The concept of security is a contested one. The United Nations definition in UNDPs Development report of 1994 is the most authoritive and commonly cited. The civil war in Sudan has led to 2 million deaths and over 5.5 million refugees. In a resolution from 2005, the UN decided that the war in Sudan was a threat to international security and peace. The 10th of January UN decided that a peace commission ought to be send with 10 000 military and civil men including 700 policemen.The main purpose of this thesis is to improve our knowledge of those factors which can cause an increased risk of conflict within a state, and how that can affect the social conditions for individuals.

The purpose with this study was to get a deeper understanding of how the social welfare secretaries experience the meeting with clients.Our main questions were how the social welfare secretaries thinks about their own way to behave in the meeting with clients, which difficulties/obstacles there can be a and which factors they think affect the meeting. What is it that makes the social welfare secretaries experience a meeting as good or less good.Theory used: ?naive theory? and ?theory of communication?. The social welfare secretaries emphasised the importance of respect and clarity in their relations with the clients. By contrast with literature, the hover between power and support was not found difficult.The goal is that the social welfare secretaries and the clients understand each other and that they reach the purpose with the meeting..

The study aims to gain insight into how social workers perceive their psychosocial work environment and examine whether this effects the performance of their duties. The study mainly addresses the shortcomings of the psychosocial work environment of Social Services and the implications it entails for social workers health and wellbeing. The psychosocial work environment includes physical and psychological factors therefore the study's interpretive framework consists of organizational theoretical and social psychological concepts and previous research on the subject. We examined the organizational and social psychological connections to social workers perception of their work environment with a qualitative approach. The empirical data was collected through interviews with four social workers in a municipality in central Sweden using a semi-structured interview guide.

Regional European Offices with the purpose to represent regions and municipalities in the EU-system have had a substantial expansion over the last years. One example is the North Sweden European Office for the counties of Norrbotten and Västerbotten, consisting of seven different headmen who are representing both the private sector as well as the public system. This diverse leadership representation makes North Sweden a very good example on a so called Quango, organisations that stand under simultaneous influence from both public and private sectors. These Quangos opens up new possibilities to solve public problems, but they also bring together two different working models which is not always easy to handle for a Quango. According to earlier surveys some characteristic Quango problems within North Sweden exist, for example the ability to prioritize and thereby be as effective as possible.

Alzheimer?s disease has increasing effects on the Swedish population. Now, about 90 000 swedes have been diagnosed with the disease. Many of these persons are cared for by someone close to them. The aim of this study is to increase understanding for the situation and experiences of the persons caring for their affected partner and to examine which support they are given by the public sector.

The purpose of my study was to examine adoptive parents' experiences of adopting children older than three years of age. I wanted to look into what kind of information, help and support every adoptive parent had received. I also wanted to examine if the adoptive parents worried about anything concerning the children's emotional needs and in what way the adoptive parents prepared themselves for this, before the adoption. I asked the adoptive parents about their knowledge regarding the children's experiences from the time before the adoption and how things had been going since the children came to Sweden. To achieve my purpose I interviewed six adoptive parents from five families, with a total of eleven internationally adopted older children.The research findings of my study showed that a risk exists for older adopted children to suffer emotionally because of earlier experiences.

This thesis aimed to describe how the ideological dividing line concerning the welfare state has changed between the two largest governmental parties in Sweden, the Social Democrats and the Moderaterna, during 1990 to 2010. The scientist Mark Blyth points out that ideas are important instruments for structural and institutional change by identifying ideas as weapons, blueprints and cognitive locks, which were being used in the theoretical framework. The empirical data was made by a qualitative analysis of the parliamentary speeches and debates from both parties held every year. The results shows that the budgetary law passed in 1997 became a new institutional blueprint, which changed the political conditions for the Social Democrats. Furthermore, the results point to a change in the Moderaterna?s rhetoric concerning the welfare state to a more pragmatic view. .

Retiring from elite sport can be a difficult and disruptive process for an elite athlete. To improve the quality of the transition after retirement, elite athletes are recommended to have dual careers which mean they combine their sport with education to be prepared for a new career when they retire from elite sport. To help elite student-athletes with this combination, universities and sport organizations provide different kind of support. This study was conducted and aimed to investigate elite athletes? perceptions of support offered by a university in Sweden and the elite athletes? perceptions of combining top level sport and academic studies.

The purpose of this essay has been to answer the question of whether or not administrators of economic support perceive that their professional status is ranked lower than that of their coworkers in other fields of the social services. We set out to study whether or not their comparative status differed depending on their use of standardized assessment instruments and if their experience with regards to professional status differed depending on the size of the municipality they worked in. We also wanted to determine in what way (if any) the comparative status manifests itself and what factors influences it.We?ve utilized method triangulation in order to answer the questions posed in our purpose. The quantitative study was conducted using a questionnaire and the qualitative with three interviews.

Entrepreneurship is considered essential for the Swedish economy, as well as globally. Accordingly,massive efforts are put into creating environments that successfully can support new ventures. The business incubator is a prominent part of these efforts and is important especially for the knowledge shared within its internal network. The aim of this study is to further explore how different activitieswithin the incubator can influence the interaction, and thereby the construction of social capital,among the incubatees. Using a qualitative case study of three incubators, and the framework of theincubator model, it is concluded that three distinguishing components within the framework influence the interaction, namely infrastructure, mediation and business support.

The purpose with this essay is to study the public support givers view of the concept innovation and to study how the public support givers discuss and act around the division of public support to entrepreneurs innovations. The purpose is further to describe if the division of public support favour or not favour environmental innovations and to examine if the public support givers consider the industry for environmental innovations is profitable for the society?s economy.We have done several case studies where we have interviewed eight public support. Support givers in this essay are defined as public authorities and other organisations on local, national and/or international level that gives public support to innovations. The public support givers that take part of the essay is VINNOVA, ALMI Stockholm, Innovationsbron, Energimyndigheten, SU Holding AB, KTH Holding, Västra Götalandsregionen and MISTRA.Our theoretical starting point is Silverman and Baums theory ?Picking Winners or Building Them?.

The purpose of this study is to examine how EU-migrants visiting the social project Crossroads experience their life situation in the Swedish society. Two questions were formulated: (1) How do the respondents describe their situation when it comes to work, housing and social network? (2) How do the interviewees describe and experience the social project Crossroads? The method used was qualitative interviews conducted with five EU-migrants who visited Crossroads. The theoretical framework is the concept of integration and Bauböcks (1996) theoretical model of the ideal society. The results show that none of the interviewees had their own accommodation.

Our purpose was to investigate if Swedish University educated social workers, living as active Christians, in any way might be influenced by Christian values. The main questions; Can Christian values be a factor in the choice of career to become a social worker? How does a personal belief in Christ impact the relationship towards the clients? Is Christian belief a support in the work? In this paper we used a qualitative method and interviewed eight persons, with a background as above, four of them employed by a church organisation and the other four working in the social sector. The result we present is that the eight Christian social workers Christian belief influenced their work very individually. How much this supported them was a choice about how official and open they wanted Christian values to be.

Aims: The aim of this study is to describe how youth?s political exclusion is constructed as asocial problem. This is done through a study of a project which aim is to engage young peoplein politics.Method and theory: By interviewing the project?s manager and developer as well as eightparticipating young people different constructions of the problem of youth political exclusionhas been analyzed using the social constructionist perspective on social problems.Findings: The dominant perspective found in the empirical material includes framing youngpeople?s lack of political knowledge and self-confidence as the reason for their politicalexclusion. Even though the Youth Board (ungdomsstyrelsen) in Sweden officially views allyoung people as a resource, when youth politics are implemented through projects, this is notthe view that young people meet.

This study intends to illuminate women?s experiences of their own self-harm. Self-harm is mostly associated with women and research shows that women mostly are over-represented. This study describes women?s experiences about their self-harm but also how they perceive the elements around them during their illness.