The purpose of this essay was to study how school welfare officers cooperate with other school staff, regarding children in vulnerable positions, and how the school staff apply their obligation to report to the social services if they have concerns regarding children at risk, according to the law of social service, SoL.We have especially focused on questions concerning cooperation, both between the school staff, and between the school and the social services. We also wanted to identify some of the restraining factors and dilemmas that could come up during the process of reporting children at risk to the social services. The study was based on qualitative interviews with ten school welfare officers from the same municipality.Our conclusions of our study are that there exists a well-developed cooperation between several organizational levels, including the school welfare officers, other professions in the schools and the social services. There were though opinions among the school welfare officers that they wanted to increase their professional claims in relation to the school nurse, due to their larger competence in talking to children. Regarding the formal responsibility to report to the social services, a majority of the school welfare officers felt they had access to the support they needed from both their principal and the students healthcare-team, and that they were not left alone in the process..

The North-American sociologist Michael Lipsky has characterized social workers as street-level bureaucrats with a substantial discretion in the relationship between the welfare state and its citizens. Within Lipsky´s theoretical framework social workers appear as a powerful group that socializes the citizens to uphold certain expectations towards the welfare state and its (re)distributional programs. From this point of view, it is important to learn more about social workers and the attitudes they express towards the welfare state. The aim of this study is to analyze how the welfare-political attitudes of future social workers are affected by their social background (e.g. class background and ancestral homeland).

A large number of children and teenagers are placed in foster care for various reasons. Social services have a responsibility to follow up youths and ensure that they have the same opportunity for positive development as other young people. A qualitative study was conducted with an abductive perspective by gathering material from social workers in this particular field. The research design of this study is an interview study. The theoretical premise was Bronfenbrenners ecosystem theory and Maslows hierarchy of needs theory.

The aim of this essay was to examine what kind of help and support social services departement can offer gamblers and their relatives. We also want to examine what the relatives to the gamblers think about the help and support they have got from the social services departement. Central questions we asked were: What kind of help and support can social services department offer the gamblers and there relatives? What kind of help is there to get for children respectively adult relatives? Do the relatives consider that the social worker have enough knowledge about the problem? Do the social workers consider that they have enough knowledge about the problem? This is a qualitative study of three women relatives to the gamblers, three social workers and one specialist in this problem. We have delimited the study to one big city in Sweden.

This qualitative study is about the individual supportive conversation with the school welfare officer in upper secondary school. The main aim of the study was to find out what the pupils get out of a series of conversations with the school welfare officer and what it means for the pupils that the welfare officer belongs to the school organization. Six qualitative interviews were held with pupils who had conversation contact with the school welfare officer during their time at upper secondary school.I found that these pupils and welfare officers were oriented towards change and solutions. I found that the most important thing for the pupils was to achieve a good and trusting relationship with the welfare officer. After this the pupil starts a process of change in cooperation with the welfare officer, with the aim that the pupil should be happy and satisfied with the current life situation.

The increasing significance of social economy as a concept is linked to general global processes such as the crisis of the welfare state, neoliberal globalization, anti-bureaucracy tendencies and decentralization, but also to a growing political interest in human rights and social development. In Sweden the idea of the social economy generates wide support within civil society as well as within the government and across party political boundaries. Furthermore, what is problematic in this context is the fact that the discussions on the subject tend to be relatively uncritical and often it seems as if though the expansion itself is the main objective. The emphasis on cooperation and the third sector in terms of welfare production implies a set of risks in relation to state responsibility, democracy and the autonomy of civil society. This paper aims to explore those risks and how they can be dealt with within the Swedish context..

The aim of our study is to explore social workers view on the importance of clothing. We want to know how and if social worker reflects on the importance of their clothing and how it may affect their clients. Dresses social workers differently due to different work situations? Play client`s clothes any role in the social welfare officers? Can client`s clothing affect the assessment of their problem?The study is based on a qualitative method. The data consists of two focus group interviews with four social workers in each group, containing three women and one man in each focusgroup, with a total of eight informants.The results of our study indicate that the clothes are important in meeting with clients and especially as to help create a relationship with the client.

The purpose of this essay was to examine six high school welfare officers' experiences and work with students suffering from social phobia and discuss the welfare officers' view on social phobia from a psychiatric, cognitive and a knowledge theory. The study consists of qualitative interviews with welfare officers from several different high schools and attempts to answer the following questions: What previous experiences do welfare officers have of students with social phobia? How do welfare officers become aware of students with symptoms of social phobia and bring forth their problems? How do welfare officers describe their social work with students suffering from social phobia?The welfare officers' experiences of students with social phobia varied but turned out to be less salient than the amount of research in the area would suggest. The theoretical knowledge also varied, as did the acquiring and use of theory. These findings were then analysed on the basis of Rosmari Eliassons thoughts on knowledge, leading to the conclusion that the interviewed welfare officers do not construct their work on praxis-knowledge.

The aim of this study was to examine how clients who have or have previously had a drug- and/or alcohol addiction experienced interchanges with social workers. In this study, eight semi-structured interviews were made with respondents from an out-patient clinic in a small town in Sweden. Questions were asked regarding clients? experience of the social workers' attitudes during the initial meeting as well as all continuing meetings. Other possible variables that affected the interchanges, either positively or negatively, including how the clients wanted to be treated, were also explored.

Social enterprises make up one of the groups of participants that provide welfare services financed by public funding. The object of this study is to describe and analyze from a theoretical point of view which conditions, in what fields, by which division of responsibility and finally through what decisions these social enterprises are allocated a place in the market for social welfare services. The company that has been the object of study offers services in the field of social welfare and in employment. In the study a triangulation of qualitative methods has been used: studies of literature on the subject, recurrent interviews and observations and also reviews of documents. The results have been analyzed from theories on the space available on the market for social services, on social economy and on social capital in the form of strong, weak and bridging bonds.

How do you do co-operation between government agencies? It is a wide spread view that there can be quite a few hitches in co-operation between agencies. In later years this idea has spread to the media where there has been negative coverage of the social service agencies. This generally applies to cases where children suffer because the right assistance takes too long to co-ordinate or does not get co-ordinated at all between schools, healthcare and social services. The social welfare law dictates that it is the social welfare office duty to co-ordinate the government agencies for the child?s best interest.

The purpose of this paper is to investigate how social workers, working in a management position in the health care system, perceive the encounter of the medical and social perspective. With seven qualitative interviews, the study tries to conclude whether or not social workers are accepted at managerial positions within the health care sector. The social worker is, as a manager in health care, a leader but at the same time in a professional alienation from the medical caregivers. Organizations in the health care sector are often multi professional and have their own long standing tradition, history and culture. The results show that the conditions for social workers, working in a management position in health care appear to be agreeable.

The aim of this study was to develop knowledge about the social workers' importance for unaccompanied children's integration in the Swedish society. In order to investigate this we also have to distinguish other people who are important for the unaccompanied children. The method used in the study is qualitative interviews and we have interviewed four unaccompanied children and three social workers to reach the results. To analyze the results we have used symbolic interactionism and Antonovsky's theory about sence of coherence. The results showed that it is important for unaccompanied children to have access to significant people to integrate and they also have to learn values and attitudes which exist in the society.

Animal welfare is of increasing concern in present society. In commercial pig farming, animal welfare problems are common. One of the causes for these problems is the barren environment in which pigs are housed, which can cause oral manipulation of pen mates. Providing straw might be one solution to this problem. Another solution could be reached through genetic selection.

The purpose of this essay was to investigate the experience of being young and living in Herrgården in Rosengård, Malmö, from the aspects of six adolescents, two police officers, one social worker and one youth leader; and also what the cause is according to them, of disturbances arousing like those in the spring of 2007. At this moment there were antagonisms between adolescents and policemen. The research was performed with a qualitative method based on partly structured interviews. Four kinds of main themes were notable from the interview results. Those were: Growing up in Herrgården, Other peoples' view of Herrgården, Identity and Causes of the disturbances.