The thesis explores the meaning of the concept "children's best" in relation to the social Swedish parental insurance debate from a post-structuralist view. The main material has been taken from daily news papers and the methodological as well as theoretical basis is provided for by Laclau & Mouffes discourse theory. In particular has the concept "empty signifiers" been of use when investigating "children's best" as a strong argument on both the "pro" and "against" sides of the debate of an individualized parental insurance. The theoretic purpose of the thesis is also to examine the poststructuralist/feminist dilemma in order to approach a more pragmatic and useful model of the two combined provided by Alcoff and Fraser. One conclusion is that "children's best" may never have an objective answer and will be a changing concept in time, ideology preference and discoursive field.

AbstractBackground The importance of establishing well-functioning parent-teacher relationships are clear objectives in the Swedish National Curriculum for Preschools, (Lpfö 98, Lpo 94 & Lgr 11 chapter 1-2). Parental involvement in preschool activities is seen as important for several reasons. Facilitating healthy child development, learning and socialisation are some of these reasons. During the past twenty years Sweden has become a multicultural society. Today, people from more than 170 countries live in Sweden, and about 18% of the population are first or second generation immigrants.

Background During the child?s first year of life there is a continuous contact with the Child Health Services (CHS) and the parents feel confident and involved. After the first year, the visits to the CHS is reduced at the same time as the everyday life changes for the family as the child starts going to day-care and the parents often go back to work.Aim To examine what it is like being a parent to children aged one to five and what kind of parenting support parents of children aged one to five are in need of.Method Semi-structured interviews were used to interview 25 parents in 21 telephone interviews and one focus group with 4 parents. The recruiting of parents was done on site at one open day-care and with the help of CHS nurses in Sweden. There were 10 men and 15 women.

The objective of this thesis was to study how parents of adult drug addicts experience their contact with the social welfare office, what elements affected the parents degree of satisfaction with the contact with the social welfare office, and whether the contact meant any help for them. Six parents of adult drug addicts were interviewed..

Background: Good health at community and individual levels are key policy priorities. These priorities can be shown through supporting parents about various different healthy lifestyle choices. In order to know where interventions are needed, it is of interest to study how parents generally feel and how they perceive their parenting.Aim: To study how parents rate their own health and parenting skills, and examine whether there is any correlation between perceived general health and perceived parental competence.  Further, this study will show whether there is a correlation between rate of perceived general health and rate of perceived parental competence when it comes to gender.Method: 64 questionnaires were collected at strategic open kindergartens in the municipality of Uppsala. The questionnaires were distributed to the parents present and who chose to participate in this study.Main result: The result of this study shows that parents have a high rate of general health.

This thesis describes and analyzes how some early childhood educators and parents perceive cooperation in educational work with 4-5 years old children who have been diagnosed with autism. The work will examine which approach preschool teachers assume, the extent to which parents are involved in the work and how parents influence looks.The Literature section provides an overview of previous research on different pedagogical approaches with autistic children, what parental cooperation can mean for autistic children, and what advantages and disadvantages there are with cooperation between preschool teachers and parents.This work has a hermeneutic perspective. The method is based on a qualitative study where we used qualitative interviews with a hermeneutics base. The theoretical starting point for this work is the variety of theoretical perspectives.The final results/summary we came up with is that preschool teachers and parents of autistic children believe that parental cooperation in preschool has a crucial role in children's development and learning. Both sides believe that it is necessary to have a partnership, but we also came to the conclusion that parental cooperation, in addition to the positive, was also perceived as problematic to some degree..

This report is a commission from the Care Unit of Hässleholm municipal. The purpose is to illuminate what is distinguish for contact persons at sheltered housing in the Municipal of Hässleholm? It contains three questions at issue. What are the expectations of the contact men? What information is given? How is communication between the professional categories working out?The report also contains a background with a brief Swedish history in care of older people.

The purpose of this study is to increase understanding of how parents of children in need of special support have experienced their interaction with the pre-school. Our three main areas of interest were to investigate how several parents experienced their contact with the pre-school, if there were any experienced factors that had played a part in the contact with the pre-school and if we could conclude anything about how the curriculum had been followed in these cases, with assistance of the parents? experiences.Our study is qualitative and we chose to interview six parents. We both participated in all of the interviews. The theoretical base of this study is rooted in the phenomenological theory and we also used the framework factor theory to complement our analysis.One of our conclusions was that the parents expressed so many different experiences that we decide not to try compare them in general.

Introduction When a child comes into a family changing conditions for the older sibling, who may feel left out. This can be a problem for parents who face new challenges towards the older sibling, which can lead to parents looking for advice and support. Parenting is an activity that strengthens the role of parents and provides information about children's health and social development. Purpose The purpose is to describe the parents' experiences of support in their parental role by participating in the sibling circle. Method Semi-structured focus group interview was conducted and qualitative content analysis was performed.

This thesis aims to investigate how the interests of women are handled in political parties whose opinion programs are based on class interests. The essay constructs a theoretical framework, which shows that the descriptive representation of women is a prerequisite for their subjective interests being represented, however not a guarantee.By studying how the Social Democratic party deals with the demands from the Women's federation, the empirical material sheds light on the theoretical discussion. The study's methodological foundation consists of an ideology critical textual analysis, which focuses on the debate on the design of parental allowance that took place within the party during 2005. During the party's congress the women's federation advocated a proposition for increased individualization of the parental allowance, however the party did not accept it. The analysis confirms the theoretical argumentation that descriptive representation is not a guarantee for the representation of women's interests.

The aim of this study was to understand the contact between foster homes and social workers, by doing a comparison of the social workers and the foster homes experiences of the cooperation that is between them. We started from three main questions to get an answer to our aim, how the foster homes and the social workers experience the organization of the foster care in the Social Service as an impact of the cooperation, what does the foster homes and the social workers experience as a important fact of a successful placement and finally, how does the foster homes and the social workers experience the supporting and controlling contact that is between them. To get our results we based our study on interviews whit four foster homes and whit four social workers. The analysis was based on one theoretical perspective, Skaus (2007) analytical approach for power and help. As a conclusion we have found out, that the organization of the Social Service has significance for the contact between social workers and foster homes.

The aim with the study was, that through a qualitative research approach, to examine in which way social services employees perceive information about children with incarcerated fathers and how they furthermore relates to the child's right to both parents in these situations. Seven interviews were implemented with social workers in the Stockholm County to obtain informa-tion on the following questions; how the children's needs are noticed at the social services, how employees discuss the child's right to their incarcerated father and which possibilities and obstacles social workers experience to promote contact between the child and the father. The ecology of human development theory was used in the analysis. The conclusions are that chil-dren with incarcerated fathers seldom is noticed at the social services as a result of inadequate cooperation between authorities but also due to whether the social services should be respon-sible for the children. Furthermore, children always have the right to maintain contact with their incarcerated father, with exceptions for situations where physical or sexual abuse have occurred.

Background: Studies show that unsolved contact tracing of chlamydia increase in Uppsala County. Research shows that the meeting between patient and caregiver, when performing a contact tracing, may be crucial to the outcome of contact tracing. Objective: The aim of the study was to investigate how midwives describe the encounter with the patient during contact tracing in youth clinics in Uppsala County Council. Methods: A qualitative approach with semi- structured interviews was used to collect data. Nine midwives of varying age and work experience from seven different youth clinics in Uppsala County Council were interviewed.

The purpose of this thesis was, on the mission of LRF Konsult Södra marknadsområdet, to research on why their customers were satisfied and/or dissatisfied. The research was performed in two segments: customers that had joined the company through acquisitions of other accounting firms and customers that had been in contact with LRF Konsult?s personal sellers.To be able to find the answer to our purpose we chose to do a qualitative study. Five interviews were performed with customers in southern Sweden, Skåne and Halland, to get their personal view of the service and of their relation to LRF Konsult and their contact person.The theories suggested that the satisfaction of the customers would increase depending on their relation with LRF Konsult and their contact person. Our research concluded the relation differed for each customer and that it was of great importance that the contact person at LRF Konsult understood and adapted the relation to what the customer wanted.

In 2007 the Prevention Unit at Södermalm in Stockholm started a group activity for parents and children. The group activity?s intention is to offer families support in their early interaction. This study is a part of providing knowledge about this intervention. The purpose of this study is to describe and analyze the stories which are produced by five participants in a support group for parents and children.