During 2010, 1446 people committed suicide in Sweden. Research shows that groups that are less favored in society have an increased risk of suicide. Social services often encounter groups of people that have a high risk of suicide, for instance welfare recipients or substance abusers. The purpose of this study was to shed light on how Social workers talk about suicide and how this might affect interactions with suicidal clients. The study is based on qualitative interviews with five Social workers in Stockholm.

Our aim with this essay is to examine if social work in the care of elderly tends to be salutogenetic or patogenetic oriented. A salutogenetic oriented activity means that the Social workers focuses on the elderly peoples individual possibilities, and collaborate with the receiver of care in order to offer him or her aid and resources for meaningful living conditions. A patogenetic oriented activity on the other hand means that the Social workers focuses on the elderly peoples most primary needs, their illnesses and to introduce adequate treatment. We also examine if Social workers in the care of elderly tend to prefer male or female characteristic features in the receivers of care. Finally we wanted to find out if there were any gender distinctions, if the appraisal of aid were more affected by a male or female receiver of care.

With this study, our purpose has been to achieve profounded knowledge and understanding regarding the use of discretion among Social workers specialized in social allowance issues. The Social Services Act, structured as a framework law in the Swedish context, provides the social worker with a certain degree of discretion, in order to enable accommodated decisions depending on client case specifics. This study problematizes these aspects of legal security, and our intention has been to examine which factors impact the assessments Social workers carry out in statutory decisions of social allowance applications. To attain this, we narrowed down our intention into a number of distinct and delimitated research questions: (1) Which elements of the client case impact the social worker?s assessment? (2) Which external aspects influence the social worker?s assessments and decisions? (3) How do Social workers decide the client?s credibility? In order to establish answers to our research questions, we have utilized a qualitative approach of research by exerting qualitative interviews in addition to a vignette study.

The purpose of this essay was to examine the different aspects of motivational work with active heroin-using clients from a Social workers point of view. The further purpose of this essay is to also examine what the advancements and discouraging factors in such a motivational work might be. To attain this purpose we focused on these following questions:What might motivational work with active heroin-using clients look like?According to the social worker, what factors constitutes for a beneficial progress in the engagement of motivational work with active heroin-using clients?According to the social worker, what constitutes for discouraging factors in the engagement of motivational work with active heroin-using clients?We chose to do a qualitative study by conducting separate interviews with six Social workers working in a social services agency, all of whom are working with drug-addicted adults. We then analyzed the answers by using an abductive research strategy, testing the collected empirical data against our chosen theoretical perspectives.

The aim of this study examines how two groups of Social workers at two workplaces reflect to their own clothes in various work situations. We want to gain an understanding of the variables that affects Social workers choice of clothes at work. In a qualitative approach the study is based on two focus group-interviews and four semi structured interviews. Empirically analyzes relate to Pierre Bourdieu?s "la distinction, Ervin Goffman?s "frontstage-backstage", and of Michele Foucault?s power concepts.

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.

Social workers in the Social Services are seen as professionals and they are associatedwith a substantial degree of freedom to carry out their work in order to interpret theSocial Services Act and make decisions. This freedom is referred to as discretion andis a central aspect of the role of the social worker. But the social worker is employedwithin an organisation that exists in an environment influenced of political decisionswhich sets boundaries to how far the freedom stretches. The general aim with thisthesis is to gain insight in how Social workers within the Social Services experiencetheir discretion. Secondary this thesis also aims to explore how discretion is shapedand negotiated.

The purpose of this essay has been to study if the social services adjust the choice of institution to every juvenile's need of care. If the choice of institution isn't adjusted to the juveniles the institutional placement can become a way to store them rather then treat them.To accomplish the purpose of the essay we have interviewed ten Social workers with different worktitles and positions. We have delimited the study to three swedish communities with varying sizes. We have analyzed the material with Bourdieus theory of "field" and "doxa" and Antonovskys theory "a sense of coherence" (SOC).We came to the conclusion that the social service adjusted the choice of institution to the juveniles needs as much as possible. Although there are a couple of factors that some times makes the best choices impossible.

The general objective of this qualitative study is to analyse and describe what people with psychiatric disabilities write on their blogs about their encounters with Social workers. The questions the study is aiming to answer are: How do people with psychiatric disabilities describe their encounters with Social workers? Do the informants describe instances of paternalism and advocacy? How do the informants describe their sense of meaningfulness, comprehensibility and manageability? The study is based on a theoretical framework in which empowerment and sense of coherence (SOC) are the key elements, along with the concepts of paternalism and advocacy as well as meaningfulness, comprehensibility and manageability. The research data was collected from blogs on to the blog forum Psykiatrin.blogg.se ? psykiatrins Robin Hood (meaning ?the Robin Hood of psychiatry?).

The purpose of this study was to investigate the association between physical activity and perceived stress, energy and musculoskeletal disorders among office-workers and warehouse-workers and also to see if there were any differences depending on work-place and gender. The method that was used to collect data was three different validated questionnaires that measured stress and energy (the Stress-Energy questionnaire), musculoskeletal disorders (intensity and localization of pain, a Pain Drawing questionnaire with a VAS-scale) and physical activity (IPAQ ? the short version). Eighty-eight workers participated in the study. Forty-seven of them were office-workers and forty-one were warehouse-workers.

This essay aims to examine and compare Swedish and Norwegian social work with children. It is a comparative study between two social welfare offices, in districts with similar population and problems, one located in Stockholm and one in Oslo. The main questions were; how is the work organized and carried out, what type of help and assistance is available and what kind of discretion and powers do the Social workers have. In our essay we used qualitative methods mostly based on interviews, vignette questionnaires and documents, but also written research. In our analysis we used modern organisation theory and street level bureaucracy to seek explanations.The two welfare offices have similarities and differences.

The main purpose of this study is to find out what kind of help social service in one selected municipality in Sweden can provide for children who have witnessed or been victims of domestic violence. Using focus group interview this study investigate how the Social workers meet the needs of these children. The bases for our analysis are the Organization Theory and the Attachment Theory, as well as previous research. Important results are that the social services are dependent on notifications in order to do their work and that the most common interventions are foster care, emergency foster care and/or family therapy. The difficulties that Social workers perceive their work are unjustified families and heavy workloads.

The main purpose of this study was that, in the light of theories of how street level bureaucrats may affect the implementation of political decisions, examine and analyze the Social workers interpretations of the child perspective's impact on the handling of social assistance, and what opportunities and/or limitations they feel that the organizational preconditions means for the application. The survey had a qualitative research approach and consisted of eight thematic interviews with a total of ten respondents operating in five different municipalities. Eight of the respondents were Social workers dealing directly with social assitance and two had managerial positions. The results of the interviews were then analyzed with the help of an actor-structure approach to implementation and Michael Lipskys theory of street-level bureaucrats and their role as policy makers. The results of the survey showed that the respondents had relatively similar views on the child perspectives implications for work with social assistance.

The purpose of this essay was to study which arguments Social workers used in the basis of their estimation concerning young people of the age 13-18 given an aid, a contact person (swe. kontaktperson). The purpose was also to describe how the legal paragraph, regarding contact person, is regulated and then compare the arguments made by the social worker with the intentions expressed by the legislator. To answer our purposes we studied the law and the intentions expressed by the legislator, which is the foundation for the legal paragraph that regulates contact person, 3 chap. 6 §.

With this research we aimed to seek how youth workers express their experience of counselling on the internet compared to traditional counselling face to face with a theoretical ground in semiotics and symbolic interactionism. Our questions were 1) How do youth workers describe their experiences from anonymous, faceless online counselling? 2) How do youth workers experience the differences between online counselling and the traditional face-to-face counselling? 3) Which possibilities and difficulties do they see in online communication with adolescents? We used semi-structed interviews with seven youth workers. Six of those are active in non-profit organisations, and one in social services. The results from our interviews showed that the interviewees saw that misunderstandings were more frequent on the internet, but that online counselling with adolescents still was easier than in the face-to-face meetings.