles of sports where awakened and how it corresponds with the possibilities of disabled youths participating in club organized sports. From that thought came the idea that, with our team as the point of original we should contribute with increased knowledge regarding the experiences of disabled youths doing sports. Using ethnography and co-operative observations we have researched both including and excluding factors that contribute to the possibilities of disabled youths opportunity to do sports. We have been able to distinguish that the youths in question feel that sports can be identity-building as well as give a sense of community. The study shows that the basic principles of sports does not correspond with reality because the lack of availability is the determinant factor. .

This essay is a qualitative study concerned with questions about disability. I set out from a definition of disability which highlights non-disabled peoples´ participation in making a disabled person ?the Other?. My aim is to contribute to an understanding of the experiences of disabled people as well as problemize the way that normality and disability is socially constructed. The empirical material of the essay consists of qualitative interviews with disabled men and women and the essay is written with a critical perspective.

The purpose of this essay was to investigate the view of what kind of role the personal assistant has in disabled people´s life and sexlife and how conceptions of a "normal" life and "to live like others" can be identified related to this. My research questions was: What does the expression "to live like others" mean to the organisations? What is the view in the organisations of the personal assistant´s role in the client´s life? What is the view in the organisations of the personal assistant´s role in the client´s sexlife? What is the view in the organisations of disabled people´s rights to get assisted help with sex? I chose to do semistructured interviews with different organisations related to disability and assistance and I analysed the interviews with theoretical aspects of social constructivism, the principle of normalization and the theory of SRV (Social Role Valorization), autonomy, individualism and models of action. My main conclusion were that the views of disabled people´s sexuality and the personal assistant´s role in disabled people´s sexlife were widely separate. However, almost all of the organisations were pointing out the autonomy of the individual and the importance of setting the limits.

The purpose of this essay is to describe and analyse the dilemmas within assessments to establish the parenting ability of mentally handicapped parents, and furthermore to see how these assessments are carried out.To achieve this purpose we have interviewed eight professionals from three different professions who comes into contact with mentally handicapped parents throughout these assessments. These professions we have interviewed people from, are employees from social services, employees from assessment homes and lawyers.We have summarized the results of our interviews into three main themes. The first is focusing on which method/model employees from social services and assessment homes use to help establish the parenting ability of mentally handicapped parents. The second theme describes different dilemmas that can arise in these assessments and the last theme describes the knowledge that people we interviewed have regarding mentally handicapped parents.Professions which carry out assessments of mentally handicapped parents often come across a variety of different dilemmas, one of the clearest is how to enable these parents to understand the necessity behind the assessment and to give them an understanding of what kind of help and support they need in order to give their children a "good enough" childhood..