The aim of this essay was to deepen the knowledge of how child-protection-work is illustrated by massmedia. The essay takes it stand in discourse analysis to explain what image is displayed of social work concerning child-protection that is published in news media during 2007 in one of Sweden?s most read evening-papers. The result of the study is that social workers involved in child-protection-work often are categorized as either too zealous or too uncommitted, in the media. The result reflected the current discourse concerning how social workers do their duties in the modern society..

The purpose of this essay is to explore how social workers view a possible connection between exposure to honour violence and development of mental illness and/or substance abuse. We first heard of the possible connection from a voluntary organization who work in this field and who believe that this connection could be common. We therefore wanted to explore this from the perspective of social workers who come into contact with victims of honour violence: was this something they had noticed? How did they deal with it if it was noticed? We also asked how the possible connection could be interpreted and, supposing the social workers had failed to notice the connection, why this could be. We made five qualitative interviews with six social workers working in different contexts whom within their work come across honour-related issues.

Children's Need In Focus (BBIC) is a processing and documentation system used in child welfare cases to investigate, plan and monitor interventions. The BBIC has had a breakthrough in Sweden and out of the country's 290 municipalities, there are 284 that use the system daily as a tool in cases involving children. The purpose of this study was to examine how social workers experience the BBIC as a working system and what strengths and weaknesses there are in the BBIC concept. We wanted our study to examine how the BBIC could possibly enhance the quality of childcare matters, but also how the BBIC could potentially increase children's participation in cases. We have performed qualitative interviews with eight social workers who work in four different municipalities where the BBIC is applied daily.

The purpose of this study was to investigate the association between physical activity and perceived stress, energy and musculoskeletal disorders among office-workers and warehouse-workers and also to see if there were any differences depending on work-place and gender. The method that was used to collect data was three different validated questionnaires that measured stress and energy (the Stress-Energy questionnaire), musculoskeletal disorders (intensity and localization of pain, a Pain Drawing questionnaire with a VAS-scale) and physical activity (IPAQ ? the short version). Eighty-eight workers participated in the study. Forty-seven of them were office-workers and forty-one were warehouse-workers.

The aim of this study is to take note of  social worker´s views on opiate addiction and medication-assisted treatment. The definition of social workers in this paper, is people who are involved with individuals  who have an opiate addiction and have therefore been in contact with drug assisted treatment. Data was collected through interviews with social workers. The interviews were based on an interview questionnaire on four explicit themes: Motivation, Medical Assisted Treatment (LA) Other complementary treatment and expenses and its meanings. These are analyzed and discussed through the theory of harm reduction and the theory of labeling..

In Sweden the divorce rates has increased during the latter part of the 20th century. For many children it?s everyday life growing up with parents no longer living together. The Parental Code states that "The child's best interests must be central to any decision in custody, residence and access." But what does the child?s best interest really mean and how do we investigate it? We decided to investigate its meaning by interviewing social workers regarding their interpretations of the child's best interests from a family law perspective.

The aim of this qualitative study was to explore which inner conceptions about the abused older women the professional social workers had and how they experienced the enconter of an abused old woman in an intimate partner relation. The theoretical background is social construction by Berger and Luckmann. This theory was uset to analyze the transcribed interviews. This study is based on nine interviews with five professionals in social services, three volunteers from the voluntary sector and one social worker who worked in a community based support group for abused older women. The result of this study shows that older women were often abused, by a relative they were dependent on, in their home.

My main purpose with this study is to investigate how the social worker relates to knowledge, power and profession. From this purpose has also the concept ?to be a social worker? emerged.The study is based on a qualitative study and consists of semi-structured interviews with seven social workers from different fields of expertise.The result of the study shows that the knowledge is dependent of different fields of expertise. But in the contact with the client, regardless of field of expertise, the knowledge is gathered through a reflective pattern. Through theoretical attempts and earlier experience from social workers, this is brought to life in this unique meeting.

The purpose of this study is to give us a deeper understanding about street workers importance for youths. We also wanted to investigate this from a gender perspective, both considering the street workers but also the youths. The focus for this study is on both the street workers and the youths. The study is based on a qualitative approach. We were going to study people and their behaviors.

The purpose of this study was to investigate the association between physical activity and perceived stress, energy and musculoskeletal disorders among office-workers and warehouse-workers and also to see if there were any differences depending on work-place and gender. The method that was used to collect data was three different validated questionnaires that measured stress and energy (the Stress-Energy questionnaire), musculoskeletal disorders (intensity and localization of pain, a Pain Drawing questionnaire with a VAS-scale) and physical activity (IPAQ ? the short version). Eighty-eight workers participated in the study. Forty-seven of them were office-workers and forty-one were warehouse-workers.

The aim of the study is to describe social workers discretion when it comes to the relation between children placed away from home and their biological parents.The study describes how the social worker designs the contacts with the biological parents, for instance the extension for the actual meeting. The results are based on six interviews conducted with social workers who work with foster children. They have responded to questions related to the contact between children and their biological parent. The questions are based on eight vignettes. The contents of the vignettes show different conditions that affect the contact, for example age and foster care attitudes The results of the study have been compared to other previous research in discretion of the social worker and contacts between children and their biological parents.In summary the study shows that there is  high degree of independence for the social workers designing their work and that their level of discretion.

Summary:Teenage girls? choice of dropping out or complete a treatment.The purpose of this study is to investigate, from a client?s perspective, why teenage girls (age 13 to 17) drop-out or complete a treatment at Familjehuset in Karlstad, Sweden. We also want to investigate if the teenage girls? experiences coordinate with the social workers opinion of why the teenage girls choose to drop-out or complete the treatment. Earlier research shows that many factors influence the client?s choice.

This master thesis is based on a general issue of quality in social services. I have chosen to illustrate through an empirical case, namely the position social responsibility coordinator and shortened SAS.This position is fairly new to the Swedish social services and has the overall mandate to monitor, develop and ensure quality.To study this, I have developed two analytic schemes. One is based on the concept of quality value components, the second is based on the concept of quality character components. These analytical schemes are used as the presented material. When I study mycase, I have used two methods, documents and questionnaires.In this study I will try to describe how new solutions to improve the quality of social services can conform and develop.

Children are said to be the future of our society. Hence, how we take care of our children is a cause of concern. This is evident in much of the social work that is carried out in Sweden. One of the times when we find children to be the most vulnerable is when they, for different reasons, are separated from their biological families and placed in foster care. Based on the fact that Sweden over the last century has experienced an increased immigration intake we wanted to take a closer look on how this change of the population dynamics has influenced foster care in the country.

The aim of this study has been to highlight how school social workers experience their discretion, and furthermore how they feel about working in a context mainly dedicated to teachers. The study is executed with a qualitative research method where ten interviews with school social workers, in eight schools in the area of Stockholm have been conducted. The theoretical framework used to analyze the results was discretion, street-level bureaucracy and human service organizations.The main findings of this study imply that the most important ambition of the social work that was conducted in the schools was to help the students reach their knowledge goals. The assignment is, however, not clearly defined, which has lead to school social workers defining the mission and goals themselves. They all have wide discretion and great possibilities to decide how to execute their work, but how they use the freedom that was given seems to vary among them.