This study focuses on the influence a user may have over his or her welfare service, personal assistance. A county, an assistance firm and a user cooperative are compared with the thesis that the organisation that surrounds the users shapes the possibilities the user have to influence his or her personal assistance. There are questions that try to answer if there are outspoken social goals within each organisation. Questions regarding influence of the user when she or he is choosing the assistance provider and the users possibility to influence and his or her power to decide who and when anyone works as an assistant are asked..

The purpose of the study is to explore how social workers work with youths that seek financial assistance and what importance gender plays in this process. The participants were six female social workers that work with financial assistance. They were interviewed and had to reflect over a case, where the client where either male or female. The results was analyzed and compared in relation to social constructive theory and gender theory. The study shows that social workers work in two parallel processes, when they decide about financial assistance and other help benefits, the formal and the intuitive.

The purpose of this study was to examine divergences in assessments of Social assistance in one big and one small social welfare office in the municipalities of Malmö. To examine this we used a qualitative method. We held interviews with social workers and their superiors. At the end of the interviews with the social workers we presented two vignettes, describing different cases of first time applications of Social assistance. The social workers was asked to assess whether the application should be granted or not, and motivate their decisions.

The aim with this study is to analyze how Swedish social services interpret men's and women's needs and whether it is possible to discern any pattern in the social services investigations. The following questions are of importance: how men and women are described in the assistance investigations and if there are any differences between men and women in assistance investigations. The analysis is based on a qualitative text analysis of twenty assistance investigations. The investigations have been studied gradually and interesting patterns emerged which were analyzed by the theory of gender.The results are multifaceted and demonstrate on the one hand that men and women receive the help they apply for and the assessment of their needs is conducted in an equitable way. On the other hand, the study demonstrates that there is a difference in how men and women are described in the investigations..

This paper is a case study of a local labour market project. The aim of the study is to investigate the staff?s way of working with unemployed people, receiving Social assistance, in order to reduce the payment of Social assistance in four adjacent city districts of Stockholm. Other objectives of the study are to investigate which criteria the staff uses when selecting participants for the project, in which way the participants? background affects the measures taken by the staff and how the staff experiences working as part of a project.

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 purpose of this thesis was to examine the municipal guidelines regarding the construction of the prerequisite "other living expenses", and how the construction of the prerequisite was constructed in relation to the legislation. The sample of the thesis was the municipalities in Stockholm?s county. The empirical result was compiled with the hermeneutical method, and analyzed through a legal perspective and three different theoretical perspectives, as well as compared with previous studies. The theoretical perspectives were legal pluralism, bureaucracy, legitimacy and rule of law.

In our paper we chose to study care management in the old age care. According to the law for the social services the needs of elderly should govern the assistance they are granted. But research has shown that municipal guidelines govern the assistance and that the elderly have to adjust their needs to them. Thus there is a discrepancy between law and practice. The aim of this study was to understand how care managers relate to municipal guidelines, laws and the requests of elderly when the application for assistance is established.

Our aim of this study is to analyze how the concept of reasonable standard of living is by assistance officers in geriatric care, as well as the impact of their discretion on the assessment. We conducted a qualitative study with the help of interviews. During the collection of the empirical material, we have experienced greater confusion among assistance officers opinion about the concept of reasonable standard of living. We lacked a clear answer to the concept content. The interview subjects' responses did not differ so much, they said, among other things, that the concept is difficult to interpret, fuzzy, or that they do not have a good understanding of it.

This study is about conception in the evaluation of financial assistance within the social services. The aim of this study is to describe and understand how social workers reason about variation, conception and local norms and its significance in the evaluation process. To reach this purpose we have conducted semi-structured interviews with eight social workers in which different themes were discussed and reasoned about. In order to understand and analyze our results we have studied/used the knowledge about tacit knowledge and street-level bureaucracy. Our results showed, as previous research states, that social workers do have conceptions about clients.

There are an increasing number of unaccompanied children coming to Sweden. Sweden is one of the countries in the world that receive many of them. This awoke my interest to investigate the assessment of financial assistance and ?other living expenses? considering unaccompanied children. My approach was a qualitative study including interviewing five social secretaries working in five different districts in Malmö.

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.

Sweden introduced a development assistance policy in 1952 and thirteen years later Sida, Swedish International Development Cooperation Agency started, in 1965. But in 1995, five separate development assistance authorities came together and established the new Sida as it is today. Sida is Sweden?s representative in the development assistance policy field and they work through projects that have to be presented through a Country Strategy Process (CSP). The aim of this paper is to point out Sida?s perspective on the conducted development assistance policy and what guide lines that are followed.

The purpose of this study was to investigate how social workers who worked with financial assistance perceived their work situation and the impact work-related stress had on their health and quality of work. Further, the study intended to find out if they felt that they received support from their employer that could prevent stress-related sick leave. The following two research questions were to be answered: In what way does work-related stress affect social workers? health and job quality according to their own experience? What kind of support and help experienced social workers were available within their organization? To receive answers to the questions semi-structured interviews with five social workers were conducted, analyzed and interpreted. The results showed that when social workers have a heavy case burden, high stress and a risk of deteriorated job quality occurred.

Purpose: The aim is to investigate the mechanisms behind the destructive entrepreneurship in the assistance industry.Method: To investigate the destructive entrepreneurship in the assistance industry, we conducted a qualitative study in the form of semi-structured questions. In total, we interviewed four authorities and an employer organization.Theory: Theoretical framework: The study is based on Baumol's (1990) theory of productive, unproductive and destructive entrepreneurship and rent-seeking by Murphy et al (1991), but the study's principal theory that we have chosen to apply is the routine activity theory of Cohen & Felson (1979) that describes three elements that must come together in order for a crime to be committed.Conclusions and discussion: Our study shows that it is clear that there is both fraud and abuse within the assistance allowance, which can be done in different ways. Some users simulate their illness that they exaggerate their need for assistance. Some assistance providers have abused the compensation by paying lower wages and empty false wages etc. The study showed that there also exists a type of human trafficking.