The purpose of this study was to investigate how social services workers describe, the risk of being exposed to threats and violence in their profession. Six social services workers were interviewed, four from the Welfare Office in a major city and two from the Child and Family Services in a minor city. Results showed that the majority of social services workers consider themselves exposed in their profession, meaning that they feel there's a risk of a violent or threatening situation occurring in their work situation. All interviewees had experiences from some sort of threat or violence in a work related context and they attested that non-personal assaults, such as threats made through telephone, email and answering machines are more common than verbal assaults made in personal meetings. Being prepared and listening to ones intuition is a way of dealing with exposure when meeting with a client.

The central goal of this study was to compare statements of the minister of migration in power in 1994 with those of the minister of migration in 2006. The statements reflect two peaks of refugee immigration in connection to the war in former Yugoslavia and the present war in Iraq. The study analyses the statements in a critical discourse analysis framework. More specifically the aim was to find out if there were any discursive differences in these statements and how they might manifest themselves in society. The material was composed of 12 texts, 6 for each period originating from Swedish newspapers and from the ministers' public speeches.

The purpose of this essay was to examine how professional social workers work with follow up foster home placements. The study was based on qualitative interviews with ten professional social workers from different municipalities in Skåne in an attempt to answer the following questions:* What routines exist for the follow-up work with foster care?* What factors have an impact on how the follow-up is formed in the particular case?* How can the follow-up affect outcomes of the placement?* In what way could the work with follow-up foster home placements develop?The theories we chose to analyze our material from was the ecology of human development formed by Urie Bronfenbrenner and the theory of civil courage formed by Lennart Lundquist. The interviews were semi-structural which gave the respondents a chance to talk in a free way about the questions we presented.The result of the study showed that there is a difference in the way social workers form the follow-up work of foster care. The greatest difference is in whom the social workers include in their follow-up.

The aim with the study was, that through a qualitative research approach, to examine in which way social services employees perceive information about children with incarcerated fathers and how they furthermore relates to the child's right to both parents in these situations. Seven interviews were implemented with social workers in the Stockholm County to obtain informa-tion on the following questions; how the children's needs are noticed at the social services, how employees discuss the child's right to their incarcerated father and which possibilities and obstacles social workers experience to promote contact between the child and the father. The ecology of human development theory was used in the analysis. The conclusions are that chil-dren with incarcerated fathers seldom is noticed at the social services as a result of inadequate cooperation between authorities but also due to whether the social services should be respon-sible for the children. Furthermore, children always have the right to maintain contact with their incarcerated father, with exceptions for situations where physical or sexual abuse have occurred.

The main purpose of this study is to examine and gain increased knowledge concerning the legal security of children taken into protective care. The purpose is also to enable contemporary social workers to reflect around phenomena in today´s social work, among other things how investigations are carried out surrounding children taken into protective care thought this historical study. To find out how social workers dealt with caretakings I have chosen to examine the personel files that the social workers compiled for each child and also interview a man who worked as a social worker at the time of the investigation. The paper is divided into two part studies were the first one studies legal security through Mattsson´s (2002) further development of KjÆnstad?s way to analyse legal security, namely through investigating the clarity of the law, procedural rules and the comtetenay of the social workers.

The study aims to describe and analyse the relationship between norm and practice regarding social services casework on honour-related problems. The relationship between norm and practice involves the difference between the way it is intended that social workers shall operate in these cases and how they perceive that this works in practice. We interviewed two focus groups of eight Swedish social workers, four in each group. We also held an individual interview with a social services business developer. Focus group interviews were based on two vignettes; one depicting an honour-related case and the second an "ordinary" case.

This study aims to further Work-family conflict research for Social Workers by providing insight into what kind of impact the job role of social workers in Sweden has on their private lives and how they deal with it. The study operates from a qualitative approach and is based on three focus group-interviews and three semi-structured interviews with people working in different fields of social work. The empirical material has been analyzed through the Dramaturgical Perspective and Frame concept of Erving Goffman. The results of this study show that the job role impacts the psychological well-being of social workers, their family life and their social life to varying degrees, mainly due to organizational and client-based aspects, often resulting in role-conflicts and a lack of energy in their private lives. The primary strategies were found to be conversing with colleagues, spending time alone, embracing hobbies and having a clear understanding of individual responsibility. .

The purpose of this paper has been to reach a greater understanding in how moral inflicts social workers way of handling everyday situations. In what way, if in any way, moral comes to play a part in the making of decisions. In order to reach this understanding we have interviewed two different groups of social workers which we also later on came to compare . One of the groups contained six interviewees and the other group contained five interviewees. Both of these groups were in the ages between 27 ? 52.To shed some light over this phenomenon did we use two theoretical perspectives, first Kant?s morale theory and second, consequentialistic utilitarism theory.As a result from the interviews we?ve made, we came to an understanding that the meaning of morale and in what way it can be applied in the everyday work differs between these two professional groups.

AbstractOur purpose was to understand how social workers experience the possible complexities that working with economical aid can entail. As an example we chose to focus on long-term economical aid work. We aimed to address the question of which factors could affect their work. In a prior study, done by Dellgran & Höjer (2003) the conclusion was drawn  that  the combination of economical aid, healthcare and schools makeup a third of  practical social work in the terms of the proportion of the amount of social workers, but only 8 percent of the research is done in those areas. Other studies (Stranz, 2007) demonstrate that the research that is done on working with economical aid is deficient.

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.

In November 2006 and July 2007, changes were made to the Social Services Law and the Criminal Injuries Law, defining children who have witnessed domestic violence as crime victims. The objective of our study is to examine if these changes have affected how social workers responsible for child protection inquiries interact with children who have witnessed domestic violence, and to what extent these children?s need of support are taken into account. Qualitative interviews have been carried out with five social workers, with the aim to evaluate how they meet and become aware of these children. Our problem-formulation is based upon the question how social services implement the recent changes to the law.

The purpose of this qualitative study was to examine male social workers experiences of working in a female dominated work. The aim with this study was to find out how men perceive working with mostly women and how this effects their construction of masculinity. The theories that have been used in this study are a social constructive perspective on gender, Chodorows (1995) Theory of Socialization and Connells (2008) Theory of Masculinities. The method used in this study is qualitative interviews based on the experiences of five male social workers in Sweden.The interviews have been recorded and retailed in text in its full version, to enable analysis out of the above mentioned theories and earlier studies. The result of the study shows that the men in this study experience mostly benefits from working with women and they feel appreciated as being men.

The overall aim was to examine how the public interest to protect children from violence and sexual abuse at home, is realized by social workers. The study´s central focus was the risk assessments as Social services are obliged to do when they receive a report containing concern that children are being exposed to violence or sexual abuse at home. The study addresses the following questions:o How do social workers go about practically, and what support and knowledge is being used to determine whether the Social services need to intervene for the protection of a child?o What risk and protective factors are taken into account by social workers in the assessment process?o What contextual factors do social workers experience are affecting them in the assessment process?o Which support does the documentation system BBIC provide in the assessment process?The study material was collected through qualitative group interviews, with a modified vignette methodology as tools. The study included a total of twelve social workers, with varying numbers in each interview group.

Utredningshemmet in Hässleholm, Sweden, is a special residential home for acute management and investigative evaluation of juvenile delinquents.Utredningshemmet has, since 1991, used an investigative model, which is based on systems theory. The investigative work is done in close co-operation with social workers, youths and their parents.This study takes into account the youths, who have had a commissioned placement to carry out an investigation of their needs of care and treatment, 71 juvenile delinquent cases. They are divided into three one year intervals: 17 cases in 1993, 28 cases in 1998 and 26 cases in 2003.The purpose of this evaluation is to illustrate changes in the social workers, parents and youth's level of satisfaction during the development of the special residential home's investigative model.Approximately one to three months after discharges social workers, youths and their parents completed a level of satisfaction questionnaire. The results demonstrate no significant difference in the level of satisfaction between different time periods. There are, however, differences in satisfaction levels between social workers, who have the highest level of satisfaction, parents, who have the next highest level and finally the youths level of satisfaction..

The purpose of the study is to explore how social workers work with youths that seek financial assistance and what importance gender plays in this process. The participants were six female social workers that work with financial assistance. They were interviewed and had to reflect over a case, where the client where either male or female. The results was analyzed and compared in relation to social constructive theory and gender theory. The study shows that social workers work in two parallel processes, when they decide about financial assistance and other help benefits, the formal and the intuitive.