This essay examines through a sociological perspective how physical objects in Ted Kooser?s poetry collection "Delights & Shadows" can be used to depict the characters? social environment. This is done by examining the physical objects found in 25 poems, the relationships between subjects and objects, and how this relationship can describe the social environment. The essay also examines how the relationship between subjects, objects, and the presence of the social environment within the text affects the reader experience. The physical objects are examined with Bill Brown?s Thing Theory as "things" that stop working for humans, when their flow within the circuits of production and distribution, consumption and exhibition is arrested, however momentarily.

Stress is part of everyday life and in the working conditions of the social services in Sweden. Thus each and every person has resources and strategies to cope with those stressors that construct the assumption of stress. The aim of this study was to understand how persons in leading positions of the LSS of Social Services in Kalmar experience and cope with stressors in their leadership and organization and to investigate what factors during working and non-working hours promote health. Influenced by the theoretical approach of Aaron Antonovsky´s Sense of Coherence seven qualitative interviews were conducted with persons in leading positions. They were asked about stressors, coping strategies, resources and health promoting factors that help to cope with stressors.

The aim of the study was to understand professionals? perceptions and experiences of adolescent stress. In the study I interested myself further if you can identify gender-specific patterns in the professional stories about young people's stress and stress related illness. Five interviews were conducted with professionals in psychiatry and social work. The thesis took its incipience in social constructionism.

Grief research generally demonstrates that children and teenagers who have lost a parent in suiciderisk developing severe psychological and physical morbidity, as well as social disabilities, in adultlife as a result of traumatic aspects of the death and complicated grief reactions. The youngbereaved also run a highly increased risk of developing suicidal behaviour or to commit suicidethemselves. Despite these alarming reports, the research field is poorly explored and studies thattake an interest in the long-term consequences and the subjective experiences of the bereavedyoungsters are lacking. A qualitative study using narrative methods has been carried out toexamine the experiences of four young women, who during adolescence lost a father in suicide.The study specifically focuses on the grief process, the short- and long-term consequences, and theneed for social support in relation to family, extended network and society. The study reveals thatthe women?s traumatic loss has shattered their basic assumptions about the world as a safe andmeaningful place.

Patienter med cancersjukdom kan ha önskemål om aktiv palliativ cytostatikabehandling i livets slutskede. Målet med behandlingen är att förebygga eller lindra symtom som sjukdomen för med sig. Den behandlingen som ges får inte ge så mycket besvär att patientens livskvalitet försämras utan målet är att försöka hålla tillbaka sjukdomen så patienten får leva längre. Det är viktigt att ha en fortsatt tro på framtiden, att vara aktivt delaktig i sin sjukdom där cytostatikabehandling kan skapa hopp och livskvalitet. Syftet var att undersöka hur patienter med cancersjukdom upplever aktiv behandling med cytostatika i livets slut när bot inte längre är möjlig.

This study examines the connection between social capital and involvement within voluntary associations; involvement is defined either as being a member in an association or a member who has some kind of assignment in an association. The study also examines if there is a difference between two social economic groups regarding the attainment and transformation of social capital through being involved in a voluntary association.Social capital is defined as social trust and the willingness of collective action.The result of the research shows there is a slight connection between the involvement in voluntary associations and social capital. It shows that people who are members of a voluntary association often have higher social capital than those who are not members of any voluntary association at all. The study also shows that there is a difference in attainment of social capital between those who have some kind of assignment in a voluntary association and general members.When studying social capital and involvement in voluntary associations it is also of interest to take social class into the analysis, because the study shows that people with a lower education had increased social capital when they were members in an association compared to the members with a higher education..

The purpose of our study is to describe and understand whether, and if so, how social workers in school and in social services construct computer gaming adolescents as a social problem. We chose social workers who encounter adolescents with different problems. We have conducted qualitative interviews with vignettes to capture the social workers' reasoning about computer gaming adolescents and how they handle this in their work. The study shows that all social workers we interviewed had encountered adolescents with troubling computer gaming habits. In the study, all agree that computer gaming becomes a problem when it leads to deviant behaviour such as not going to school, staying up all night and so on.

Normal children acquire the necessary social habits without being consciously aware of this, they learn instinctively. (Author?s translation from Swedish to English) (Asperger & Frith, 1998, s. 21) This essay is about people who do not learn to socialize, the social habits, instinctively but through conscious learning. We have interviewed three adults with the diagnosis of Asperger syndrome with the aim to let them tell us about what it means to have a neuropsychiatric disability.

HOW DO SOCIAL WORKERS WORK WITH PROSTITUTION? A case study on social work in the work with prostitution and perspectives on the sex purchase law from social workers. PERNILLA ELOFSSON MARIA AHLQVIST Elofsson, P. & Ahlqvist, M. How do social workers work with prostitution? A case study on social work in the work with prostitution and perspectives on the sex purchase law from social workers.

No previous studies have been conducted on elementary school in Sweden about children`s thoughts about the first animals on earth. The work takes up the children`s ideas of the first animals and the difference between girls and boys knowledge. The purpose of this work was to determine if student`s views are consistent with the science know today. In the interview, five girls and five boys participated. Mankind is asking where it all began, today we know that the first life arose for 4 billion years ago and it was from the water.

The aim of this study is to examine social workers' and social work students' attitudes towards people living with hiv in Sweden. I will also examine if there is a connection between knowledge and attitudes. The questions at issue are how social workers' and social work students' attitudes can assume to influence on their professional practice and what causes can affect their attitudes towards people living with hiv. The study is based on a qualitative method. The methods have been: conversational interviews with five social workers, who work with family issues and integration, and a focused group interview with four social work students.

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 study aims to gain insight into how social workers perceive their psychosocial work environment and examine whether this effects the performance of their duties. The study mainly addresses the shortcomings of the psychosocial work environment of Social Services and the implications it entails for social workers health and wellbeing. The psychosocial work environment includes physical and psychological factors therefore the study's interpretive framework consists of organizational theoretical and social psychological concepts and previous research on the subject. We examined the organizational and social psychological connections to social workers perception of their work environment with a qualitative approach. The empirical data was collected through interviews with four social workers in a municipality in central Sweden using a semi-structured interview guide.

We have chosen to focus on the meaning of long-term income support dependency regarding health, goal setting and motivation for the recipient of economical aid. We have chosen to use semi structurized interviews to achieve our goal of reaching the clients experience of long-term income support dependency. The study consists of interviews of six clients whose answers have been analyzed through appliance of Kielhofner´s Model of human occupation, Scheff´s Shame in self and society.   Our results show regarding, 1) the factor health that long-term income support dependency may elevate the risk of illness and less experienced options of possibilities to act. 2) regarding the factor goal setting, that goals may be inefficiently used during social work with long-term income support dependent clients and may result in a disorganized relationship between client and social worker in the sense of making the parties pull in opposite direction. 3) regarding the factor motivation, that long-term income support dependency and the living with the emotion of shame elevates the risk of maintaining a negative image of oneself that limits the willpower to assimilate new knowledge and/or skills.

In Sweden there are laws and recommendations from The National Board of Health and Welfare about the importance of a user's involvement in and possibility of influencing services directed at them. Even with such good intentions the same board reports that it is hard to know if people experience that they do. The purpose of my study was to examine how professionals can use their knowledge to help users increase their sense of influence in services that they use. My focus has been on adults with neuropsychiatric disabilities within the autistic spectra, such as Asperger syndrome, and on the professionals working with them. The specific problem among people with neuropsychiatric disabilities is a lack of social skills.