TO WORK WITH BIOLOGICAL MOTHERS IN LUNDFROM AN ORGANIZATIONAL POINT OF VIEWALEXANDRA BERTRAMBertram, A. Degree project in social work 15 Credits. Malmö University: Faculty of health and society, Department of Social Work, 2014.This essay deals with biological mothers whose children are placed in foster care within the municipality of Lund. This essay aimed to describe how social workers in Lund deal with biological mothers from investigation, to treatment. In this essay social workers whom meets biological mothers on an everyday basis have been interviewed about their experience in the field, to gather information. The result of this study describes how the social service in Lund works with biological mothers, routines for offering the mother support, reception of the mothers, how to diminish the risk of the mother feeling stigmatized, how the mother can have power to change her current situation, cooperation between different units in the social services, how the relationship between mother and child are planned and maintained and to presuppose from a parent orientated perspective and a child orientated perspective.Keywords: biological mothers, cooperation, foster care, organisation, social services, treatment

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Holmqvist, L & Niia, K. SOCIETY’S FORGOTTEN CHILDREN. A STUDY OF THE SOCIAL SERVICE’S WORK WITH YOUNG PEOPLE WHO AGE-OUT OF FOSTER CARE. Degree project in Social Work, 15 Credits. Malmö University: Faculty of Health and Society, Department of Social Work, 2017This is an essay dedicated to the young people who has been placed in out-of-home care, and because of their age has to leave their placements to stand on their own. International, as well as swedish research shows that this is a vulnerable group of young people who often both has a broken past and an uncertain future ahead of them, and that many of them has a hard time faring as independent adults. In many other countries, the transitional period these young care leavers goes through when they make their journey to independence is high on the agenda. In Sweden however, this group and their unique situation has gotten very little attention, neither in the legislation, from scientists or from social workers. In Sweden we put in a lot of resources and effort to support children in care, but very little to when it's time for these young people to leave the system. The purpose of this essay has been to find out why this group of young people seems to be invisible in the swedish context. To do that we’ve studied previous research, legislation and conducted interviews with social workers working with these youths. To help analyse our empiricism and find an explanation to the problem, we’ve used theories about the social workers room for manoeuvre, the individualisation of the swedish society and how New Public Management has come to effect the public sector. We’ve found that Sweden’s general and universal laws which puts a big responsibility on the individual, combined with the fact that these young people falls right in the crack between childhood and adulthood -both according to law and in the eyes of the population, are factors that plays a big part in the reasons as to why these young care leavers in Sweden seems to become a “hidden-population”.

The purpose of this study is to contribute to a deeper understanding about how placement discontinuities of children in foster care affect their learning. The aim is to find out more about their learning and what role school plays in their life. A life-world perspective is used and theories mainly developed by Alfred Schütz (2002) build the theoretical framework. The empirical research is mainly based on narratives of a pair of twins at 19 years of age, who agreed to share their life stories and experiences of their time in school. Meetings were arranged separately with Alex, the boy, and Helena, the girl, both eager to participate. They felt that their stories could contribute to knowledge. The stories show that placement discontinuities in their early childhood made memories and their perspective of time blurry. They both suffered severe neglect in two of their foster care placements. School offered them a safe place throughout their adolescent years. However, despite this, they are critical to the teachers who saw that they suffered neglect at home but never acted upon that knowledge. Hence their first-hand experiences suggest that teachers, considered important in earlier research studies, are not as important as friend made or the daily routines that provide certain security in an otherwise uncertain life. The social services didn’t listen or support them. Alex and Helena felt that they had to take care of themselves. Their stories show that both of them are goal-oriented and that they highly value a good education. This is evident since they have always taken responsibility to complete set homework and to make school a functional place where they have also learned to know themselves. Furthermore, it is obvious that the twins have played a tremendous role for each other when their life-world time after time has changed. Alex and Helena’s stories and experiences can give the social services a deeper understanding of what lies behind the statistics. A teacher, who listens, shows support and has ambitious expectations regarding the children’s academic performance, has been confirmed in previous research to be of significant importance. In addition, the study shows that teachers should learn more about children in foster care. A life-world perspective and life-world theories can contribute to an alternative point of view regarding learning in life-world discontinuities. Learning can be reflected on by using Schütz theory about “strangers” as a way of understanding learning in a wider range, especially when there are discontinues in the life-world. The reflections made in this study point out the possibility that schools, as organizations, seem to have independent cultures that can be transferred between one another. In fact there seems to be certain variables that are the same for schools in general and hence it is of significant value to recognize school as a regional life-world. The expectations of how you act as a student and among friends are important for the sense of belonging. It is possible that Alex and Helena succeeded in school partly because some of the things they learned about the first school could be transferred to their new school. The study contributes with two new concepts; “livsvärldsbrott”- life-world-disruption and “livsvärldsbevarande”- life-world-preservation.

Care leavers (adults formerly in foster care) are more likely to have negative outcomes in adulthood than non-fostered peers, especially in employment, earnings, and education (Courtney et al., 2011; Courtney et al., 2018; Pecora et al., 2005; Pecora et al., 2003). Success is determined by how well care leavers are able to demonstrate positive outcomes in these domains, but these domains are often defined by policy and research. Services provided by legislation focus on independent living skills to promote care leavers’ educational and employment opportunities in adulthood (Collins, 2014). However, little research has explored how care leavers themselves define success, determine their own goals, and use the services provided to meet their goals. Informed by the identity capital model (Côté, 2016b), this study answers the questions: 1) how do care leavers define success in their own words, 2) what self-defined goals did care leavers have as they transitioned out of care, and 3) what human, social, and cultural capital was available to help care leavers meet their goals at transition. Using a narrative approach, 15 care leavers were asked to offer their own definition of success, goals at transition, and provide details into what human, social, and cultural capital resources they had available to meet their goals. Findings indicate care leavers’ definitions of success demonstrate a focus on achievement, life satisfaction, and connection, and their goals are aligned with those determined by legislation and research. However, many had yet to achieve their transition goals by the time they aged out of aftercare services. This delay was based on systemic barriers that inhibited care leavers from building various capital during their time in care and during their transition to adulthood; these barriers are endemic to the child welfare system and posed a form of structural oppression in the lives of children and care leavers. This indicates a clear need for policy, practice, and research to determine better ways to provide services and reduce the impact of structural oppression within the child welfare system for future care leavers during their time in foster care, the transition from foster care, and early adulthood.

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Foster care case managers are responsible for the wellbeing of foster youth in the foster care system. Teens (ages 13-17) in foster care are most vulnerable to serious risks, such as sex trafficking. Such risks have been heightened by the advent of internet-based technologies that connect foster youth with unsafe others at unprecedented frequency and speed. This thesis examines how case managers tackle the challenge of online safety as it relates to adolescents in the foster care system in the United States. I conducted 32 semi-structured interviews with case managers who worked with foster teens (ages 13-17) within the past 5 years. After each interview, I transcribed the recording and conducted qualitative data analysis to identify emerging themes. I found that foster teens face numerous online risks with sexual-related risks (e.g., sex trafficking) and contact-related risks (e.g., unsolicited contact) being most prominent. However, case workers may not be prepared to address all of these challenges because of lack of online safety training and support from foster parents. Also, case workers are overburdened with many responsibilities that make online safety a secondary priority. This thesis identifies the gaps in which case managers are trained and highlights the need for more support to handle online safety challenges. Therefore, this thesis recommends that the foster care system must place a higher priority in establishing support groups and collaborative training among foster parents, case workers, and foster children to fully manage foster youth online safety.

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