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The purpose of this study is to illustrate how family home secretaries are discussing the conditions and importance of the biological children in foster families. Through this we want to gain an understanding of the subject and contribute with knowledge that can generate further research. Previous research shows that biological children are under prioritized in foster care. We were curious about what foster care secretary’s actually do for this group of individuals in their work. To get this information we interviewed six social workers who works with foster care. Our six informants were located in different municipalities in southern Sweden. The theoretical perspective we used were the norm of the core family, from private to public and the last theory we used were risk- and protection factors. The qualitative method for the study was semi- structured interviews that we transcribed and coded for our results. The results shows that the biological children gets often overridden due to the lack of resources and that the different municipalities argue differently about the need to support the biological children. The biological children in fosterfamilies has an important roll and meaning for the fosterchildren’s wellbeeing. Another result show that familychanges affects the biological children but the social workers dont’t reflect about that.

Uppsatsen "Att leva med bonussyskon – Om de biologiska barnens situation i familjehemmen" ur ett föräldra- samt professionellt perspektiv är utförd och skriven av Annie Dahlbom. Denna studie syftar till att få kunskap om de biologiska barnens situation och behov i familjehemmen. Följande frågeställningar har ställts : Hur ser familjehemsföräldrar och familjehemssekreterare på de biologiska barnens delaktighet och roll? Vilka upplevelser och erfarenheter får biologiska barn i och med familjens uppdrag? Har biologiska barn ett behov av stöd och hjälp för sin egen del och i så fall hur? Denna studie är av kvalitativ karaktär och bygger på semistrukturerade intervjuer med familjehemssekreterare samt familjehemsföräldrar. Studiens resultat visar att biologiska barn i familjehem anses ha en betydelsefull roll för uppdraget och är i hög grad delaktiga i den dagliga vården av det placerade barnet. Familjehemmets egna barn har ingen delaktighet vid möten eller i kontakten med socialtjänsten. Upplevelserna av att fungera som familjehem är av både positiv och negativ karaktär där förlorad tid med föräldrar samt goda och nyttiga kunskaper är exempel på sådana. Samtliga informanter tror att någon form av gruppverksamhet skulle vara ett bra forum för de biologiska barnen. / This essey "living with bonus siblings- Biological children’s situation within their family’s work as a foster family" have been written and executed by Annie Dahlbom. The purpose of this essay is to understand the biological situation within their family’s work as a foster family. How will the biological children react on their family’s mission? I want to gain knowledge about how these children’s participation takes place within the separate parts of their family’s work. Is there a need for shoring and help for foster homes own children according to their situation? The following questions have been asked to fulfill the purpose of this study: How do foster parents and professionals describe the biological children's participation and role? What experiences have biological children in the family's mission? Have biological children need support and help for their own part, and if so, how? This study is qualitative in nature and based on semi-structured interviews with professionals and foster parents.The results demonstrate that the biological children of the foster family have a significant role in the mission and is heavily involved in the daily care of the child is placed. The foster family’s own children have no involvement in meetings or in contact with social services. The experiences of serving as foster homes are both positive and negative character where lost time with parents as well as good and useful knowledge is examples of such. All respondents believe that some form of group activity would be a good forum for the biological children.

Barnkonventionen har blivit lag och det ställer högre krav på kommuner och socialtjänst att tillvarata barns rättigheter. Detta gäller i synnerhet barn i samhällsvård, där det sedan länge rapporterats om missförhållanden och brister. Samtidigt är familjehemsbristen ett nationellt problem idag och kommuner har svårt att möta de ökade behoven av familjehem. Syftet med denna studie är därför att undersöka familjehemssekreterares samt familjehems erfarenheter av hur arbetet med familjehem fungerar i Umeå kommun med omnejd. Detta genom semistrukturerade, kvalitativa intervjuer med familjehemssekreterare och familjehem som sedan analyserades med hjälp av konventionell kvalitativ innehållsanalys. De huvudsakliga resultaten är att stabilitet behövs på många olika plan, såväl i socialtjänstens organisation som i själva familjehemmets situation. Ytterligare framkommer att ett gott samarbete mellan olika aktörer, inte minst mellan socialtjänsten och familjehemmen, är grundläggande för framgångsrika placeringar. Båda grupperna vittnar emellertid om att det i nuläget finns omständigheter som försvårar stabilitet och samarbete. Som exempel nämns nuvarande lagstiftnings betoning på föräldrarätten, socialtjänstens höga personalomsättning och ovisshet vid placeringar. Studiens resultat påvisar ett behov av vidare forskning kring hur framtidens familjehemsvård ska utformas för att åtgärda de brister som föreligger idag. Uppsatsens titel är ett citat från en av studiens intervjuade familjehem.

The aim of the study was to understand how the family home secretary reasons and thinks and how they express themselves in their actions towards the family home’s biological children. The method used is qualitative semi-structured interviews, involving six family home secretaries from four different municipalities. The results were analyzed with the help of two theories – the theory of grassroots bureaucracy and the sociology of childhood theory. From the collective views of all informants, the biological children’s attitude towards the family home mandate is considered important. However, participation from the biological children is limited. Education and guidance is directed solely towards the family home parents, without any active involvement from the biological children in these efforts. Some of the informants stress that they as professionals must be better at paying attention to the biological children than what prevails today. The collective results show that family home parents are expected to take great responsibility for their biological children as well as their participation and well-being within the family home mandate.

The aim of the study was to gain knowledge about what role the foster carers’ biological children play in foster family care and also gain a deeper understanding of the biological children´s significance in a foster family care arrangement. The aim of the study has been conducted through the perspective of the Social services. The data collection consists of eight individual qualitative and semi-structured interviews with social workers who are currently working with foster families there biological children are living at home. The new childhood sociology and the concept of participation serve as the base of the theoretical framework and have been applied to the analysis of this study. The study shows that the respondents have a positive attitude towards the biological children´s presence in the foster families. They value the biological children´s function in the families as important and should thus not be forgotten. At the same time, there are no clear guidelines for how the social worker should work with foster carers’ biological children. The contact between the social worker and the biological children mostly goes through the children’s parents. The role of the biological children is not always clearly defined in the foster family care arrangement and their involvement can be perceived as insignificant. Furthermore the respondents terminates that no special support designed for biological children in foster families exists. Several respondents also reflect upon that they want to avoid burdening the biological children with responsibility that is not theirs to bear. The role of the biological children in the foster family care and their significance in the foster family care arrangement concludes therefore acknowledged by the social worker but not always recognized.

The aim of this study is to understand from a professional perspective the importance of the biological children’s participation in the family home process and how family home social workers use their room for maneuver to involve the biological children in the family home process. The method used to answer the aim and the research questions was semi-structured interviews with seven women that work as family home social workers and the empirical material was analyzed through a thematic analysis. The theoretical framework we used to analyze the results was Lipsky's theory of Street-level bureaucracy and discretion. The main findings of this study were that family home social workers think that the participation of biological children is important both for the child's own wellbeing, for the whole family's dynamics and for the outcome of a family home placement. The most common methods used by family home social workers to involve biological children are relationship building and different types of conversations depending on the children's age and maturity. The study showsin the family home investigation, there are formalized guidelines that the family home social workers work according to but there are no general guidelines in the work with biological children in the further family home placement. That results in a discretion for the family home social workers. The study shows opportunities for improvement in making the biological children more involved in the family home process and that the biological children's participation is important for the work of family home social workers. Our results both confirm and contrast previous international and national research presented in the study.

Studien syftade till att undersöka hur socialsekreterare beskriver familjehemsföräldrars behov av stöd vid sammanbrott samt vilka möjligheter de uppfattar sig ha att möta stödbehovet. Sju socialsekreterare deltog i studien och data samlades in genom en fokusgruppsdiskussion och tre enskilda intervjuer. Studiens teoretiska ansats var teorin om gräsrotsbyråkrati samt begreppet handlingsutrymme. Resultatet visade att de intervjuade socialsekreterarna upplevde en svårighet att prata om sammanbrottet utan att se till placeringen i sin helhet. Det blev också tydligt att ämnet var ovanligt för socialsekreterarna att reflektera över. Stödjande samtal uppfattades vara det främsta stödbehovet och socialsekreterarna beskrev en för familjehemsföräldrarna känslomässig process i samband med ett sammanbrott, vilken de bemötte med tid för återhämtning samt “ett lyssnande öra”. Organisatoriska förutsättningar i form av arbetets organisering och dess kultur, ledningens insyn och förtroende, hög arbetsbelastning samt geografiskt långa avstånd var aspekter vilka möjliggjorde eller begränsade socialsekreterarna. / The aim of the study was to examine how social workers describe foster parents’ need of support in the event of a placement breakdown and which opportunities the social workers perceived having to meet the parents’ needs. A focus group and three individual interviews were made, including totally seven social workers in the study. The theoretical approach was the theory of street-level bureaucracy with focus on the concept of discretion. The social workers described a difficulty to talk about placement breakdown without seeing the placement as a whole. It became obvious that identifying foster parents’ needs during or after a placement breakdown was not perceived as part of the social workers’ work tasks. Although, they expressed that foster parents’ may need support in this situation. The social workers described an emotional process for foster parents, which they responded to with listening as well as “giving time for recovery”. Organizational conditions affecting the work were discussed in terms of workplace culture and organization, the management’s insight and trust, a high workload and geographically long distance which enabled or limited the social workers.

The purpose of this study was to get a greater understanding for how the people surrounding children in foster care support these foster children in their education. In order to learn more about that, I had to understand these individuals own opinion on education for foster-children. Do the people that stand close to a child in foster care think that foster children have the same abilities to learn in school as other children? And is it fair to require the same investment as we ask from other children? And how does the way professionals and foster parents inform each other and work togeter influence this process? The study was conducted through six semi-structured interviews. The perspective of four different foster parents, a teacher and a social worker were examined in this qualitative study. To help understand why some people have better chances in life than others and how a foster family can make a difference in that for a child, I have used Pierre Bourdieu's Cultural Theory. The theory helps understand that a foster child is in a very low social position in society, especially at the beginning of the placement, and has to work itself up to get acces to more symbolical resources. The results of the study show that support from people around the foster child is a very important factor for a child to succeed in school. Every one of the individuals I have interviewed was aware of that fact. The main obstacle people experience is that information about the child is not always shared and they do not alwas know how other organizations function. The factor that is most favorable is a positive work relation between the professionals, foster parents and the child.

This essay is about what considerations foster home secretary may face in their profession and how they use themselves as a tool. We were interested in the family home secretaries as a profession and we found that this area is relatively unexplored. The essay is based on semi-structured interviews with ten family home secretaries from seven different municipalities. To interpret our results, we used Mead's theory of "Mind, Self and Society". Our paper shows that family secretaries are faced with a variety of considerations in the selection of foster homes. We have also presented several different criteria that foster secretaries put on families to enable them to become current foster home. All the family home secretary saw themselves as tools in the process to match children with foster homes, but it proved to be difficult for them to put this into words and describe how they used themselves. One of our research questions concern how experience affects their work. It turned out that the experience also gave answers to our other questions.