The purpose of our study is to examine whether stress among social workers is present, and ifso, what strategies they and their supervisors use to manage work-related stress. The study isbased on a qualitative method. The data consist of interviews, with six social workers andthree supervisors. The study?s theoretical framework is based on KASAM, SOC-sense ofcoherence by Antonovsky, demand- control- support model by Karasek & Theorell, stresstheory by Hans Selye and coping strategies by Lazarus.

Family centres are established to serve families with children and the personnel usually consists of units of social-workers, preschool staff, paediatric nurses and midwives. The purpose of the study was to examine the social-workers preventive work with families at the family centre. To fulfil the purpose, a qualitative interview with five social-workers was conducted. The theoretical framework referred to attachment and empowerment theory. The results of the study showed that the main part of the work consists of giving advice and support to parents.

In the beginning of 2002 a new kind of debate started inside the Swedish trade unions that also were published in the newspapers. The debate was about if the Swedish trade unionshould organize the undocumented workforce or not. In this thesis I will deal with this issue and also investigate what kind of solutions the trade unions in Sweden use on this newphenomenon, a phenomenon that recently have become a social and political problem during the last years. This is a new subject within political science and there is limited research made before. Because of that, this thesis will be empirical, inductive and exploring by its nature.

The purpose of this study was to examine and increase the knowledge about the way young, newly graduated social workers view their professional role considering their age and professional experience, how they experience the relation to their clients and colleagues and how these experiences all together affect the way the young social workers handle their professional role. Seven social workers in the ages between 23 and 25, who graduated from Socialhögskolan, Stockholm University, in January 2007, where interviewed. They also answered a questionnaire covering the similar questions as the interview. Little research had previously been made in this particular area, why the triangulation of methods was helpful in analyzing the results, with ata coming from two different resources. To analyze the data a multidimensional theory was used, containing coping theory, an experiential perspective, Antonovskys theory a sense of coherence, cognitive theory and role theory.

The focus of this thesis is on social workers? knowledge in assessing and making decisions in child welfare cases. The primary aim is to identify what skills or knowledge social workers find most useful within child welfare agencies in Swedish municipalities. Six different types of knowledge, social policy and the approach of child welfare cases are perspectives considered in the analysis. The interviews with social workers were held in three agencies in southern Sweden, in 2014.

AbstractWorking with child and youth welfare is one of the most difficult challenges a social worker might face in the field of social work. Those who work with child and youth welfare are more exposed to stress and burnout than other comparable human service occupations. Research links the prevalence of stress and burnout to several key variables, such as demographics, working conditions and personality factors. In contrast, even though social workers in this field face many negative work-related problems they report a high job satisfaction. The aim of this study is to examine how uplifting and straining experiences affect social workers, who work with child and youth welfare, through the use of The Critical Incident Technique and interviews.

The purpose of this study was to investigate how social services workers describe, the risk of being exposed to threats and violence in their profession. Six social services workers were interviewed, four from the Welfare Office in a major city and two from the Child and Family Services in a minor city. Results showed that the majority of social services workers consider themselves exposed in their profession, meaning that they feel there's a risk of a violent or threatening situation occurring in their work situation. All interviewees had experiences from some sort of threat or violence in a work related context and they attested that non-personal assaults, such as threats made through telephone, email and answering machines are more common than verbal assaults made in personal meetings. Being prepared and listening to ones intuition is a way of dealing with exposure when meeting with a client.

The National Arts Council[1] has made an evaluation on obstacles and success factors for the interaction between culture and school. In the evaluation report they concluded that teachers and cultural workers have different views on culture and knowledge which creates confusion in their interaction. Thus I became interested to investigate teachers and cultural workers views on culture, aesthetics, and the knowledge that they think the students / children / young people should get from culture and aesthetics. This work is based on qualitative interviews with four teachers and four cultural workers. I compare their views with each other and link it to different research perspectives on culture and aesthetics in school to get an understanding of the similarities and differences in their approach, and what implications it can have in the school?s learning processes. In this work, from a didactic point of view, I found that when the teachers and cultural workers are talking about culture, the why-perspective differs.

The aim of this study was to enlighten social workers experiences of social networks direct influence in Swedish social services, and in which ways those influences are manifested. Some of the issues that are being explored in this study are: The separation of the private sphere and professional duties; boundaries and dual relationships that occurs inside social networks; the use of social networks as a control-instrument in authority exercise towards clients; and social networks arising impact on social work. The empirical material was collected with nine qualitative interviews with social workers stationed at different social service departments in a Swedish municipality. Also one qualitative e-survey was sent out to, and answered by four social workers with a managerial position in the same municipality.The results reveal that several informants have experienced different problematic situations involving clients within the social networks. This study shows that the informants are very restrictive with what information (text and pictures) they publish on their facebook-profiles, because of their position of authority and the awareness of the possibility of always being watched.

  Author: Moa di Zazzo EilertsenTitle: ?Children should not grow up like that. They may turn out the same?: Social workers, working with foster care investigations, reasoning about family and family structures of foster homes. [translated title]Supervisor: Annika StaafAssessor: Norma MontesinoThere has been a change in family structure which shows that the nuclear family, which is still the main form of family pattern, is becoming less frequent nowadays.

There is currently an ongoing discussion in Sweden about the need for weather shelter for farm animals being kept outdoors during the winter season. Currently, the national animal welfare legislation requires weather shelter providing the animals? with access to a dry and clean place to rest, but under certain conditions exemptions can be granted. The Swedish Board of Agriculture has put forward a hypothesis that there is a difference between judicial decisions in animal welfare cases dealing with weather shelters, as to whether the animal has shown to be suffering or not. The aim of the study was to highlight any weaknesses or difficulties when assessing animal welfare issues associated to the absence of or design of weather shelters.

This is a qualitative study inquiring ?What does it entail to be a sex worker in Sweden today?? Four female sex workers were interviewed in semi-structured interviews. Using methods for reflexive analysis, interpreting the interviews and their context theoretically through notions of Competence and Stigma, the results of this study shows that sex workers may be both competent agents and stigmatized. This informs the understanding of sex work, stigma and how learning, subjective room for action and social agency can be aggravated or hindered by stigma. The results are viewed in the context of Swedish legislation against sex purchase in relation to previous research which shows that said legislation is problematic.

Since drinking habits are created in social environments the workplace has an important role in alcohol prevention. This study has investigated employees (N=216) in a Swedish municipality work organisation with the purpose to describe the alcohol culture in workplace and how it influences on the workers attitudes towards alcohol. The theoretical baseline for the study has been Ames and Janes framework that explains the relation between workplace culture and drinking habits among workers. The study showed significant relations between restrictive attitude towards alcohol and not drinking with co-workers (POR: 2.5) and feeling low pressure in the work situation (POR: 2.2). Therefore it should be of interest for employers to adopt a cultural perspective and a primary prevention strategy in their alcohol policies that focuses on social relations and the workplace conditions.

Investment costs for eight different type housing systems for dairy cows has been calculated in order to compare the building costs as a function of herd size, shelter type and automatization. A commercial calculation programme for building was used and complemented with prices of equipments specific for dairy cow building. Herd sizes were 120, 250 and 400 cows. The milking equipments were automatic milking system (AMS), parallel parlour with 32 stalls (2x16) and rotary parlour with 24 stalls. Shelter was either insulated equipped with automatic cable driven scrapers on solid alleys, automatic feed wagon on rails, or uninsulated with manual manure handling and a tractor driven mobile mixer wagon on a drive-through feeding table. Building cost per cow or per kg milk was calculated using an average life time and 6 % interest rate and annual milk yield is 9 500 kg/cow and year. Structure effect 3-4 % higher for an insulated structure than in an uninsulated for 400 and 120 herd respectively. This is much lower compared to what is normally argued.

Unemployment and long term unemployment is a reality for a large number of people in Sweden. This may be the result of structural changes in the labor market, but involves a wide range of issues. Along with other actors, the social services are obliged to support the long term unemployed to find a job. The aim of this study was to describe and analyze the work done by social workers towards the long term unemployed, 25-49 years old, in two municipalities. We performed altogether six qualitative interviews.