The national spatial planning guidelines and the subsequent legal regulation in the Natural Resources Act and the Environmental Code has been a part of the Swedish planning system for almost 40 years. In the recent years, critics have claimed that the regulations are outdated and does not work the way it was intended. This paper examines closer why it is perceived that the regulations does not work, with a focus on how the national interests are managed in the municipal planning. Why is the national interests not applied in the municipal planning as intended? Is the error in the system or in the implementation of it? The aim of this essay is to study the gap between theory and practice by studying how the land management provisions in the Environmental Code is applied in five selected municipalities.

The intention of this essay was to describe and analyse the participant's experience in a work project based on a holistic model. The main purpose of the project was to integrate homeless people back into society. My main questions were: 1. What meaning did the project have in the participant's life? 2.

The main purpose of this study was to examine, and illustrate, highschool social workers experiences of pupils with self-injurious behaviour. Self-injurious behaviour in this study refer to individuals who harm them-selves, with physical injury as consequence, without purpose to commit suicide. A qualitativ method was used and five highschool social workers, in the south of Sweden, were interviewed.The main questions were:- What kind of experiences have highschool welfare officers of pupils with self-injurious behaviour?- What view, and personal opinion have the welfare officers at the problem, and how do this affect them in their work with these pupils.The school social workers experiences of pupils with self- injurious behaviour, were for instance that the pupils often feel ashemed over their behaviour and that they often have lowe self-esteem. The social workers seemed to imagine the behaviour as a copingstrategy.It turned out that the social workers personality and their personal opinion regarding self-injurious behaviour, were of great importance in their work with these pupils..

The most common preventive and treatment service for children in child welfare services in Sweden is the contact family program. The number of children who are involved in the program has steadily increased. Usually it is a single mother who apply for or is offered this service. The aim with a contact family is that the parent should get respite and that the child should have its network enlarged and sometimes get a male role model.The purpose of this study was to look into how children´s perspective was considered in the contact family process. I have studied the process in order to see how it works and to see to what extent children is participating.

This thesis discusses the attitudes versus methadone assisted rehabilitation ad modum Dole Nyswander in Sweden during the period 1972-2004. This is done by means of a Foucault inspired discourse analysis applied on the directions issued by the Board of Health and Social Affairs. The context in which these directions were created is also described, in which scientific achievements on methadone treatments during the period, and the main actors struggling to establish and define the discourse on narcotics and narcomania, are juxtaposed to the effects of the work of the Board. It is stated that the directions were largely affected not by scientific results and knowledge on methadone, but by the symbolic connotations of narcotics in Sweden established in the discourse already in the mid 1960´s. Also during the end of the studied period, after the occurence of AIDS had begun making methadone more broadly accepted, the findings of this thesis showed that the legacy of the 1970´s symtomtheory and its severe antagonism against methadone, was still present, in effect, in the discourse around methadone and subutex assisted rehabilitation, and so in the directions issued by the Board of Health and Social Affairs..

This report is written in cooperation with the Swedish National Road Administration South-Eastern Region in Jönköping. The report is a result of the evaluation to give an answer to the question about how well the function contract has been carried out on the E4 in Östergötlands and Jönköpings län. The evaluation is divided in two hard parameters and one soft.The Swedish National Road Administration is interested in knowing how the standard on the road have been changed during the functions period, which is the reason why the first hard parameter is considering road standard. To evaluate the standard there have been a comparison of values from measures taken every year on the current road stretch. The second hard parameter considers economy.

This essay deals with 18 year old boys´ experience of their usage of pornography. My main focus was the pornography found on Internet, which includes pornographic films and nude pictures.Both developmental and social psychological perspectives were applied in the study. These theoretical perspectives were chosen, because boys´ view of sex, especially during their adolescence, are influenced by the increased supply of porn and that boys understanding of porn are influenced by values present in our society. The methods used were three focusgroups and a short survey with simple questions regarding pornography. The choice of methods was based on my standpoint that an open discussion concerning porn was less offensive of integrity, in comparison of working with individual interviews.

The purpose of this work was to research how baby nurses define the concept child maltreatment and how they conduct themselves to mandatory reporting.The central questions were; How do the baby nurses interpret the concept child maltreatment and which children do they consider comprehending the concept?What are the reasons that children are maltreated according to the baby nurses opinions?Do the baby nurses apprehend that they meet children that are maltreated in their work?How do the baby nurses interpret the mandatory reporting and what course of action do they use when they suspect child maltreatment?Nine baby nurses were interviewed. The material was analyzed with the help of a phenomenological method.The participators idea of the concept child maltreatment was focused on observing signs from the child and concrete actions from the parents. The outcome of this concept is that the participators categorization is neither or nor. The participators knew about the mandatory reporting and they did a further interpretation because they focused on the risk of the child.

The purpose of this essay was to study how school welfare officers cooperate with other school staff, regarding children in vulnerable positions, and how the school staff apply their obligation to report to the social services if they have concerns regarding children at risk, according to the law of social service, SoL.We have especially focused on questions concerning cooperation, both between the school staff, and between the school and the social services. We also wanted to identify some of the restraining factors and dilemmas that could come up during the process of reporting children at risk to the social services. The study was based on qualitative interviews with ten school welfare officers from the same municipality.Our conclusions of our study are that there exists a well-developed cooperation between several organizational levels, including the school welfare officers, other professions in the schools and the social services. There were though opinions among the school welfare officers that they wanted to increase their professional claims in relation to the school nurse, due to their larger competence in talking to children. Regarding the formal responsibility to report to the social services, a majority of the school welfare officers felt they had access to the support they needed from both their principal and the students healthcare-team, and that they were not left alone in the process..

Clients with dual diagnosis have difficulties to recover and have a tendancy to fall between two stools. Among other things this is due to the fact that caregivers have different approaches, values and focus. The purpose of this study is to compare how clients, therapists and socialworkers look upon the aim of the treatment, its form, residential care, the conception of goalfulfillment and participation. In our study we have applied the theories of Aaron Antonovsky, Howard Becker and Erving Goffman. The paper consists mainly of qualitative interviews with clients, therapists and socialworkers.

The aim of this paper was to examine how social workers' comprehension of the need of financial aid exists in, and is influated by, the organisation they work in. To investigate this, we asked ourself questions concerning how the social worker view the way that the finicial aid-system and work surrounding it is formed, whether the social worker's understanding of the need of financial aid co-exists with the percieved common understanding of the work place (do the understandings coincide, do the social worker adjust his or her understanding or is it possible to have a separate understanding), whether the social worker feel that he or she have discretion to influence the organisation and how possible conflicts between different views are handled. We felt that a qualitative method would best help us answer these questions. We therefore interviewed seven social workers working in the same organisation. We then looked at our material from an organisational theory perspective, focusing on the individual in the organisation.We found that the social workers were socialised into the organisation and adapted the norms and values that existed there.

This thesis examines the National Heritage Board in Sweden and the way they look upon themselves, the surrounding world and their mission. Methodologically it?s a discourse analysis based on poststructuralist and social constructionist thoughts. This means, simplified, that nothing is taken for granted and that power relations and ideology always matters. There is no true or distinct heritage.

The purpose of this essay was to examine what consequenses of alcohol and narcotics that youth magazines describe and how the user and addict is described. My porpose was also to examine what situations the magazines claim that alcohol and narcotics are related to.The questions for my studie was:1. How is an alcoholic/drug addict /user described in youth magazines?2. What situations are related to alcohol/narcotics in youth magazines?3.

The purpose of this essay is to examine the concept of competence within the social services. More specifically it aims to find out how the social workers themselves look upon their own competence in social investigations concerning children. As the study was based on focus groups the main questions were vague at the beginning and were cleared later on during the group sessions.In three focus group interviews in three different municipalities in southern Sweden 11 social workers were asked to discuss this issue. The interviews were then thoroughly transcribed. In the data I identified 9 themes seeming to play a special roll in the discussions about competence: practice; experience; approach; intuition; responsibility; theories, methods and laws; reflection; resources and ethics; specialisation versus integration.The analysis made on these themes was based on two different kinds of perspective; one focusing knowing-in-action and the other focusing the organization framing the competence considered.As a conclusion the 7 first themes can be seen as a definition of the competence used in social investigations concerning children.

Utredningshemmet in Hässleholm, Sweden, is a special residential home for acute management and investigative evaluation of juvenile delinquents.Utredningshemmet has, since 1991, used an investigative model, which is based on systems theory. The investigative work is done in close co-operation with social workers, youths and their parents.This study takes into account the youths, who have had a commissioned placement to carry out an investigation of their needs of care and treatment, 71 juvenile delinquent cases. They are divided into three one year intervals: 17 cases in 1993, 28 cases in 1998 and 26 cases in 2003.The purpose of this evaluation is to illustrate changes in the social workers, parents and youth's level of satisfaction during the development of the special residential home's investigative model.Approximately one to three months after discharges social workers, youths and their parents completed a level of satisfaction questionnaire. The results demonstrate no significant difference in the level of satisfaction between different time periods. There are, however, differences in satisfaction levels between social workers, who have the highest level of satisfaction, parents, who have the next highest level and finally the youths level of satisfaction..