Are different ways of life possible in a world that increasingly becomes "Westernized" or globalized? This study examines and analyzes the diverse and complex way of life that includes socioeconomical nomadism as the Irish Traveller community are availing themselves of on the island of Ireland. In a broader perspective the study of the Travellers is put in context to how modern society emerged, and what characterizes the contemporary western societies. This is to understand the way Travellers nomadic lifestyle has been constrained and how the interrelationship between the dominant society and the extended family group constituting Travellers social composition has affected their livelihoods. Their social role is considered from two identification points ? home and work.Nomadism as a phenomenon, its history, expression and possible motives are being described in this work.

The purpose of this study is to increase an understanding of what prevents the mandatory reporting law, based on the preschool staff's approach to mandatory reporting law about child abuse and neglect to social services, and how these barriers affect their decision to report. The study will also understand what preschool staff experience facilitates the mandatory reporting process and what can be done to improve the process even more. The questions of the study were based on the purpose of the study and have been formulated in two questions:What prevents the mandatory reporting law requirements for preschool staff and how can these barriers be removed? What facilitates for preschool staff to be confident in the decision to report child abuse and neglect, to social services?The study used qualitative semi-structured interviews with five people working at the preschool, including two preschool teachers and three childcare workers. An interview guide was designed as a help to answer the questions about what the barriers are and what it is that makes it easier for the preschool staff, regarding the decision to report cases of child abuse and neglect to social services.The results, based on the five interviews , shows preschool staff's thoughts of the knowledge on the mandatory reporting law, the mandatory reporting process, their perspective of the mandatory reporting law and the uncertainty surrounding the mandatory reporting law.The study's analysis consists of the results that have been analyzed using the theory of social representations, in which the analysis shows an understanding of how the preschool staff act and think about the mandatory reporting law requirements based on their everyday knowledge.

This masters thesis investigates how the Swedish county libraries relate to equality between men and women. The thesis treats the county library both as a place of work and as a part of the national library network. One of the reasons why this study focuses on county libraries is because of their special position in the Swedish library organisation as a link between the national policy and the public libraries. The analysis in the study is based on theories that argue masculinity and femininity as social constructions, and therefore can be affected by a different type of conduct. Data was gathered using qualitative questionnaires combined with some quantitative elements that were used to gain fundamental facts regarding the distribution of employees between the sexes and the existence of equality policies.

The objective of this study was to uncover what aspects of urban plazas and parks that are most important for users? evaluations of places? aesthetics and microclimate (the characteristic climate for a limited space). This was done by investigating people?s general ideas of plazas and parks (the prototypical concepts) and compare these with place users? descriptions of four specific places. Interviews with two groups (31 and 24 persons respectively) were carried out in order to collect this information.

The purpose of this study was to inquire how social workers perceive and describe financial abuse of older persons. Six qualitative interviews were carried out and the assembled data was then categorized and analyzed using a theory considering exercise of power and ageism as a theoretical frame. Previous research has shown that at least 10% of older persons have been exposed to some form of abuse or violence; however, there is a lack of research carried out in a Swedish context regarding financial abuse specifically. The six persons interviewed in this study all presented financial abuse as some kind of violence and as previous research has shown the study suggests that this is an increasing problem. Further research ought to be carried out to increase the awareness of this particular form of abuse and to facilitate discovery and development of measures to prevent financial abuse of older persons.

This study investigates how social interaction affects newly arrived pupils? views on their study situation in the Swedish educational system. The aim is to give a contribution to the discussion on the notion of including ?the Other? in educational practice in multicultural schools. Semi-structured group interviews were conducted to explore how the intercultural perspective and the theory of inclusion can be used to explain the dynamics of social interaction.

This is a case study about the effects that disasters have on social work. The case in question is the fire in Berga village, Kalmar, which took place the 12: th of October 2011. The aim of this study is to describe the ways in which Kalmar worked crime preventive towards young people before the fire and after. The study also aims to specify if, and how the disaster affected the crime preventive work with young people. In this study we define the fire like a disaster and disaster has the ability to create changes in policy.

An explorative study on the work motivation of employees at a retirement home. The three main factors are internal motivation, external motivation and control. A comparison between how important they estimate the different factors to be and how they experience them today reveals which factor is their key motivator and which areas that need improvement. Results indicat that internal and external motivation are slightly more important than control. And the amount of perceived control reflects the amount of creative and initiative behaviour of the individual.

Henriksson, I & Jönsson, M. Den svenska glasburken. En diskursanalys av Statens Offentliga Utredningar/ The Swedish glass jar. A discourse analysis of official government reports. Examensarbete i Socialt arbete 30 poäng.

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.

The purpose of this thesis is to investigate the employees´ duty of loyalty to their employer when making statements on social media networks and if this opposes the employees´ right to freedom of speech. Another purpose of this thesis is to investigate freedom of speech from an EU juridical point of view. Also a discussion concerning gender issues on this subject takes place is presented in the thesis. The questions to answer the purpose of this thesis are the following: Where is the line drawn for what an employee can publish on a social media network without breaching their duty of loyalty towards their employer?, and How does an employee´s freedom of speech relate to these types of statements on a social media network? The method used for this thesis is the classical legal method.The legal inquiry shows that duty of loyalty is a hidden clause in all employment contracts, and it must be respected by the employee.

This thesis has been conducted at Volvo Bussar ABunder a period of ten weeks. Within the organizationVolvo, the work is conducted with leaders and teamson every level; from production to top management.They have three tasks, besides executing their dailywork, they are expected to actively work on improvingtheir individual work as well as themselves as persons.The two latter are future value adding activities for theorganization. When doing so, however, it has beennoticed that they often lose the grasp of their dailywork. The question that consequently arises is whythis happens. Is it because of lack of time or it isbecause the co-workers do not have the competenceand simply do not know how they are to execute thethree tasks? Or, is it because the motivation to executethe three tasks is not enough? With this in regard, thestatement of issues for this bachelor thesis were thefollowing: how can the conditions for leaders and theteam be improved, in order for them to execute thesethree tasks.To find out why the execution of these threeassigments did not always succeed, the decision wastaken to conduct a survey and interview study in reallife and at the plants.

This paper examines how individual social welfare officers argue about the conditions in foreign aid. The paper is a qualitative interview study there nine social welfare officers from four local governments have been interviewed.The results are divided into two areas. First, the client's responsibility over their own lives   and self-determination. These two areas are then analyzed separately.The analysis assumes an aletisk hermeneutics where the basis for the attribution of the result is Max Weber's vocation ethics and the more recent research about foreign aid.The conclusion of the study was that social workers believe that the client's responsibility for their own self-sufficiency outweighs supply. Financial assistance must be justified in order to be paid regardless of whether this causes rejection of application for financial aid..

The focus in this paper was on managers in the middle position in the care of the elderly and people with disabilities. The aim was to develop knowledge about the conditions of work among managers in the middle position and what they characterized as good leadership and which strategies they used in their work. The empirical data consisted of nine qualitative interviews with managers in the middle position in the municipality of Halmstad.The frameworks that mainly limited the middle managers' discretion were laws, political regulations and most of all it was the allocated budget. Their discretion was found closer to the operation such as working methods, recruitment and changes in job schedules. The middle managers spent the majority of their working hours with personnel administrative work and that they often had to prioritise among their tasks.

The aim of this study was to investigate whether there is a social-psychological relevance in allowing animals to be involved in therapy work. I have examined if the animals may contribute to effects on human relationships between caregivers and patients, and if the animals can contribute to helping patients to achieve better well-being. Through previous research and a quantitative interview I have received answers to the following questions: How are animals used in the treatment work? How do animals affect the relationship between caregiver-patient? In what ways do animals in treatment affect relationships between people? How do the professionals who work with animals believe that animals can affects the patient? I have interviewed people working in different kinds of treatment work using animals. The areas examined include work with animals at youth care, police, disability care, elderly care and school.