This study focuses on the use of animals in social work from the perspective of social workers. The purpose of this study is to examine social workers? experiences of animal assisted social work and how social workers view the integration of animals in various fields of social work. The research is based on a qualitative method and four semi-structured interviews were conducted with social workers. The theories incorporated in the study are Attachment Theory and Sense of Coherence (SOC).The following results are presented: Social workers are considered to have a more comprehensive understanding of clients compared to their associates who do not hold a degree in Social Work.

The aim of this study was to describe how male social workers who work in the section for children and family in one municipality in southern Sweden, experience that their gender influences their daily work. The main focus is to understand what it means to be a man in the social services department. The first research question was how the male social workers experienced how their gender influenced their contact with children and parents in terms of possibilities and obstacles. The second research question was how the male social workers experienced how their gender influenced their working place in terms of possibilities and obstacles. The third research question was how the male social workers experienced that their gender affected the work with women colleagues.

The aim of this study is to through six interviews, with six experienced, social workers?, in three cities, understand how the child?s position in the Swedish child protective services? enquiries has change, and the factors behind it. The aim is also to compare if the social workers? view of the child?s position in the enquire has change accordingly to Socialstyrelsens intentions of BBIC. The theoretical approaches that was used is the new institutionalism, the Shier?s pathways to participation and the term discretion.

The overall aim of this study is to investigate how social workers who are dealing with financial assistance are experiencing discretion in their daily work. The aim of the study is also to examine how social workers who are dealing with financial assistance relates to the controlling and the supporting functions of their daily work and how this in turn affects the attitude to the client. In order to examine the aim of the study, qualitative method was used. Eight social workers have been interviewed and presented with two fictitious cases that they have been able to discuss. Theories regarding the street-level bureaucrat and its discretion have been used to interpret and understand the collected material.

The aim of this study is to understand the collaboration at a child investigation and the actions that may be encountered as a result of the investigation, based on the Social Secretaries experiences of collaboration with other agencies such as schools, police, health visitor and child psychiatry. In the study, eight social workers from different municipalities was interviewed at a total of six occasions. One of the occasions was a group interview with three social workers at the same time. Through the interviews, it appears that the collaboration has an important role in social work and the necessity is something that manifests itself in the social secretaries stories but also in the earlier research done in this area. The results show that social workers extensively want to interact but that the purpose of interaction varies depending on the nature of the matter.

The issue of sick leave and an increase of ill health in the workplace is a social problem inSwedenthat is currently an important topic. Public human service organisations are one of the sectors where this is a major problem. The aim of this study is to examine what significance the leadership in public human service organisations has on the health and sense of well being among the staff within the organisation. We have chosen to look at this issue from a health promoting perspective where we focused on health factors and to what extent the management can influence and promote the possibilities for a healthy workplace with healthy staff. The results of the study are based on interviews with three leaders within the public human service sector.

Our paper is targeting mainly students, but also all other people interested in social work with children. The purpose of our study was to investigate how the social workers experience and handle their work with children, who have been exposed to sexual abuse, and what kind of support and guidance the social workers are offered, in order to handle their working situation. We chose to perform a qualitative study, by the use of interviews, since we found it to be the most appropriate way to gather the information. Our conclusion is that the work with these issues is emotionally burdensome and requires a great commitment, however it is essential for the social workers to maintain a certain distance to their work, in order not to influence their personal lives. It is through experience and knowledge that the social workers learn how to handle their working situation.

Although Lean has received an increased amount of attention in the service context, research still has not established how successfully Lean manages to increase service productivity; since service productivity consists of both efficiency and quality. Research regarding productivity discusses the risk of a tradeoff between efficiency and quality in service production processes. Therefore, this thesis aims to explore if the tradeoff in a production setting with low variability in demand and low customer participation exists, after Lean has been implemented. With a qualitative approach, a case study has been conducted at Scandinavian Airlines Ground Handling to evaluate the effects of Lean in the baggage handling process. The result of the study shows that the tradeoff has not been overcome; efficiency has increased at the expense of quality.

Because of the situation around the world with war and poorness many people need to leave their homeland and find safeness in other countries. A big amount of this group is children without company of an adult, so called unaccompanied children. The numbers of unaccompanied children who seek safeness in Sweden grow every year. The aim of this study was to investigate how social workers in four municipalities in south of Sweden experience their work with investigating the needs of unaccompanied children. The aim was also to investigate how the social workers experience their opportunities to meet the children?s needs with personalized interventions.

In this study, I intend to examine some aspects of the activities of cultural companies in the town of Arvika. The study is qualitative in nature and based on in-depth interviews with self-employed cultural workers, as well as representatives from Arvika municipality. Cultural policy documents have been studied to clarify the self-employed status in the cultural sector and thus their importance to the cultural life in Arvika overall.My hope is to get a glimpse of what it means to work as a self-employed within the cultural sector in Arvika and the conditions that exist, in order to successfully run and develop their businesses.There is a shift in cultural policy, which has led to permanent forms of employment becoming fewer and self-employment to grow ( Karlsson & Lekvall, 6 ). One can say that the cultural sector has moved in the direction from a public matter, to the more privatized ( Köping , Lantz & Stenström, 3 ). The problem with this is that the policy of self-employment has not progressed at the same rate as the amount of business.

Our paper is targeting mainly students, but also all other people interested in social work with children. The purpose of our study was to investigate how the social workers experience and handle their work with children, who have been exposed to sexual abuse, and what kind of support and guidance the social workers are offered, in order to handle their working situation. We chose to perform a qualitative study, by the use of interviews, since we found it to be the most appropriate way to gather the information. Our conclusion is that the work with these issues is emotionally burdensome and requires a great commitment, however it is essential for the social workers to maintain a certain distance to their work, in order not to influence their personal lives. It is through experience and knowledge that the social workers learn how to handle their working situation. We also learned that although the work with sexual abuse against children gave birth to different emotions of the social worker, the social workers feel satisfaction with their work, by helping the exposed children. We hope that our paper will inspire and encourage to further studies in the area, since there is still much to be explored. .

To integrate environmental concerns into non-environmental policy making has become an important policy objective within the European Union. This essay investigates policy instruments in use to achieve environmental policy integration in the EU's transport sector respectively fisheries sector. The point of departure is a theoretical discussion about governance and the use of different policy instruments for environmental management at the EU-level. The focal point is the argumentation that regulatory policy instruments alone cannot achieve environmental policy integration satisfactory. By using Jordan et al's classification of so called "new" environmental policy instruments (market-based instruments, voluntary agreements and ecolabels) as complements to regulatory measures, the essay investigates whether the first-mentioned are used within the two sectors.

The Swedish welfare organisation is built on the fact that the legislation gives the municipalities and social workers guidance and direction how to assess cases. Through out this the clients have right to be assessed both equally and individually. How is this done? The purpose of this paper was to examine the effect of the organisation referred to the social workers ability to discretion and the evaluation of the assessment in first time applications of social assistant cases. The purpose was also to look for variations in decisions and if these could be explained out of organisational and assessment effects.

Social workers in this study describes various experiences of the assessments of interventions for children and adolescents. Social workers experience of the many different situations where an assessment of best effort must be made on the basis of BBIC, which is the Social Services investigation records. To make this assessment, the Social workers need social assistance and support of their colleagues and manager. Knowledge mixed with experience is also an important part when it comes to being professional and not let emotions control that could otherwise be happened when the social worker meets and builds relationships with clients. Social workers are also those who will decide which achievement the client needs from the needs.

The aim of this thesis was to study how social workers in social services in several municipalities perceive that they interpret the concept of domestic violence and how they believe they would act when it comes to different types of domestic violence. The thesis has focused on three types of violence; physical, psychological and economical. Seven social workers were interviewed with a thematised interview guide and six vignettes. The theoretical perspectives applied in the analysis were the process of normalization and the continuum of violence. The results showed that the social workers did not interpret domestic violence unanimous, and they had different ideas of how they would act in the vignettes.