The Motor Group of the European Council was commissioned in the autumn of 1997 to prepare a proposal for a new European Bus and Coach Directive. In the beginning, most of the Member States did not have the accessibility requirements as their main concern; still a smaller network with actors from the National delegations from Britain, Germany and Sweden would influence the other National delegations in the Council group to finally agree to retain the requirement of accessibility of the Directive. Within the EU decision process, the European Disability movement acted as a strong player during the whole negotiation process using the proposal to a new Bus and Coach Directive as a tool to influence key actors to go towards a Directive with a strong approach for accessibility.Policy Transfer and Policy Transfer Network are used as analytical tools to understand and structure the transfer of the question of accessibility during the negotiation process. Actors understanding how the bureaucratic process works within the EU decision system have a chance to contributing for the changes in the directions they wishes for within a range of policy areas. The principal aim of the Directive was to guarantee the safety of passengers and to provide technical prescription in particular to wheelchair users.

The purpose of this study was investigating the means which rule the social worker?s choice of institution placing youths and how they match the youth?s individual need compared with the type of home. The questions were: Which significance has the characteristics of the youth and their family for the placing? Which significance has the characteristics of the institution? Which significance has the social workers? way of working, investigation, theories, economy etc.? A qualitative way of interviewing has been used. Eight interviews were done; six with social welfare secretaries who place youths and two social workers who work with coun­selling and placement.

The aim for this paper is to investigate how a limited number of youth recreation leaders and leisure-time pedagogues view their vocational competence, which kind of power the persons in the essay experience to have in their workplace and which kind of status they experience that they have in comparison with other occupational groups in their schools. The final aim of the paper is to find out how teachers interact with youth recreation leaders and leisure-time pedagogues when it comes to their vocational competence. My questions are:How do a group of youth recreation leaders and leisure-time pedagogues view their professional assignments?How does a group of youth recreation leaders and leisure-time pedagogues view their power in their workplace in comparison with other occupational groups?How do a limited number of youth recreation leaders and leisure-time pedagogues view their status in relation to teachers, other occupational-groups and parents? Which role have my respondents been assigned by their team and why do they think they have gotten that role?To answer these questions I have used a qualitative method which includes four in depth interviews. The overall theoretical perspectives are symbolic interactionism and social constructivism.

The aim with this independent degree project of master thesis is to find what the user opinions of the intranet in a county council is. The paper seeks how the question about how the culture in the organisation was affected by the use of the intranet. An important part is to explore the expectations and acceptance of the intranet and get a picture of which functions and services support day-to-day work with good quality. One goal is to find out how the intranet users feel that the communication, information and usability can be developed.The focus group interview is a qualitative method that has been applied for gathering data from the respondents, who participate in the investigation from the county council. The used method is unstructured focus groups containing the three dominating categories of staff in the county council.

The Arctic region is rich in natural resources such as oil, gas, minerals and fish. Climate change causes the Arctic ice melt, making resource extraction possible as well as opening up new transport routes through the Northwest Passage and the Northeast Passage. This has led to competition and cross-border strife among the Arctic States. The two largest states in the Arctic are Russia and Canada, which are also members of the Arctic Council. Russia and Canada are at the moment involved in several disputes regarding the Arctic territory where the ownership of the North Pole is one example.

The aim of this study was to investigate how counselors who work at youth clinics relate to the question of the integrity of adolescents who are under 18 years old in relation to the parents rights to information. The study was based on semi-structured interviews with eight counselors from youth clinics in the StockholmCounty. We have analyzed our empirical material by categorizing the statements from the counselors and by using two different theories. The first one is a consequential ethics theory and the second one is a cognitive theory. These two theories have helped us to understand the thoughts and actions of the counselors.

The purpose of this study is to search and analyze different logics that operators use in the work of helping juvenile delinquents to break their criminal behavior. New institutional theory is used in this study to analyze the results. The study was conducted through qualitative interviews of six professionals in two municipalities which work with juvenile delinquency. There are two questions that we want to address in this study. The first one is what methods the social workers are using in two middle large municipalities to help youth to brake there criminal behavior.

Authorities, municipalities and county councils have great opportunities to pave the way to a sustainable society. In the public sector, the tax revenue is used and therefore it is important that both employees and societal stakeholders feel that they participate in the sector?s decisions and fields of application. Municipalities and county councils are primarily service organisations. The employees? commitment is necessary to be able to reach set goals, to develop procedures and policies that support the overall political goals, in other words, to be successful in the environmental work.

The present study discusses the political integration of immigrants in local government in the muncipality of Växjö from 1971 to 1991 in the form of representation. The main data source consists of lists of people holding local commissions of trust in the various boards and committés appointed by the municipality council, as well as in the council itself. These data are then compared to population statistics from Statistics Sweden. Main findings of the study are that immigrants are insufficiently represented in relation to their proportion of the population. It is suggested that this is a result of structural discrimination and possibly insufficient socialisation..

SummaryBackground: Management control is important for all kinds of activities, both in trade and industry and in the public sector since you must economize on scarce resources. There are nevertheless many different views on management control, which have changed with the times. With regard to the public sector in Sweden, the management control systems have changed radically the last half century, especially from the 1980s, due to depressions and increased focus on effectiveness. New approaches have been taken by many municipalities and county councils, both in Sweden and internationally, where the former management control systems have been abandoned in favour of result control, target costing, and activity-based-costing, for example. Another new approach has been the Balanced Scorecard, which was introduced by Kaplan & Norton in a pioneering article in 1992.The Balanced scorecard is a multidimensional tool, originally intended to be used in trade and industry, but with regard to its nature, it has been adopted even by many non-commercial organizations, especially in Sweden.

This thesis focuses on the perception of immigration and refugees in the commonEuropean refugee and immigration policy. It identifies different discourses andstudies their development and interrelated power structures.Using the discourse theory of Laclau and Mouffe, documents from theEuropean Council, the Commission, the Justice and Home Affairs Council andParliament debates are analysed. The study is defined in the time span of 1999-2006, i.e. from the European Council's first agreement on developing a commonEuropean asylum system, following the period up till today.Four discourses are distinguished, focusing respectively on rights, security,European Union's needs, and cultural identity. I use Sandra Lavenex theory ofrealism and idealism to analyse one of the main points in the thesis: There is afundamental schism between the one rights-based discourse, focusing on universalhuman rights, and the three sharing a particularistic focus on immigration as asecurity concern.

AbstractWorking with child and youth welfare is one of the most difficult challenges a social worker might face in the field of social work. Those who work with child and youth welfare are more exposed to stress and burnout than other comparable human service occupations. Research links the prevalence of stress and burnout to several key variables, such as demographics, working conditions and personality factors. In contrast, even though social workers in this field face many negative work-related problems they report a high job satisfaction. The aim of this study is to examine how uplifting and straining experiences affect social workers, who work with child and youth welfare, through the use of The Critical Incident Technique and interviews.

The aim of this study was to investigate and gain a deeper understanding of how the staff at the youth clinic approaches, and might influence, participation and responsibility as regards the girl and boy respectively in the process that follows when an unplanned pregnancy has been verified. Qualitative interviews were carried out with staff at five youth clinics in Skåne. All staff did routinely work with girls and boys that were involved in an unplanned pregnancy. The theoretical starting point of the study was a gender perspective involving feministic gender theory and masculinity theory. The main questions were: How does the staff at the youth clinic view the responsibility distribution between the girl and the boy involved in an unplanned pregnancy, and how does the staff explain this distribution? Are there any guidelines to how the boy and girl should be approached, and in this way ensuring that they both feel involved in the unplanned pregnancy and its consequences? How does the youth clinic staff view and discuss a gender perspective in relation to their work? The result of the study showed that at four of the clinics a difference was evident in the staffs´ views as regards participation and responsibility in the unplanned pregnancy of the boy and girl respectively.

On the basis of theoretical knowledge about the complex of problems which can occur in an implementation of a collaboration project, the purpose of this essay is, to examine how representatives on each authority relate to and manage collaboration as a work method, the awareness of problems within the organisations that collaborate, and the preparedness around how to manage problems with collaboration. "Unga vuxna" is a collaboration project between Kalmar county council and all 12 municipalities in the county council. More specifically it is a cooperation project between psychiatry and social services. Theories used in this essay are professor Berth Danermarks studies about collaboration, and social psychologist Jay Hall?s theory about capability.

This studie explores how a promotive youth movement that aims to activate adolescents in economically and socially exposed areas, can affect the youth?s participation in society and oppose their experience of stigmatization. The youth movement, whom is being studied, uses urban art expressions as a mean to engage and motivate the adolescents. The empirism has mostly been collected by a limited participatory observation, and through qualitative interviews with staff and adolescents in the movement. The result has been analyzed through Pierre Bourdieus field theory.