AbstractMy study is based on that I think there is a problem at the Handicraft program for hairdressers where I currently work as a hairdresser teacher. I believe that there are clear objectives and a wide range of courses focusing in craft knowledge, but the social competence goals are unclear and there are no courses on the subject. Since I have 13 years hairdressing experience and know roughly what it requires, I wonder where and how the teaching of social skills is performed at the Handicraft program for hairdressersThe purpose of this study is therefore to find out how some of my colleagues perceive the teaching of social skills. The issues I have focused on are what these teachers believe that social skills are, how they perceive their teaching of it and when they believe that teaching really should be. There is not much literature on this subject because it is a relatively unexplored area. I have therefore concentrated on literature dealing with social skills in general, and theses and essays dealing with the quality of hairdressing education. I have chosen to make a qualitative interview study. The objectives related to social skills can be incorporated in the teaching of many subjects; I chose to interview two core-subject teachers and four vocational teachers. The interviews have been based on respondents' own interpretations of social skills. They have been individual interviews of about 30 minutes. My results show that most teachers believe that social competence is about a good meeting between people and to coping with different situations in a good way.

The aim of this Masters thesis is to investigate how trained social workers experience information in their daily work. The thesis focussed on three major questions: - What type of information and information sources are mostly used by the trained social workers? - What kind of information barriers are described by the participants? - How can the patterns of information seeking and information use be understood on the basis of the trained social workers professional and social context? Semi-structured interviews were carried out with trained social workers working with child welfare enquiries. My theoretical framework consists of user and context oriented theories about classifications of information, information barriers and models of information sources. My conclusions are that trained social workers working with risk assessment in child protection services, need to use different kinds of information in their daily work, such as problem information, domain information and problem-solving information.

The purpose of this study was to examine what social workers include in the term "parenting ability". More specifically the purpose was to investigate how social workers view the parenting ability among parents with an intellectual disability. Furthermore the aim was to examine what difficulties social workers come across in their work with families where one of the parents are intellectually disabled. The study was based on six interviews with social workers that specifically work with children under the age of 18, and occasionally come across parents with this type of disability. The interviews were analysed using Donald Winnicott's terms "good-enough-parenting", "holding" and "the holding environment".

A multi professional team use different professional skills to a specific target. The people in the team complement each other to achieve the best performance possible. Professional identity is a mix between the professional and personal identity. Social identities, like professional identity, is a product of social categorization and social comparison. The purpose of this study was to examine how increased cooperation in cross-disciplinary teams has affected the professional identity of home care staff.

Sweden is the country in Europe that receives most applicants from asylum seeking unaccompanied children. The majority of all unaccompanied children are boys and the two biggest sending countries are Afghanistan and Somalia. There is however a big difference between the proportion of unaccompanied girls between the two countries, Somalia with a big proportion of girls and Afghanistan with a low proportion of girls. Previous research has shown that there is a big knowledge gap about unaccompanied girls? migration.

This paper aims to give an insight into how venture capital work with their investments in the school sector. The purpose of the paper is to examine their work, regarding to goals of the company and the process of controlling the goals.  The study also aims to determine the way the companies work with value growth.This study uses a qualitative research method, where the theories license to operate, the relationship value management framework, agency-principal and new public management theory is tested in relation to the collected data. Eleven persons were interviewed in this paper. This paper also aims to give an overview to venture capital in the school sector, where it will examine whether financial goals could collide with social goals.What the study can tell is that venture capital does not have a license to operate in this sector, according to the theory.

The purpose of this study was to increase the understanding of the phenomenon that there are so many young people placed in institutions in Sweden despite the valuable knowledge regarding the problems and risks of doing so. The questions that follow in the essay were what guided the social workers to choose institutional placement for youngsters. It went on to also ask if this knowledge could contribute to an increased understanding of why there were so many young people placed in institutions despite the criticism from scientists. To accomplish the goal of the essay, former science in the subject was reported and six social workers within social services were interviewed. The material of the interviews was analyzed with help from the theory of human service organizations, street-level bureaucrats work situation and the new institutionalism.The result of the investigation showed that the social workers choices to place young people in institutions is guided by specific work and organizational factors connected with a belief in the helping function of the surroundings.

Purpose: To explore how the changes in work life, here represented and depicted through the concepts of knowledge work and knowledge worker, have been incorporated in the official psychosocial work environment discourse in Sweden. Methodology: Critical discourse analysis, contrasting the official psychosocial work environment discourse to literature on knowledge work and knowledge worker, to explore how employees, employers and their relations are constructed within these two discourses; focusing identity, autonomy and power. Using the constructions to make visible how they are articulated, used and dealt with in a real life case from the Work Environment Authority. Theoretical perspectives: Our social world is socially constructed and language is the main tool for constructing it. Discourse analysis is thus not just a tool for deconstructing texts but also for enhanced understanding of our construction of the world and our ability to communicate about it.

The aim of this thesis is to investigate how libraries market themselves in social media and why they do it. I have studied a certain public library?s process of introducing social media into its marketing mix, the preparations for this process and the effects of these marketing methods.The theoretical framework for this thesis is based on relationship marketing, a theory which focuses on relationships, networks and interaction. My main method has been semi-structured interviews with a librarian at the relevant library, with the manager of the library and with the head of the municipality?s department of communication.The results of my studies show that marketing on social media is a positive and important thing for libraries.

The purpose of this study was to examine how professional workers understand the bullying problem among Swedish youth in the age of 13-15 years. The main focus was to examine the new phenomena electronic bullying, from a professional point of view.The biggest question to answer was: "How does the school and organizations understand the bullying situation among Swedish youth today?" Individual interviews with professional social workers within the school and nationwide organizations have been used to fulfill the purpose of this work. Two different respondent types were used in order to get a wide perspective and a dynamic view.Electronic bullying had increased, but the school yard was still the most common arena for bullying, according to the respondents. The schools tried to prevent bullying, but the social workers felt that they lacked some knowledge of electronic bullying, because it was relative new.

Sara Lidman?s second novel Hjortronlandet (1955) unfolds in the north of Sweden in the early 20th century. It describes the progress of modernity and the conflicting interests of an old local culture and a new more ?civilised? one. The two cultures are constituted by different value systems and in the novel they are represented by two neighbour communities.

This essay is about children who have psychological and social problems. An increase part of children and young people in Sweden describe this kind of difficulties. These problems are at the same time a concern for the school as well as the social welfare. The purpose in this essay is to explore if children with psychological and social problems have the same legal rights to education as other children. The main questions are to describe the legal rights in this area and explore how schools and social welfare cooperate in order to achieve better possibilities for the children.The facts take a legal aspect as a starting point.

The present study deals with the scope of action available to a social worker when analyzing, assessing and proposing measures regarding young persons experiencing social problems. The interest in the subject area emanates from the fact that the number of youth placed in different forms of round the clock out-of-home care in Sweden increases, whereas research in the subject shows that such placement gives few positive results and sometimes even has negative consequences for their development.The study investigates how the preconditions of the social worker influence their scope of possible action, in particular as regards their place of work, the situation of the individual dealt with, and the profession itself being one based both on scientific evidence and knowledge gained by experience. Lipsky?s theory on ?street-level bureaucracy? and Hasenfelds theory on human servicing organizations form the theoretical framework of the present study. The empirical input comes from interviews with focus groups of active social workers.The analysis of the interviews shows that social workers generally feel that they have a broad scope of action as far as the regulatory framework and office management are concerned.

University of ÖrebroDepartment of social SciencesSociology, Contnuation Course, 61-90hp.Essay 15hp. Spring 2008Title: Who is resbonsible? A soceityscientific discussion about burnout.Author: Emilie FuchsAbstractThe purpose with this essay is to do a critical comparation between two different perspectives, burnout as an individual problem and burnout as a social problem. The first perspective states that the individual itself is responsible for her sickness while the second perspective states that the society and foremost the labour market should work in order to prevent people from beeing burned out. With that purpose in mind I want to enlighten and hopefully bring up the topic for discussion.The essay is based upon the following questions:? How can you sociologically understand the labour market of today?? How can you understand burnout in an individual context?? How can you understand burnout in a social context?By studying and reading four books, I have presented the two different perspectives of burnout.

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.