The aim of this study was to enlighten social workers experiences of social networks direct influence in Swedish social services, and in which ways those influences are manifested. Some of the issues that are being explored in this study are: The separation of the private sphere and professional duties; boundaries and dual relationships that occurs inside social networks; the use of social networks as a control-instrument in authority exercise towards clients; and social networks arising impact on social work. The empirical material was collected with nine qualitative interviews with social workers stationed at different social service departments in a Swedish municipality. Also one qualitative e-survey was sent out to, and answered by four social workers with a managerial position in the same municipality.The results reveal that several informants have experienced different problematic situations involving clients within the social networks. This study shows that the informants are very restrictive with what information (text and pictures) they publish on their facebook-profiles, because of their position of authority and the awareness of the possibility of always being watched.

The purpose of this study is to discuss the use of social media by the Swedish Police for democratic purposes. The idea of citizen empowerment is closely related to the development of new communication technologies such as social media. Yet many studies indicate that governmental institutions rarely make use of the assumed potentials of social media.In this study, the democratic potential of social media is derived from Habermas normative concept of deliberative participation. Operational definitions emphasize discursive equality, interactive reciprocity and external impact. The analytical framework is combined with qualitative text analysis to highlight the conditions of interaction between representatives of the Police and citizens.In conclusion: the democratic potential of social media, from a Habermasian point of view, is to a significant extent neglected at the expense of its strategic advantages.

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.

The following essay or thesis is a study over scientific endeavors in the fringe. It is a study of Riksorganisationen UFO-Sverige, whose proponents aim to make the UFO phenomenon (or phenomena) a subject of scientific scrutiny. To achieve this, the ufologists first have to redefine common concepts of ufology as pseudo science or religion, mainly by challenging definitions given by scientific sceptics on the one hand, and proponents of conspiracy theories or the new age environment on the other. Thus UFO-Sverige seeks to construct an alternative scientific identity in contrast to adversaries on both sides, each unwilling to give the UFO phenomenon any further examination. Following the work of Tomas Gieryn's sociological grip on questions of epistemology, especially concerning the social boundaries of science from other cultural categories through what has been labelled as epistemic boundary work, during which proponents of a particular field aim to achieve epistemic authority and thus the legitimate right to define what is and what is not science, I seek to analyze how questions of science and legitimacy are actualized in an intellectual environment or culture not broadly accepted as scientific.

The aim of this study was to describe how male social workers who work in the section for children and family in one municipality in southern Sweden, experience that their gender influences their daily work. The main focus is to understand what it means to be a man in the social services department. The first research question was how the male social workers experienced how their gender influenced their contact with children and parents in terms of possibilities and obstacles. The second research question was how the male social workers experienced how their gender influenced their working place in terms of possibilities and obstacles. The third research question was how the male social workers experienced that their gender affected the work with women colleagues.

According to our apprehension, work of integration is commonly considered managed in the main best through the labour market. Since this path is not available to everybody we wanted to find out how work of integration also can be practised in other areas. The purpose of this paper is to, with focus on children and youth, find out and analyze in what way the people working locally in residential areas and in associations, reflects around integration in general and within their own business, plus in what way they pursue local work of integration practically. The method we have used is qualitative, with unstructured, individual interviews. Our seven respondents within local authority, church and sport clubs, have told us about their work from a perspective of integration.

The main purpose of this thesis is to analyse the possibilities and problems facing a privatised work injury insurance. This discussion includes the element of premium differentiation. Todays´ Swedish social insurance system is ineffectively formed. The costs have dramatically increased during the 1990´s. The Swedish government is now looking for ways to improve the efficiency of the system.

There seems to be a consensus in the world that the climate is changing, bringing unpredictable and severe consequences for both humans and nature. The feld of social work is known for helping misfortunate individuals and groups, and is said to deal with people in their environments. Yet there seems to be a lack of giving these environments meaning as also something natural. This thesis has the purpose of exploring the connection between social work and the physical environment made by research literature, using the methodology of literature review. The questions asked is in which ways the physical environment can be connected to human welfare; if so, what implications are there for the feld of social work, and fnally how can the discussion be understood using a typology over environmental sustainability presented by Andrew Dobson.

The main purpose of this study was to examine, and illustrate, highschool social workers experiences of pupils with self-injurious behaviour. Self-injurious behaviour in this study refer to individuals who harm them-selves, with physical injury as consequence, without purpose to commit suicide. A qualitativ method was used and five highschool social workers, in the south of Sweden, were interviewed.The main questions were:- What kind of experiences have highschool welfare officers of pupils with self-injurious behaviour?- What view, and personal opinion have the welfare officers at the problem, and how do this affect them in their work with these pupils.The school social workers experiences of pupils with self- injurious behaviour, were for instance that the pupils often feel ashemed over their behaviour and that they often have lowe self-esteem. The social workers seemed to imagine the behaviour as a copingstrategy.It turned out that the social workers personality and their personal opinion regarding self-injurious behaviour, were of great importance in their work with these pupils..

The purpose of this study was to find out how caregivers experienced their psychosocial work environment at three municipal homes for old people. The Copenhagen Psychosocial Questionnaire (COPSOQ) was used in order to study different dimensions of the work environment, and questions about health, sickness presence and sick leave were included. The questionnaire was answered by 86 out of 112 participating caregivers (77%). The results showed that the caregivers experienced high demands at work. The degree of feedback and influence at work was low, but they reported that their work was highly meaningful and that they usually received social support at work.

AbstractAim: this paper is a report of a concept analysis of forgiveness and its practice within the social work area. Background: worldwide interest in and funding for forgiveness research has brought about a body of knowledge from many disciplines that could be clinically useful to social work. At this time forgiveness interventions are used in social work in other countries, primary in the USA. The social workers in the Scandinavian countries need to focus on this important area of inquiry. Method: forgiveness was explored from a philosophical perspective and from forgiveness interventions from a variety of areas suitable for social work.

The purpose of this study was to examine and illustrate whether employed social workers, working with supplementary benefits at a social service office, felt stressed. If so was the case, we wanted to investigate if this stress that they felt had any effect on their clients. This study was based on eight qualitative interviews, of which four was with social workers and four was with clients. For a better understanding of our results we used Karasek & Theorells demand-control-support model.The study reveals that the social workers do feel stressed, but they only do so in periods. They declare that they would like to have more time for their work assignments, the meetings with the clients in particulate.

The opinion of social workers towards their work with children and young persons wasstudied in this essay. Even their point of view with reference to the term the child?s bestinterest has being considered and special focus was laid on the social workers attitudestowards media coverage and its criticism towards their work. A qualitative approach was usedconsisted of six interviews. The theoretical frameworks were based on the theory aboutfreedom of action and the theory of social representations.

Feberboken, written by Stina Aronson and published in 1931, is a fragmentary meta literary autobiographical work told and written by the pseudonymous female author Mimmi Palm. The novel tells about a literary-erotic passion causing female subordination, fever and sick-ness. It balances between biography and fiction and consistently decontructs itself through its meta literary prespective. This essay finds that the structure of the novel and its thematical confusion of literature and erotique, fiction and reality, woman and man, derives from a struggle for definitions. Thus, the essay attempts to a close reading focusing on ambivalence and resistance and in order to determine the nature of the fever, it tries to analyze Feberboken in the light of early Swedish literary modernism.

The purpose of this study was to examine creativity in psychosocial work. The aim issues where to find out how creativity develops in social work, why the relation is important for the innovativeness and how the creativeness can change a person. Through a qualitative method with interviews of four persons in psychosocial work and with one man who's a professor in philosophy, four relevant themes were identified. The themes are about the relation, the meeting, the dialog and the changing. All four themes are related to creativity and I used existential, philosophic and also psychoanalytic theories when I analyzed the material.