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.

The aim of the study was to examine how social workers investigate and assess addiction cases whether gender matters or not. The following questions were asked in the study; ? Does the gender of the client influence whether a case is opened after the first meeting at the Addiction Unit? ? Do social workers consider there is a difference in handling an addiction treatment investigation when the client is a man or a woman? ? Do divergences exist in the assessment and the final decision process when the case concerns a man or a woman? The study is based on the qualitative method. The material is gathered from semi-structured interviews with social workers. Their job tasks include assessment and evaluation of addiction cases.

The purpose of this study was to look at the common opinion about children in Cambodia. By interviewing the professionals in different help organizations we studied the common opinion about children in general and the common opinion about children who are exposed to sexual trafficking. The ambition of the study was also to see if the common opinion about children in Cambodia affects the help that is available for the children who are exposed to sexual trafficking.This is a qualitative study including semi structured interviews with seven professionals who work with vulnerable children. The interview guide focused on the themes: children?s needs, sexual trafficking, children?s rights, childhood, children?s sexuality and gender.

The regime theory is the dominant paradigm in the studies of urban politics in USA. It provides a set of concepts to analyse the change from government to governance in the American local politics. The regime theory postulates that governing power in local government tends to be highly fragmented. The private sector has with its control of economic resources a major influence in shaping governing decisions. In this essay I study the regime theory in a Swedish context to investigate if the theory is pertinent when studying of Swedish local governance.

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.

The aim of the essay is to investigate how the term ?Third world? is constructed in media. With this I intend to make a historical survey of the conception. With the help of Swedish newspapers and their description of the concept, I am going to answer the following questions: How is the concept ?Third world? constructed in script, in a historical context and in modern time? Is there a tendency of racism in the term?The method I used was discourse analysis.

Theory of mind involves the ability to take another person?s perspective in thought, emotions and intentions.  There is today a lack of instruments to assess children?s development of Theory of Mind (ToM) in Swedish. ToM is considered by many scientists to be the basis for development of pragmatic competence. The relationship between these two abilities is complex and not fully resolved. Both abilities are important components for the development of social skills.    The purpose of this study was to compare 4 and 5-year olds ToM-ability measured with a Swedish version of Wellman and Liu?s ToM-scale, Sally Anne and Social Emotional Test with estimated pragmatic competence measured with the Children?s Communication Checklist (CCC).

This paper describes a case study of the largest film production ever conducted in Scandinavia. The study aims at explaining the complex relationships in the network structure in which the project took place. Coordination of creative projects carried out in a network context, includes handling conflicting interest and contradictions. Creativity needs space and freedom while projects need structure and coordination, whereby controlling these projects becomes complex. Adding to the complexity, does the loose form of organization that the network structure represents, without any long term structure.

The purpose of this study was to understand school counselors´ and teachers´ perspectives on the prevention of bullying in relation to social capital. The study was based on a qualitative process with semi-structured interviews from three teachers and three school counselors from three different schools. The main question was to find out teachers and school counselors perspectives of bullying in relation to social capital. The analysis was based on a theory that focuses on social capital, where trust and confidence as well as universal and selective interventions are important. Today, bullying is considered a serious and significant problem in school.

A geographical position and its social, cultural and political context as well as climate and specific physical characteristics define the scope for a landscape design project. This has become clearer for us in our master project where we have made a Design Program for the outdoor environment of Wollo University in Dessie, Ethiopia and analysed and reflected on the work and process. The aim for the project has been to design an attractive and functional outdoor environment for the Campus, based on the inventories and the needs and wishes of clients and users. But, the aim has also been for us as landscape architect students to gain a greater knowledge about landscape architecture and the design process by position ourselves outside our usual context. The method has been open and seeking where the site, literature studies, dialogues with people and our own experiences from the field study in Ethiopia has influenced the work. Wollo University is situated 400 kilometers north of Addis Ababa, in a mountainous landscape. It faces problems of heavy rainfall during the summer, soil erosion, a lack of essential facilities, and is still a construction site with empty spaces in-between buildings and infrastructure.

In August 2007 we went to New Zealand for a placement at Child Youth and Family Services. There our interest in Family Group Conferences (FGC) took off. FGC is not near as common in Sweden as in New Zealand. Therefore the purpose of this study was to examine how the Social Services in Helsingborg and Höör in Sweden and Belfast in Northern Ireland work with FGC. We had the privilege to go to Belfast in Northern Ireland as part of the project Insight Europe.

In the pilot study for a biography, some of the methodological and/or theoretical problems facing the anthropologist and biographer are discussed.The empirical section is based on a number of interviews I made with my grandmother over the period 1995-2001. I have come across inconsistencies in the material when rendering a historical event. Furthermore, the material makes me reflect on how the biographer or anthropologist is able to handle or interpret that she and the subject/informant has a different attitude to metaphors and how the metaphors can change over time, space and interpretation.The essay begins with a summary review of some of the central social and behavioural scientific theories that can be related to the individual and the biography.There then follows an in-depth discussion based on Paul Ricoeur's philosophy that says that your identity is created in relation to how you look at your history and future at the present time. Identities are created in an interaction between the field we are currently in, the cultural capital that includes gestures, mannerisms, symbols, our language and the area of interpretation the field allows in the culture. Consequently, the biography is also a representation that is created in time and space and between the subject and the person rendering the subject.The biography or ethnography is transient and is of necessity a historiography.Ricoeur talks about the living metaphor.

The aim with this study was to analyze and understand how begging is constructed as a social problem in Sweden between September of 2010 and the end of February in 2014 in debate articles in Dagens Nyheter. To do this I have chosen to use a social problems theory and critical discourse analysis to highlight some aspects in the process of defining the social problem. The study's main finding is that the construction of beggars and begging appears to be in a relatively extensive redefinition in the current situation. It is shown by, for example, a shift in focus in the discourse. For this reason, it is relevant for social work to examine how the construction progresses..

The purpose of the essay is to examine Gay, Lesbian and Bisexual person?s experiences of the Social Services treatment. Our question is: How do Gay, Lesbian and Bisexual person?s experience the treatment in a relief seeking situation at Social Services? We have a social constructive point of view. Our theoretical foundation is heteronormativity, heterosexism, homophobia, coming out/disclosure, intersectionality, master suppression techniques and we discuss Social Services as a system.

The purpose of this essay was to examine municipal guidelines regarding the administration of the social assistance, collected from 18 municipalities in the Stockholm-area to achieve a greater understanding on how they were constructed in respect to the legislation and how the language mediated their contents. The legal aspects of the social assistance was studied through a jurisprudential method in which the legislative history, texts of laws and case laws were examined. The empirical aspect of this essay was studied through a hermeneutical method and analyzed through theories of social constructionism and legal pluralism. The results from the jurisprudential study were also used to understand how the municipal guidelines were constructed in relation to the law. The results of this essay corresponded well with previous studies in this field where considerable divergences in the approval of social assistance have been established.