Lately, alarming reports have appeared regarding the work environment and work situation of social workers. Research focusing on the promotion of health and well-being in the workplace among other professionals show that factors such as social relationships, ability to influence their work situation and leadership are important. A quantitative study was conducted focusing on the work climate for social workers employed by some of the district administrations in the City of Malmö. A questionnaire with questions and statements on various factors in the work environment was sent to 34 social workers. They were asked how important these factors were for their well-being, as well as to what extent they felt that these factors were present at work.

This essay describes the philosophy of science that Thomas Kuhn puts forth in his work The Structure of Scientific Revolutions. The question is, does his description of the scientific paradigm work as well today as in the examples he gave in the book?The conclusion is that there are certain factors that make for a number of differences between science today and, for example in the seventeenth century. There is also a growing theory or vision of a post normal science laid developed by among others Jerome Ravetz. This theory or vision is an idea of a science close to peer-communities and fast as well as critical decisions involving opposite values..

The aim of this study was to compare educational systems in Sweden, Czech Republic, Italy and Scotland. In the light of the Bologna Declaration signed in 1999, I was particularly interested in comparing social work educations in these four countries. Especially to clarify how far they have come to fulfill the goals of the common European educational policy.Central questions asked were: How do the educational systems look like in each of the four countries? How are the social work educations organized in each of them? In what ways do the social work educations differ? How can we explain such differences?Each country in this study represents a different welfare regime, and therefore I was challenged to find out if this has an impact on the implementation of the incentives of the Bologna Declaration. By studying various documents from the European Union, documents from each country and presentations of various social work programmes, I have come to the conclusion that the differences found mainly depends on the historical and socioeconomic traditions in the countries.

Today the school is a given place for preventing social problems. The school struggles continuously to live up to the expectations of balancing preventive social work with pedagogy in a satisfactory way.The purpose of this essay is to get a picture of priorities of social work in school. I want to know what it is that affects and controls the principal's decision about what kind of social project they will accept and be a part of.This essay shows that only one of the eleven principals interviewed apply projects based on evidence when they decide about participation in a social project. Instead, the decisions are based on references from other schools. The reason why the principals do not base their judgement on projects which are based on evidence is because they consider the search for results too time consuming.When there is no requirement that a certain part of the social work in a school must be based on evidence, it leads to the children taking part in different social projects which we can not guarantee are good for them.One solution can be to guide the principals through a national social teachingplan, which can assure that social work based on evidence are being applied in the municipality schools as well as the independent schools..

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.

The purpose of this article is to examine how social workers may experience fear in their profession, how they and their organizations handle the fear and how the fear may affect their practice. To obtain the purpose, in-depth interviews were carried out with seven social workers from the southeastern part of Sweden. The experiences of fear were many and are summarized in four categories. Fear of treats and violence, fear of the responsibility in complicated situations and without optimal solution, fear of being regarded and judged as worthless and fear of being scrutinized with the risk of being stigmatized. Five strategies were identified to handle the fear: Safety strategies (e.g.

The purpose of this study has been to investigate how frequently, and in witch ways, theories concerning the "late-modern" society are being used in the contemporary research of social work. My thesis is that theories concerning the late-modern society could be useful in social work research, foremost to shed light on, and broaden the understanding of, dilemmas and problems that are specific to the contemporary society. In the study I'm investigating all doctoral dissertations on social work written in Sweden between the years 2003 and 2006, and to execute the study I've applied a text analysis method in four steps. Simplified the four steps of the analysis can be said to investigate, if, how frequent, and in what way theories on the late modern society is being used in social work study. I'm also specifically investigating how problems exclusive to the late-modern society is being taken under consideration in the dissertations.In the analysis of my results I take a critical theory approach and I also discuss if theories on late-modernity is to be seen as a paradigm in the field of social work science.

In order to broaden the understanding of work motivation the aim of the study was to compare how three different teams within the same organization constructed motivation. The three teams consisted of post sorters, team leaders and mailmen. Three focus group interviews were conducted with three men and eight women. The interviews were transcribed verbatim and thematically analysed with QSR NUD*IST. The result showed both similarities and differences in the construction of work motivation in the three teams.

Occupational stress and the use of alcohol to reduce stress are both separately common in our society. A few researchers have combined the two factors.The aim of this essay was to obtain an increased understanding of how male and female managers estimate their alcohol habits in relation to their occupational stress.We have interviewed nine managers who work at a social services department in Scania. Our main theories were the theory of psychosocial work environment of Lazarus, Karaseks demand/control model, epidemiology- and cultural perspective.Our results were;· Psychosocial work environment contributes to if the interviewed people experienced stress at work.· The grade of control has great influence if the interviewed people experience stress.· There weren't any correlation between stress and increased consumption of alcohol..

Social work has gone from being a primarily philanthropic issue to becoming an academic discipline at university level. To ensure its legitimacy social work must be founded on, and developed through scientific research and documented experience. The purpose of this essay is to review the various arguments on social work in order to evaluate their impact on education, which in turn affects students. In addition, it will demonstrate how different forms of knowledge are valued depending on the contexts. As a means of reaching this objective, the following questions are addressed: ?What are the requirements and recommendations on how the education of social work should be structured, and why are these requirements and recommendations important??, ?How has the education of social work been influenced by the perception of valuable knowledge?? and ?How does the education of social work affect students?? The collected material consists of various arguments concerning the development of social work and the education of social work's formation.

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. .

The purpose of this paper was to study the various organisations that work with drug abusing homeless people in Lund. We have tried to compare the possibilities they have to change the way the homeless people look at themselves. The organisations that we have studied are Aluma, Diakonicentralen, the shelter Piletorp and the social welfare office.The methods used to collect data were interviews with professionals and homeless people as well as reading literature. We have used Ted Goldberg's (docent in social work at the university in Stockholm) theory. He writes that you have to be a significant other to persons with deviant behaviour to be able to help them become a part of the society and to change the way they look at themselves.

This study is based on the will to understand the importance of a specific theory within social work. From the concept of neo-liberal governmentality, the aim is to critically examine and discuss how governance and self-governance is manifested in social work methods and interventions, exemplified by the theory cognitive-behavioural therapy (CBT). This will be accomplished through an analysis of:? How governance (and self-governance) is manifested in text through the advocacy of CBT and methods based on CBT.? How (governance and) self-governance is manifested in text through the contents of CBT and methods based on CBT. The study has a deductive approach including the hypothesis that the discourses inherent in social work methods and interventions, exemplified by the theory of CBT and methods based on CBT, may be related to the West?s development of a neo-liberal concept of governance.

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.

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.