In 2012, about 1.3 million boars were surgically castrated, most of them without anaesthesia. Castration is performed to avoid the occurrence of boar taint and aggressive and sexual behaviour. There is a growing concern about the welfare of the piglets and the Swedish Board of Agriculture is working to find efficient and functional alternatives to castration without anaesthesia. The aim of this study was to obtain an overall picture of the latest research about the alternatives to castration without anaesthesia, with focus on vaccination against boar taint, and how they affect the welfare of the pigs. The alternative methods that are available today are surgical castration with anaesthesia and/or analgesia, rearing entire males and vaccination against boar taint.

Instrumental conditioning, the use of reinforcement and punishment, is used when training horses and these procedures may have different consequences regarding animal welfare. The aim of this study was to investigate what kind of reinforcers that are used in training horses and when these reinforcers are used. This study has its focus on positive reinforcement and its advantages and disadvantages. Interviews of five A-level and B -level equestrian coaches about their training methods were conducted to complement the literature search and give a greater understanding to why certain methods are used or not in training horses. The results show that negative reinforcement seems to be the foundation of training horses whereas positive reinforcement is used but not to the same extent.

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.

The purpose with this examination essay was to find out if participation of children in social welfare investigations had increased since the social services had started to work with BBIC. I compared the participation of the child before BBIC, then when social service had started to work with BBIC and I tried to see if there were increased participation in the investigations. My theoretic starting-point was the symbolic interactionism and I used the qualitative method of investigation. In my investigation I found that there is not yet any increase in participation of the child in the investigations when social service work with BBIC. What I found was that the reason to start an investigation often was that the parents made the problem for the child and that conditions at home for the child influenced the possibility of the child to communi- cate with an adult that the child did not know.

In recent times statistical findings suggesting a deteriorating mental health among teenagers, have been published. Not only did I find the lack of an all-inclusive analysis problematic, but also the fact that the studies themselves where often insufficient. Thus my purpose has been to chart these statistical studies, and then scrutinize the results.My method has been inspired by critical theory, where an interpretive starting point, self-reflection, and the idea that man and society interacts as a whole, is of great importance. Aside from the above mentioned studies, I have also employed secondary empirical data from TV, newspapers and the Internet. My own experience as a social worker has also been an important resource for this paper.

The general purpose of this work is to study how social welfare offices organization affect accessibility for those seeking immediate financial assistance in the municipality of Stockholm. Accessibility in this study is principally defined by Swedish Law. The study is based on an empowerment perspective. Data was collected by qualitative interviews of officials in eight social welfare offices. Search path to reach the officials was registered by participant observations.

The Swedish ostrich production started about thirteen years ago and still there are no Swedish recommendations regarding ostriches? space requirements. The European Council give recommendations and the Swedish Board of Agriculture (SJV) has a proposal, but so far the producers follow Danish regulations regarding space requirements. The Swedish Animal Welfare Agency are about to set standards for the ostriches? space requirements, and therefore the Swedish ostrich producers, together with The Federation of Swedish Farmers (LRF) ask for a scientific background to these decisions. This thesis is a preliminary study at the prospect of a future experiment on which factors important for ostriches? space requirements and welfare will be examined more thouroughly.

The social dimension in the EU, explored through the document texts of the Treaty of Rome, the Lisbon Strategy, the Social Policy Agenda and the Swedish Strategy ReportThis paper explores the social dimension of EU social policy, except the aspects of the economic and labour market. The EU documents reveal an underlying line of thought stemming from the alignment of the six founding countries, spearheaded by France, with the conservative corporatist welfare model. As one of four European welfare models, the conservative corporatist model emphasises labour market issues, corporate social responsibility and the subsidiarity principle in EU social policy. It also influences how the texts define the terms social, social policy and social exclusion. The definitions determine how policymakers combat problems such as social exclusion and identify the policy issues to be included in EU social policy.The Swedish Strategy shows how the country is responding to the objectives that it has been assigned by the EU and how it plans to attain them.

The main aim of the study was to examine the importance of organizational climate for affective job-related wellbeing. A further aim was to investigate potential differences in employee level in the experience of organizational climate and wellbeing. Another purpose was to see if there was agreement in the view of the organizational climate among the employees. Questionnaires were collected from 44 employees at a chain store. Results showed that Integration, Involvement, Supervisory Support, Training, Welfare, Innovation and Flexibility, Goal Clarity, Efficiency, Effort, Performance Feedback, Pressure to Produce and Quality had a great influence on Enthusiasm but only Pressure to Produce and Welfare correlated with Anxiety.

Sweden?s animal legislation was adopted in 1988 and is one of the most rigorous legislations in the world. Despite this, Sweden import beef from countries where animal legislation is not in accordance to the Swedish legislation. The meat consumption in Sweden has, just like the importation of beef, increased while Sweden?s own beef production has decreased.

The purpose of this thesis is to expose the political myth in the West about the ageing population seen as a threat against the welfare society. To do so I have described what a political myth is, and showed how it is presented in the most influential newspapers and organisations in the West. I have also presented alternative perspectives to the dominating view on the ageing population and it's impacts on welfare. In this way I have tried to point out that the subject has a political dimension. In the thesis last section I compare the message presented in the newspapers and the organisations with the characteristics of a political myth.

The purpose of this essay is to describe the organization of the Swedish Animal WelfareAgency during the time it was in operation. The Swedish Animal Welfare Agency was established in 2005 by the government who saw it as necessary in order to strengthen the protection of cruelty to animals in Sweden. However, the agency was shut down already in2007 and its responsibilities as an agency was moved back to the government and the department of agriculture. During its time in operation, the Swedish Animal Welfare Agency, received much criticism, among other things because of its interpretations of the law which were seen as too focused on details and thus ?bureaucratic?.

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.

This is a historical documentary research study across Neva Leona Boyd (1876-1963). The theoretical perspective is based on the historical perspective of knowledge from ancient Greece to the approach of modern symbolic interactionism. The study shows that Boyd, who was Viola Spolins teacher, was a proponent of the modern view of group play theory. 1909 she founded Chicago School for Playground Workers, later transformed to the Recreation Training School. Until 1927, the school entered in Hull-House initiated by Jane Addams.

The aim of this study was to examine what knowledge social workers express about home visits in child welfare investigations and how they know what to do. Sixteen social workers who work with social investigations concerning children were asked to discuss the topic home visit in three focus group interviews in three different municipalities in southern Sweden. The social workers in our focus group interviews mainly discussed the purpose of the home visit, what social workers do during home visits and furthermore their opinions about guidelines and policy documents regarding the home visit.  To get an understanding of what type of knowledge is the basis for social workers use of the home visit, we used Polanyi's concept of 'tacit knowing' as well as the Aristotelian theory of knowledge containing three forms of knowledge, that is, episteme, techne and fronesis. We found that the displaying of ?tacit knowing? was a consistent feature in all groups, as they had difficulty expressing their knowledge use.