The aim of this bachelor thesis was to examine attitudes among social workers, particularly their attitudes toward their clients? poverty and towards economic counseling as a method. A further aim was to study the relationship between attitudes towards poverty and economic counseling. Primary data used for the study was assembled among social workers (n = 111) with the use of an electronic questionnaire that was sent out to social welfare offices in 34 city districts in Stockholm,Gothenburg and Malmö. The findings showed that a majority of the social workers had a structural understanding of poverty and a positive attitude towards economic counseling.

The purpose of this essay is to examine the concept of competence within the social services. More specifically it aims to find out how the social workers themselves look upon their own competence in social investigations concerning children. As the study was based on focus groups the main questions were vague at the beginning and were cleared later on during the group sessions.In three focus group interviews in three different municipalities in southern Sweden 11 social workers were asked to discuss this issue. The interviews were then thoroughly transcribed. In the data I identified 9 themes seeming to play a special roll in the discussions about competence: practice; experience; approach; intuition; responsibility; theories, methods and laws; reflection; resources and ethics; specialisation versus integration.The analysis made on these themes was based on two different kinds of perspective; one focusing knowing-in-action and the other focusing the organization framing the competence considered.As a conclusion the 7 first themes can be seen as a definition of the competence used in social investigations concerning children.

Our aim of this study is to analyze how the concept of reasonable standard of living is by assistance officers in geriatric care, as well as the impact of their discretion on the assessment. We conducted a qualitative study with the help of interviews. During the collection of the empirical material, we have experienced greater confusion among assistance officers opinion about the concept of reasonable standard of living. We lacked a clear answer to the concept content. The interview subjects' responses did not differ so much, they said, among other things, that the concept is difficult to interpret, fuzzy, or that they do not have a good understanding of it.

Social workers ideas about what domestic violence is influence their ability to recognize vio-lence in cases where this occurs. Social workers awareness and understanding of domestic violence can also influence the handling of these cases. Education on the subject domestic violence can increase social workers knowledge about, awareness and handling of violence. The present study aims to investigate how social workers in child protection investigations understand, recognize and interpret domestic violence and which interventions the social workers suggest. This is a qualitative vignette study in which semi-structured interviews was carried out with social workers working with child protection investigations.

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 overarching aim of this paper is to study the professional encounter in its complexity. The requirements for receiving welfare is set by the professional and it's the professionals decision if they are met in the proper manner. This makes the assessment of the clients conditions and the correctness of the assessment hence important. There are several levels which is necessary for the social worker to take into consideration.We have therefore made a socio-analysis by using a theoretical model of Johansson (2006) where he uses the Social Psychology of the encounter to create a model with four levels, which is always present in the professional encounter: structural, positional, relational, and experience level.  Our base was that the one responsible for handling these levels was the professional which led us to search for literature concerning the professional approach.Our study is formed as a qualitative case-study. Our empirical data consist of qualitative interviews with four social workers handling social allowance.The results shows that the complexity of the professional encounter requires a professional approach.

Artikeln bygger på resultatet av narrativa intervjuer med livsberättelser från tre unga män med erfarenhet av att komma som ensamkommande barn till Sverige. Studien har en postkolonial ansats och ett socialkonstruktivistiskt perspektiv, vilket i denna studie inneburit ett ifrågasättande av den dominerande familjedefinitionen. Fokus för intervjuerna har varit att se hur definitionen av familj och upplevelsen av vilka som tillhör denna formas utifrån livsberättelserna samt hur erfarenheter kring familjeåterförening kan se ut. Resultatet visar på mångfalden av innebörder av familj samt att denna inte alltid återspeglas i svensk lag. Analysen belyser berättelserna i förhållande till sociologiska definitioner av familjebegreppet.

This study is about state officials who handle applications for sickness benefits and about municipal officials who handle applications for financial assistance. The purpose of this study is to explore the differences between the two professional roles regarding their conception about their exercise of authority, in terms of flexibility, individual adjustment, empathy and legal security.The study has a qualitative approach and is based on structured interviews with two state officials and two municipal officials. The questions that this study aims to answer are:- Is there a difference between state officials and municipal officials regarding their experience and use of flexibility? - Is there a difference between state officials and municipal officials regarding their perceptions of legal security, individual adjustment and empathy in their exercise of authority? - What kind of bureaucracy can you find in the two organizations?The results show that the state officials in this study have very limited flexibility due to legislation which makes their exercise of authority neither empathic nor individual. The municipal officials in this study state in their turn that the law entails broad flexibility and the opportunity for them to be empathic and to make individual decisions.

Uppsatsens syfte är att undersöka hur diskurserna om kön och ras/etnicitet ser ut idag i domar från länsrätten i Göteborg. Utgångspunkten är att kön och ras/etnicitet konstrueras språkligt och att vi som Socialarbetare behöver vara medvetna om hur vi är med och konstruerar kategorierna och vilken makt som ligger i vårt tal. Frågeställningarna är: Vilka diskurser om kön förekommer i länsrättens tal? Vilka diskurser om ras/etnicitet förekommer i länsrättens tal? Förekommer dominerande, underordnade eller konkurrerande diskurser om kön och ras/etnicitet i talet?På vilket sätt samverkar ras och kön med varandra? Hur kan man förstå diskursernas förekomst?Uppsatsen är en textanalys av länsrättsdomar som gäller §3 Lagen med särskilda bestämmelser om vård av unga (LVU). Jag har använt diskursanalys som metod och utgått från ett socialkonstruktivistiskt och diskursteoretiskt perspektiv.

The purpose of this study was to examine and increase the knowledge about the way young, newly graduated social workers view their professional role considering their age and professional experience, how they experience the relation to their clients and colleagues and how these experiences all together affect the way the young social workers handle their professional role. Seven social workers in the ages between 23 and 25, who graduated from Socialhögskolan, Stockholm University, in January 2007, where interviewed. They also answered a questionnaire covering the similar questions as the interview. Little research had previously been made in this particular area, why the triangulation of methods was helpful in analyzing the results, with ata coming from two different resources. To analyze the data a multidimensional theory was used, containing coping theory, an experiential perspective, Antonovskys theory a sense of coherence, cognitive theory and role theory.

Syftet med studien var dels att övergripande beskriva bidragspopulationen i två utvalda kommuner, dels att undersöka huruvida socialtjänsten tar särskild hänsyn till barn i samband med handläggning av socialbidrag. Vidare syftade studien till att uppmärksamma hur ett sådant hänsynstagande kunde komma till uttryck samt belysa om särskilda organisatoriska villkor hade någon påverkan på detta. För att uppfylla syftet användes kvantitativ metod och sekundärdata från Institutet för utveckling av metoder (IMS) vid Socialstyrelsen. Databearbetningen gjordes i statistikprogrammet SPSS och resultaten analyserades sedan utifrån organisationsteori, med inriktning på gräsrotsbyråkrati. Resultaten visar att det i viss mån tas särskild hänsyn till barnen i socialbidragsärenden.

Syftet med föreliggande studie har varit att undersöka hur yrkesverksamma inom socialt arbete ser på fenomenet e-mobbning bland dagens ungdomar. Undersökningen har byggt på fyra kvalitativa intervjuer gjorda på en skolkurator, en högstadielärare, en polis som arbetar med ungdomsproblematik samt två kuratorer  på BUP. Analysen har sedan sin grund i respondenternas svar samt tidigare forskning om ämnet e-mobbning. Rapporter från etablerade svenska organisationer som exempelvis Friends och BRIS har också studerats. Resultatet visade att e-mobbning är ett växande problem bland barn och unga både i skolan och på deras fritid.

The North-American sociologist Michael Lipsky has characterized social workers as street-level bureaucrats with a substantial discretion in the relationship between the welfare state and its citizens. Within Lipsky´s theoretical framework social workers appear as a powerful group that socializes the citizens to uphold certain expectations towards the welfare state and its (re)distributional programs. From this point of view, it is important to learn more about social workers and the attitudes they express towards the welfare state. The aim of this study is to analyze how the welfare-political attitudes of future social workers are affected by their social background (e.g. class background and ancestral homeland).

Syftet med denna studie är att belysa hur Socialarbetare inom försörjningsstöd arbetar. Fokus har lagts på de metoder som socialarbetarna brukar använda, om dessa metoder innebär en delaktighet för klienten. Hypotesen för uppsatsen är att delaktighet skulle vara önskvärd för att få klienten att stanna i annan varaktig försörjning. Jag ville också undersöka om ett tydligt uppdrag från organisationens ledning kan innebär att klienten och socialsekreteraren lättare uppnår delaktighet och med det finna en individanpassad lösning.Underlaget som har kommit fram i denna studie visar på att det behövs gemensamma krafter i samhället om detta fenomen skall minska. Delaktighet behövs inte bara från klienter utan från politiker som stiftar lagar och har visioner, kommunala och privata arbetsgivare som erbjuder arbetstillfällen och samarbetar med handläggare på Arbetsförmedlingen och Försäkringskassan som samverkar med socialsekreterare och klient.

Vårt syfte med denna uppsats har vart att undersöka om den sekundära bostadsmarknaden påverkar socialarbetarna i arbetet med hemlösa klienter som har eller haft missbruksproblematik. Då vi ansåg att det är socialarbetarnas upplevda verklighet som är av störst intresse valde vi att utföra kvalitativa intervjuer med fyra Socialarbetare. Intervjuguiden formades med hjälp av Michael Lipskys bok Street-level Bureaucracy (2010) i vilken han beskriver sin teori om gräsrotsbyråkrats yrket, denna bok har även genomsyrat hela arbetet och sedan använts som ett verktyg i analysen av vår empiri. Bakgrunds avsnittet avser att ge en vid förståelse av hur komplex hemlöshetsproblematiken är, för att sedan i tidigare forskning smalna av till den forskning som behandlar vår syfte mer specifikt. Vi kommer i vår avslutande diskussion argumentera för att den sekundära bostadsmarknaden påverkar socialarbetarna på olika sätt då de måste acceptera hyresvärdarnas krav.