The aim of this study has been to highlight how school social workers experience their discretion, and furthermore how they feel about working in a context mainly dedicated to teachers. The study is executed with a qualitative research method where ten interviews with school social workers, in eight schools in the area of Stockholm have been conducted. The theoretical framework used to analyze the results was discretion, street-level bureaucracy and human service organizations.The main findings of this study imply that the most important ambition of the social work that was conducted in the schools was to help the students reach their knowledge goals. The assignment is, however, not clearly defined, which has lead to school social workers defining the mission and goals themselves. They all have wide discretion and great possibilities to decide how to execute their work, but how they use the freedom that was given seems to vary among them. An additional finding was that being a school social worker is often a solitary role in the organization, and therefore most of them highlight the importance of enjoying independent work and having a co-worker to discuss their work with.

The aim of the study was, through qualitative interviews with school counsellors in Swedish primary schools, to study what the counsellors are experiencing condition their ability to work proactively according to the Swedish Education Act provisions on student health. During the study, six interviews with school counsellors who worked in the same suburbs, was conducted. The theoretical approach that was used is Michael Lipsky's theory of street-level bureaucrats and the term discretion. The overall outcome of the study was that the interviewed school counsellors felt that they did not have good opportunities to work preventively as the Education Act requires. The main reason for this was the school counsellor’s heavy workload. The results of the study were divided into three categories, which in turn were followed by several themes to highlight the conditions governing school counsellor’s opportunity to work preventatively.

Syftet med studien var att undersöka hur lärare i grundskolan tänker kring, och beskriver hur de arbetar med, studie- och yrkesvägledning inom ramarna för det som i läroplanen (Lgr 11) beskrivs som ett ansvar för hela skolan. Studien genomfördes med kvalitativ metod i form av intervjuer med åtta lärare på sammanlagt fyra grundskolor inom Stockholms län. Resultatet visade att flera av lärarna likställde studie- och yrkesvägledning med studie- och yrkesvägledaren. De flesta av lärarna var inte medvetna om att de hade ett ansvar för skolans studie- och yrkesvägledning, utifrån rådande styrdokument. Det kunde sägas att lärarna ansåg att syftet med studie- och yrkesvägledning var att förbereda eleverna inför framtida studie- och yrkesval, även om det fanns skillnader i hur detta uttrycktes och vad det arbetet kunde innebära. Tidsbristen uppgavs vara ett hinder och de flesta hade svårt att knyta an studie- och yrkesvägledning till sitt eget ämne. Lärarna var främst präglade av sin egen erfarenhet av studie- och yrkesvägledning, snarare än att deras uppfattningar om området kunde härledas till styrdokumenten, information från rektor eller utbildning. Resultatet analyserades utifrån teorin om närbyråkrater i relation till begreppen förstå, kunna och vilja. Det konstaterades att det fanns en väldig variation lärarna emellan både vad gäller tankar kring innebörd och det praktiska arbetet. Studien visade sig kunna bekräfta en del av de resultat som Henryssons avhandling om syo-kulturer i skolan visat (Henrysson, 1994). Detta skulle kunna tyda på att mycket litet har utvecklats på 20 år vad gäller lärares förhållningssätt gentemot studie- och yrkesvägledning som ett ansvar för hela skolan. / The purpose of the study was to examine how teachers in elementary school think about, and describe how they work with, guidance and counselling within the confines of what the curriculum (Lgr 11) describes as a responsibility of the whole school. The study had a qualitative approach, where interviews with eight teachers in four schools within the county were conducted. The results showed that several of the teachers equated the guidance and counselling with the guidance counselor. Most of the teachers were not aware that they had a responsibility to the school's guidance and counselling, based on current policy documents. It could be said that the teachers felt that the purpose of guidance and counselling was to prepare students for future academic and career choices, although there were differences in how this was expressed and what the work could entail. Lack of time was reported to be an obstacle, and most found it hard to implement guidance and counselling to their subjects. The teachers were mainly influenced by their own experience of guidance and counselling, rather than their perceptions of the area could be attributed to the policy documents, information from the principal or education. The results were analyzed based on the theory of street-level bureaucracy in relation to the concepts of understanding, able and willing. It was found that there was a tremendous variation between teachers in terms of both ideas about the meaning and practical work. The results of the study in conjunction with a twenty year old PhD thesis may indicate that very little may have evolved in terms of teachers' attitude towards guidance and counselling as a whole school approach or responsibility.

Att arbeta med utsatta människor i en statlig verksamhet som tjänsteman kan för de flesta människor verka ofarligt – men hur är det egentligen? Tidigare forskning har visat att det finns ett stort mörkertal när det kommer till klientrelaterat hot och våld och att incidenterna inte tas tillräckligt seriöst. Syftet med denna uppsats är att få en större förståelse för vad de ökade hoten får för konsekvenser för personalen på Migrationsverket. Vi vill belysa och synliggöra spänningsfältet i klientrelationen som leder till att hot och våld mot handläggare ökar. Det teoretiska ramverk som används i uppsatsen är gräsrotsbyråkrati, makt och klientrelationer. Genom sex semistrukturerade intervjuer med handläggare på Migrationsverket har vi fått fram underlag som visar att hot och våldssituationer förekommer i större omfattning än vad det anmäls och rapporteras om. Resultatet visade att mörkertalet är stort vid incidentrapporteringen och att det råder en ”det kommer med jobbet”-mentalitet bland personalen. Maktfördelningen har en stor roll i klientrelationen och är en bidragande orsak till att incidenter uppstår. Vidare visar det sig att negativa beslut är de som tenderar att utlösa hot eller våld från klienten och att det väldigt sällan rapporteras kring eller anmäls om inte klienten tar till fysiskt våld. Slutligen visar uppsatsen att förebyggande arbete måste ske i en större omfattning. / Working with vulnerable people in a government controlled authority may for most people seem harmless - but is it really? Previous research has shown that there is large hidden statistics when it comes to client-related threats and violence and that the incidents are not taken seriously enough. The purpose of this paper is to gain a greater understanding of what the increased threats and violence towards officials in a government controlled authority can lead to. We want to shed visibility over the attributes in the client relationship that leads to threats and violence against the government officials. The theoretical framework used in the paper is street-level bureaucracy, power, and client relationships. We have performed six semi-structured interviews with officials from the Swedish Migration board, which have shown that threats and violence towards government officials occur to a greater extent than it is shown and reported on. The results showed that the hidden statistics is large in incident reporting and that there is a "it comes with the territory" mentality among officials. The distribution of power has a major role in client relationships and is a contributing factor to incidents occurring. Furthermore, it turns out that negative decisions are the ones that tend to trigger threats or violence from the client and that it is rarely reported unless the client resorts to physical violence. Finally, the paper shows that prevention work must be done on a larger scale.

Studiens syfte är att undersöka hur personal på ideella respektive kommunala skyddade boenden för våldsutsatta kvinnor upplever verksamhetens möjligheter och begränsningar samt hur de upplever samverkan. Studien har en kvalitativ metod där det har genomförts åtta semistrukturerade intervjuer med fyra personal från två ideella boenden och fyra personal från två kommunala boenden. En kartläggning från Socialstyrelsen (2013) visar att det år 2013 var 71 % av Sveriges skyddade boenden som bedrevs i ideell regi och 21 % som bedrevs i kommunal regi. Det framgick även att dessa boenden hade olika förutsättningar för att hjälpa kvinnorna vilket även framkom i tidigare forskning. I studiens resultat framkom det att personal från de ideella skyddade boendena i högre utsträckning upplevde att de hade en frihet att utforma sitt arbete och att ge kvinnorna ett socialt sammanhang men att de kunde vara begränsade av kortsiktiga avtal med kommunen. Personal från de kommunala boendena upplevde i högre utsträckning en trygghet i arbetet, dock kunde de uppleva begränsningar i att beslutsprocesser var ineffektiva samt att de inte kunde utforma det egna arbetet i samma utsträckning. Personal från de kommunala boendena upplevde sig ha bättre förutsättningar för samverkan än personal från de ideella boendena, samtliga intervjupersoner upplevde dock vissa begränsningar i samverkan. / The purpose of this study is to examine how the staff of non-profit and municipal sheltered housings experience the opportunities and limitations of the organisations as well as how they experience cooperation. The study has a qualitative method in which eight semistructured interviews were conducted with four employees from two non-profit sheltered housing and four employees from two municipal sheltered housing. A survey from the National board of health and welfare (2013) shows that in the year of 2013 71 % of Sweden's sheltered housing were non-profit and 21 % were municipal sheltered housing. These sheltered housings had different conditions in helping battered women, as shown by previous research. The results of this study show that the staff from the non-profit sheltered housing to a greater extent experienced that they were free in designing their work and giving the women a social context but could be limited in short-term agreements with the municipality. Staff from the municipal sheltered housing felt safer with the organisational form however they could experience limitations regarding that the decision-making process were ineffective and that they could not design their own work to the same extent. Staff from the municipal sheltered housing to a greater extent experienced that they had good conditions for cooperation, however all of the interviewees experienced some limitations regarding cooperation.

The purpose of this study was to better understand howLSS-officials within several swedish municipalities understand and handles their discretion in regard to children and guardians who has a certain form of physical or mental disability. If or how those LSS-officials shape the services they are responsible for to help the families as a whole with their parental abilities. We will try to illustrate how the LSS-officials reflects upon the guardians ability to care for their children and how they assess the services they are able to provide in relation to those children and guardians needs. We have used qualitative method and semi-structured interviews in the study. To help analyze our material we have used Michael Lipsky’s theory about street-level bureaucracy as well as Roine Johansson’s criticism and attempt to refine the theory. Our results showed us that the LSS-officials we interviewed have varying discretion in their work with children and guardians with disabilities due to the swedish law that supports services for disability. Moreover we found that the LSS-officialshad trouble understanding how some available services could function in regards to different forms of disability. We also found that they sought different services such as parental guidance for the parents in their homes to improve the work with the children and guardians.

A few weeks before the Swedish election in September 2018, a young girl named Greta Thunberg decidedto leave school every Friday and instead sit outside the Swedish parliament in Stockholm to raise awarenessabout the climate. This “school strike for climate” has since then developed to be a world-wide phenomenonand on the 15th of March more than 1.4 million youngsters participated in more than 100 countries.However, these actions have been subject of lots of debate in media; Greta being both cherished andcriticized. Framed within the questions about what motivates the political participation and in what way theschool takes a stand, this thesis aims to analyze “school strike for climate” in relation to the role of bothknowledge and fostering in the Swedish school. Through theories of street-level bureaucracy and politicalparticipation, accompanied by Carol Bacchis discourse perspective what´s the problem represented to be the studyexamines 32 Swedish newspaper articles. The result is a variety of problem representations, getting legitimized through law or moral, but also through a representation which hold both school and the pupils responsible for result in school. One of thedevelopments in the discourse is that during time and enlarging of the political activism, the youngster’sactions more and more is characterized as political participation than of an individual choice. This alsomeans that schools have to take a stand up on an organizational level, where many principals refer to schoolattendance and the law. When political activism is legislated through the curriculum it seems to be adidactical choice by the teachers, whom within their free space as professional street-level bureaucrats mayhave varying opportunities to use the theme within their teaching. Over all, the discourse focus more uponthe climate than democratic ideals, which suggests an unused potential of “school strike for climate” incivic´s education.

This study examines the applicability of Michael Lipsky’s (1980) concept of “street-level bureaucracy” to the profession of social work in 2019. Street-level bureaucrats are public service workers “who interact with citizens in the regular course of their jobs; have significant independence in decision making, and potentially have extensive impact on the lives of their citizens” (Lipsky, 1980:3). They are faced with uncertainties in their work related to inadequate resources, unclear policies, and caseloads/workloads that defy what may be possible to achieve by any one worker. Workers develop routines and “coping mechanisms,” to manage their environments. The routines that they develop then become effective public policy for their clients. The street-level bureaucracy theory has been widely applied, but generally with the assumption that street-level bureaucrats are homogenous across occupations and settings. Recent research suggests the need for more nuanced approaches, especially with regard to the effects of professionalism, individual characteristics of workers, and the variety of circumstances in which they interact with clients. Yet most research utilizes small numbers of cases, making it difficult to measure differences among types of workers. The present study addresses that gap with a large survey of social workers in Louisiana. Findings show that these street-level bureaucrats do exercise discretion, but circumstances in which they do so vary significantly, even within a single profession. Further, ways in which they exercise discretion differ from those described by Lipsky. Instead of using coping mechanisms to buffer themselves from an otherwise overwhelming environment, the respondents in this study report consultation with peers and management to find ways to serve client needs. These findings have implications for both the study of street-level bureaucracy and the practice of social work. Keywords: Discretion, decision-making, street-level bureaucracy, social work, coping mechanisms

The aim of this study was to examine how professionals within Swedish child and youth department of social services reason regarding the establishment of a police report when they suspect that children have been exposed to violence. The aim of this study was also to examine if the professionals' experience that an established police report tends to influence their ongoing social investigations in any way. A thematic analysis was conducted based on six qualitative semi structured interviews with professionals working within the child and youth department of social services from two different workplaces. The empirical data was analyzed in relation to previous research regarding the topic of the study and selected theories. The theories that formed the basis for the analysis were Lipsky’s Street-Level Bureaucracy and Normative ethics in terms of Consequence ethics, Duty-based ethics and Situational ethics which are derived from various philosophers. The results of the study show that the professionals when they consider whether a police report should be filed or not reason about several different factors, making their assessments complex and difficult to describe in generalized terms. Some factors described as influencing their assessments are the degree of clarity in the received information, the severity of the suspected violence and the child's age and ability to tell about what they have experienced. The professionals also reason about possible consequences a police report may result in, in both positive and negative sense, which also influence their assessments. When making these assessments the professionals possess a relatively high degree of discretion using mainly consequence ethics and situational ethics. Further the result show that the ongoing social investigations are significantly affected by an established police report. The impact consists of difficulties in establishing a good alliance with the family and having to deal with the parents’ trauma. The social investigation is also affected by the parallel ongoing police process, because of the existing confidentiality during the preliminary police investigation.

This study, written by Fredrica Eurén and Linnea Skoglund, is about how prison guards who work in a detention department in Stockholm experience the treatment of homeless people who are taken into care due to intoxication. The captive homeless often receive an extra favorable treatment from the prison guards that differs from the standardized work routines. The motivations for special treatment are based on the meeting that takes place between the homeless person in care and the prison guard. The deviations that are made, as well as extra benefits that are given to the homeless in care, include food and drink and also the opportunity to stay longer in custody so that the homeless person can spend a little more time inside. The results are analyzed using two theories: emotional work and street level bureaucracy. These theories partly explain how employees in certain professions cope with emotions, and partly how employees at street level within government organizations use their discretion in decision making. Similar studies have been carried out in prison, but not in arrest as examined in this study. The results suggest that the prison guards, to some extent, feel a kind of civil courage towards the homeless, which in turn means that they provide more favorable treatment to the homeless in custody. / Denna studie av Fredrica Eurén och Linnea Skoglund, handlar om hur kriminalvårdare som arbetar på arrestavdelning i Stockholm upplever hanteringen av hemlösa som omhändertas på grund av berusning. De omhändertagna hemlösa erhåller många gånger en extra förmånlig behandling av kriminalvårdarna, vilket skiljer sig från de standardiserade arbetsrutiner som finns inom myndigheten. Avstegen från rutinerna som görs, samt även motiveringarna till denna specialbehandling, baseras i grunden på det möte som sker mellan den omhändertagna hemlöse och kriminalvårdaren. De avsteg samt extra förmåner som ges till omhändertagna hemlösa, är bland annat mat och dryck samt möjligheten till att få stanna längre på arresten för att den intagne ska få spendera lite mer tid under tak. Resultatet analyseras med hjälp av två teorier: emotionellt arbete och gräsrotsbyråkrati. Dessa förklarar dels hur medarbetare inom vissa yrken arbetar med känslor på arbetet samt hur de hanterar dessa, dels hur medarbetare på gatunivå inom myndighetsorganisationer agerar inom ett visst handlingsutrymme som ges dem. Liknande studier har genomförts på anstalter, men inte på arresten såsom denna studie undersöker. Resultatet talar för att kriminalvårdarna till viss del känner en typ av civilkurage gentemot de hemlösa, vilket i sin tur gör att de ger mer förmånlig behandling till omhändertagna hemlösa.