När en socialsekreterare ska utreda en klient enligt Lag om Vård av Missbrukare i vissa fall (LVM) behöver denne ta ställning utifrån många olika perspektiv. Syftet med denna studie var att ge kunskap om LVM-ärenden ur socialsekreterarens perspektiv samt att belysa deras tankar, uppfattningar och erfarenheter av LVM-handläggning. Undersökningens empiriska material grundar sig på kvalitativa semistrukturerade intervjuer med åtta socialsekreterare. För att kunna tolka och analysera vårt material använde vi oss av utilitarismen och det salutogena perspektivet som tolkningsram. Resultatet visar på att socialsekreterarna upplever både för- och nackdelar i arbetet med lagstiftningen. Socialsekreterarna upplever handläggningen av LVM-ärenden likt ett dilemma. Socialsekreterarna anser att lagen är nödvändig då de i avsaknad av denna skulle känna en stor maktlöshet av att inte kunna ingripa i allvarliga situationer där klienten riskerar att avlida till följd av sitt missbruk. De anser även att tillämpningen av lagen medför stora inskränkningar i den enskilda klientens integritet och att klienten i mötet riskerar att bli kränkt utan noga eftertanke från socialsekreterarens sida. Resultatet visar även på att socialsekreterarna så långt som det är möjligt respekterar klientens autonomi men att autonomin vid fråga om liv och död måste förbises. / There are many different perspective to take under consideration when a social secretary is about to investigate a client according to the Law on Care of Addicts in certain cases (LVM). The purpose of this study was to provide knowledge, from a social secretaries perspective, about their thoughts, perceptions and experiences of the LVM-process. The studies empirical material was based on qualitative semi-structured interviews with eight social secretaries. We used the utilitarianism and the salutongenic perspective, sense of coherence as interpretative framework to analyze and interpret our empirical material. The result shows that social secretaries experiences about the legislation have both advantages and disadvantages. They feel that LVM-processing is like a dilemma. Social secretaries think that the law is necessary for them to be able to intervene in serious situations when the clients are likely to die as a result of their addiction. They also feel that the application of the law entails large restriction for the clients individual integrity and that the client, without careful consideration from the social secretary´s side, risk to be violated. The result also shows that the social secretaries, as far as possible, wants to respect the client´s autonomy but it must be overlooked in matter of life and death.

During 2010, 1446 people committed suicide in Sweden. Research shows that groups that are less favored in society have an increased risk of suicide. Social services often encounter groups of people that have a high risk of suicide, for instance welfare recipients or substance abusers. The purpose of this study was to shed light on how social workers talk about suicide and how this might affect interactions with suicidal clients. The study is based on qualitative interviews with five social workers in Stockholm. The results were analyzed using the theory of professional discretion and the perspective of existentialism. The most important results were that social workers do not think that they can help suicidal clients on their own, instead they need psychiatric help. Meeting with suicidal clients raises a lot of feelings and one way to cope with this is by distancing oneself from the client. The study also showed that suicide is a complex issue and it can be hard to find a position between the human right of autonomy and the will to help people. Continuity was viewed as an important factor, but due to the work load it can be hard to follow up these clients.

The purpose of this essay has been to study the different discourses that are expressed in social welfare secretaries’ assertions when they assess cases with elements of honour-related violence, intimidation and oppression. To do so I have used a discourse analysis theory and technique, based on three qualitative interviews with social welfare secretaries. The interviews were focused on vignettes, which were all fictitious cases with various elements of honour-related violence. One of the interviews was a focus groupinterview with four participants, while the other two interviews were individual. I have also used the theoretical perspective ”ideological dilemmas” in my analysis. The main conclusion is that there seems to be several discourses competing for space when the social welfare secretaries assess cases of this sort. On the one hand there is a strong ”family support discourse”, but on the other hand there is also a strong ”protection discourse” that are competing for space. Another conclusion is that there is a main dilemma that characterizes these cases, which arises when the victim declines protection from the social welfare. Then the social welfare secretaries need to make a choice whether or not to intervene against the victims’ will.

Abstract Our purpose was to understand how social workers experience the possible complexities that working with economical aid can entail. As an example we chose to focus on long-term economical aid work. We aimed to address the question of which factors could affect their work. In a prior study, done by Dellgran & Höjer (2003) the conclusion was drawn  that  the combination of economical aid, healthcare and schools makeup a third of  practical social work in the terms of the proportion of the amount of social workers, but only 8 percent of the research is done in those areas. Other studies (Stranz, 2007) demonstrate that the research that is done on working with economical aid is deficient. We interviewed six social workers in two smaller municipalities in the southern of Sweden. Our result indicated that the social workers felt pressured by their work-load and the fact that the amount of new cases had increased. They thought that a possible reason for this could be the weak economic climate and changes in the labour market policies. They also felt that alterations and long office turnaround times at other administrative authorities also contributed. The results showed that the majority of the social workers in our study used a motivational approach in their meetings with clients and they also had the best interest in mind for each and every client. We chose to use the theoretical perspectives of Human service organizations by Yeheskel Hasenfeld (1983) and Demokratins väktare (our translation: the guardians of democracy) by Lennart Lundquist (1998) when we analyzed our results.   Keywords: Economical aid, social workers, long-termed economical aid, human service organizations.

Socialsekreterare är en yrkesgrupp med stora påfrestningar emotionellt och ärendemässigt. Enligt tidigare studier har belastningen på socialsekreterare de senaste tio åren ökat. Syftet med denna studie är att få en ökad förståelse för hur socialsekreterare upplever sin arbetssituation. Utifrån ett hermeneutiskt perspektiv belyses vilka emotioner som uppkommer i arbetet och hur socialsekreterare hanterar dessa samt vilken betydelse socialt stöd har för hur de uppfattar sin arbetssituation. Studien bygger på en sammansatt metod bestående av kvalitativa intervjuer och textanalys. De fem socialsekreterare som intervjuats arbetar inom socialtjänstens barn- och ungdomsavdelning. Analysen är utförd utifrån fyra teman: emotioner och emotionellt arbete, yrkesroll och yrkesidentitet, sociala relationer, socialt stöd och responsivitet samt byråkrati. Förutom analys av materialet från intervjuundersökningen analyseras en debattartikel av Pia Tham från DN debatt och tre repliker på denna. I resultatet framkommer att stöd från chefer och kollegor är avgörande för att uppleva sin arbetssituation som hanterbar och arbetet som positivt. Socialsekreterare som känner ett gott socialt stöd på arbetsplatsen mår bra i sitt arbete och känner yrkesstolthet medan de som inte upplever tillräckligt socialt stöd upplever mer negativ stress, uttrycker hälsoproblem och vill lämna sitt arbete. / Social workers are a professional group of workers that deal with emotional strains on a daily basis. According to previous studies the workload of social workers has increased within the last ten years. The aim of this study is to increase the understanding of how social workers perceive their work situation. Based from a hermeneutic perspective, the emotions that appear in the workfield and how social workers handle those emotions are highlighted, as well as the importance social support has on how they perceive their work situation. A mixed method consisting qualitative interviewes  and text analysis is used. The five social workers that are interwiewed are working within the children social services and youth department. The analysis is based on four themes; emotions and emotional work, professional role and professional identity, social relations, social support and responsivity, and finaly bureaucracy. In addition to analysing the material from the interwiews a debate article of Pia Tham from DN debatt has been analysed as well as three replications of this article. The result reveals that support of managers and colleagues  is essential for social workers to percieve their work situation as manageable and work as positive. Social workers who experience strong social support in their workfield feel good and useful about their job, and they look up to their profession with pride, while on the other hand, those that do not experience a proper social support feel more of the negative stress, express more health problems and wants to leave their work.

The aim of this study was to gain a greater understanding of what social workers perceive to be mentally demanding and emotionally challenging work, and which strategies they use to handle it. I chose to interview six social workers, three of them had long experience of social work, and three of them had worked for less than a year. The justification for this choice wasthat I wanted to interview people with different experience of social work over time, to be able to see possible differences in what was perceived as mentally demanding and emotionally challenging work, and how it was handled. The social workers were interviewed with a semi structured interview manual. The results showed that the organization of the social service is not fitted to the work that social workers execute. This means that what is perceived as mentally demanding and emotionally challenging work largely depends on this. Experience of the profession does not necessarily affect what is perceived as mentally demanding and emotionally challenging work. However, longer work experience seems to benefit a social workers choice of strategies. This means that mentally demanding and emotionally challenging work in some cases is better handled by social workers with longer experience of the profession. The organization of the workplace can also affect which coping strategies that are being used, for example is time for reflection during working hours beneficial for the employees.

The aim of this study was to reach a deeper understanding of the process that occurs within the social services after receiving a notification according to Chapter 14, section 1, The Social Services Act. More specifically the focus of this study was to illustrate how social secretaries reason about children’s participation in the process, as well as to examine whether the legislative change, Chapter 11, section 1 a, The Social Services Act, has affected the process in any way. The study’s results reflect interviews with five social secretaries who are active in four different municipalities in southern Sweden. The results in this study were analyzed with the help of two theories, Lipskys theory about street-level bureaucrats and the theory of childhood sociology. The results show that the social secretaries experience some changes due to the legislative alteration; they feel an increased time pressure that for some of them lead to fewer meetings with the child and more encounters with parents by telephone. Throughout the interviews the social secretaries mentioned their sense of intuition or the feeling in the room as an assessment instrument to assess whether to open an investigation regarding a child’s vulnerability. The majority of the social secretaries did not express that the child’s participation in the process was unconditional. They expressed that whether they would involve the child or not depended on how they experienced the meeting with the parents.

The aim with this study is to understand how social workers at the individual- and family sector think about child poverty and how they work with and reason about the preventive and facilitate work they do for financial vulnerable families. We have in our study used qualitative method through semi-structured interviews with social workers at the individual- and family sector to answer our purpose. The results showed that child poverty is a concept hard to define and not well established. The social workers have divided views on child poverty but still at the same time mean that it exists amongst the families they meet. There is also a big difference between municipalities and their reasoning on what a reasonable standard of living is for a financial vulnerable family and how they work with preventing child poverty. The social workers shows different ways on how to work with prevention but there is lack of understanding if their work really benefits the child.

Studiens syfte var att undersöka det eventuella, prediktiva förhållandet mellan de psykosociala arbetsmiljöfaktorerna krav, kontroll och stöd, psykisk ohälsa och intentioner till egen uppsägning (IEU) bland socialsekreterare anställda i en medelstor kommun i södra Sverige. Studien är av kvantitativ art och har utgått från en tvärsnittsdesign. Genom en webbaserad enkät som skickades till samtliga socialsekreterare i kommunen samlades data in angående de aktuella variablerna. Efter bortfallsanalys uppgick den totala svarsfrekvensen till 37% vilket innebar att 102 respondenters besvarade enkäter inkluderades i studien. Insamlade data analyserades genom en hierarkisk multipel regressionsanalys vars resultat visade att krav positivt predicerade IEU medan kontroll, stöd och högre ålder predicerade IEU negativt, samt att psykisk ohälsa inte predicerade IEU. Noterbart var att stödet hade ett avgörande, prediktivt förhållande till IEU. För vidare forskning föreslogs longitudinella studier för att bekräfta den aktuella studiens prediktiva förhållanden.

Syftet med denna studie var att undersöka hur en grupp personer med bipolär sjukdom upplever att de blivit bemötta av socialsekreterare på socialtjänsten samt undersöka om det fanns något enligt dessa personer som kunde förändras i bemötandet. Den insamlade datan är från fyra fokuserade, semistrukturerade chattinterjvuer, där urvalet bestått av personer med bipolär sjukdom som har haft kontakt med socialtjänsten. Det viktigaste resultatet som framkommit från den insamlade datan i relation till syfte och frågeställningar, är att stigmatisering gentemot vissa intervjupersoner förekommer i deras möten med socialsekreterare. Dock har en del intervjupersoner också upplevt ett professionellt bemötande där en öppen dialog har funnits. Intervjupersonerna tycker att bemötandet kan förändras genom bättre lyhördhet, förberedelser, mer personlig stöttning och bättre individanpassade åtgärder. / The purpose of this study was to investigate how a group of people with bipolar disorder finds that they have been treated by social security officers in the social services and investigate if there were any things that could change in the treatment. The collected data is from four focused, semi structured, chat interviews, where the selection consisted of people with bipolar disorder who have had contact with social services. The most important result from the collected data in relation to purpose and questions is that stigmatization towards certain interviewees occurs in their meetings with social security officers. However, some interviewees have also experienced a professional response where an open dialogue has existed. Those who have been interviewed think that the response can change through better responsiveness, preparation, more personal support and better individualized actions.