The papers purpose is to examine how the Botkyrka and Huddinge municipalities implement their juvenile law offenders' programs. The paper briefly and concisely outlines the history of juvenile offenders and the social services programs dealing with them. We focus on how two municipalities’, Huddinge and Botkyrka, implement these programs. The municipalities belong to the same judicial district,”Södertörns tingsrätt”. The paper has a qualitative approach with interviews with those responsible for the programs. Recent year’s criticism has been directed towards the lack of control and structure of the application of the program within the municipalities. This paper's conclusion is that implementations of the program vary a great deal between Huddinge and Botkyrka. However, it also shows that Huddinge and Botkyrka are making an effort to remove these differences between their respective programs. On the basis of the analysis of the material, this paper concludes that the programs can be seen as a creation of a mesosystem that include the young and partly its microsystem. Participation in the program will hopefully have a positive influence on the other systems that the young offenders are a part of. The control of that the young is managing its punishment is done by supervision. Trough this supervision the behavioural pattern of the young is influenced. The power and force to change the young offenders, and give them possibilities to change, to deploy and evolve lie within in the use of words and conversation.

The purpose of this essay is to examine trust, or lack of trust, in the social services. Previous research considering this topic is limited, which, in our point of view, implies the need of further studies. A quantative method was used, consisting of an online questionnaire containing statements about the social services. The statements were designed using a five level Likert-scale which required the respondent to rate their level of agreement. The questionnaire was published on five webcommunities directed to parents. We found, as previous research has shown, that the majority of the public, who lack personal experience of the social services, find it difficult to respond to statements about institutions such as the social services. Our results also indicates that the social services fail to gain the trust of a majority of the respondents and more then half of the respondents are of the opinion that the social services is in absence of the knowledge that they need to carry out their work. Despite these results half of the respondents would initiate a contact with the social services if they felt the need to do so.

This essay deals with the social services cooperation with the private sector relating to foster care. The aim was to examine whether and what the causes may be that the social service transfer tasks of authority to private actors. Furthermore, we have examined and discussed if such a working procedure can lead to consequences for the individual child and how / if the children's legal security is affected. Survey methodology is qualitative in nature where we conducted semi-structured interviews with three persons who work in different ways to be involved in work with a foster family. We have also made use of questionnaires sent to social workers around the country. The result has been interpreted on the basis inter alia, legal texts, legislative history, and two theories which have their origin in organization theory. Our results show that some municipalities do not feel that they have the resources to investigate the family. Furthermore, it appears that the cooperation of the social services have with the private sectors has declined, perhaps because of clearer legislation of 2008, or because of the sharp criticism that they received from the provincial government. Our study also shows that some municipalities still leaves management tasks to the private sector, without legal basis. Since there is no control over who is inquiring the family a result of this can be that a child is growing up in unsuitable environments, which in itself can affect the rule of law.

The aim of the study was to examine the background and prerequisites for social services responsibility for carers according to the carers’ section in the Social Services Act. How the legislation is perceived and implemented in practice was also studied. The study’s theoretical basis was jurisprudence and the sociology of law. Preparatory work and other sections of importance for the interpretation of the carers’ section in the Social Services Act were also scrutinized. Interviews with four municipal politicians and four local civil servants were conducted. Various factors which affect the prerequisites for the social services duty of care towards carers were identified in the study. By studying the direct effects of legislation various indirect effects were also highlighted. The results showed that legislation is a weak instrument of control in municipalities’ planning and implementation of support for carers. Therefore social services responsibility for carers is unclear and imprecise. For carers themselves it is difficult to know what support they can demand or ask for from social services – municipalities have to offer support for carers but the carers’ section does not give carers any legal right to support.

The purpose of our study is to see how the interaction between the social services and police work when a child under 15 years is suspected of crimes. What happens to the child from an agency perspective? How is the experience for the child and how do they get their voices heard? How is the professional perspective for a child when a child is suspected of a crime? What do the various authorities for short-term and long-term measures for the child? We have chosen to do a qualitative study using semi-structured interviews. The study includes six interviews with two police officers, three field secretaries and a social worker in two different municipalities. A medium sized municipality, and a larger community. The people we interviewed think differently about collaboration. The municipality have different workforms. In the smaller municipality works a social worker at the police station once or twice a week. While in the larger municipality the police and social worker work separately but together nonetheless. The result shows that they are not completely satisfied with the interaction that is today, but it takes a lot of time to build it up and it can always be better. Furthermore, the study shows that the lack of time and resource issues control much of social service work. For the analyzes we have used a theory of interaction. The result shows that the professionals are using the children’s perspective a lot when they are working with children who are suspected of crime.

This research tracks the emergence of ‘soft’ workfare in Toronto. This refers to a set of attitudes and practices apparent in the delivery of welfare-to-work programs through the Ontario Works framework, which use compulsion to push people towards employment while simultaneously encouraging limited and specific practices of individual choice. Research findings are derived from eight interviews and relevant policy reports, focusing on the experiences of three non-profit agencies and the City of Toronto, who provide employment assistance and financial assistance through Ontario Works, respectively. These findings indicate that grassroots organizations pioneered employment services for social assistance recipients, and, alongside the municipal government, had been calling for active employment programs. They made use of the distance between policy rules and their own programs to alleviate the most punitive features of OW, but judge compulsion as a means to meet a necessary end. This demonstrates how disciplinary tendencies reside within liberal governmentalities.

This research tracks the emergence of ‘soft’ workfare in Toronto. This refers to a set of attitudes and practices apparent in the delivery of welfare-to-work programs through the Ontario Works framework, which use compulsion to push people towards employment while simultaneously encouraging limited and specific practices of individual choice. Research findings are derived from eight interviews and relevant policy reports, focusing on the experiences of three non-profit agencies and the City of Toronto, who provide employment assistance and financial assistance through Ontario Works, respectively. These findings indicate that grassroots organizations pioneered employment services for social assistance recipients, and, alongside the municipal government, had been calling for active employment programs. They made use of the distance between policy rules and their own programs to alleviate the most punitive features of OW, but judge compulsion as a means to meet a necessary end. This demonstrates how disciplinary tendencies reside within liberal governmentalities.

Social service organizations have changed dramatically during the last decade in an effort to increase effectiveness and control. This has placed new demands on those in leadership roles, and the need for knowledge of how to lead these transformed organizations has increased. Transformational leadership is a leadership model based on vision and empowerment, one suggested to increase both employee effectiveness and well-being, but the usefulness of this model in the public sector has been questioned. The general aim of this thesis is therefore to increase our understanding of the transformational leadership process in the context of social service organizations by investigating factors that explain when and why transformational leadership emerges and is effective. Questionnaire data from social service employees as well as interview data from managers were used in three empirical studies. Results from Studies 1 & 2 show that transformational leadership is positively associated with employee outcomes including commitment, role clarity, and well-being. Factors that might influence the effectiveness of transformational leadership were addressed in Study 1. It was found that leader continuity enhanced the effect of transformational leadership on role clarity and commitment, indicating that it takes time before transformational leaders actually have an effect on employees. Furthermore, co-worker support enhanced the effect on commitment, reflecting the role of followers in the transformational leadership process. The way in which transformational leaders influence employees was examined in Study 2, and climate for innovation mediated the relationship between transformational leadership and well-being both cross-sectionally and one year later. Finally, organizational factors that may hinder the emergence of transformational leadership were addressed in Study 3, and newly recruited managers were interviewed during their first year of leadership. Eight hindering factors in the organization to exhibit transformational leadership were identified, including the organizational structure, ongoing change, and the leaders’ working conditions. In all, this thesis has demonstrated the usefulness of transformational leadership in social services in terms of being associated with employee positive attitudes and well-being, and has also identified factors that may both help and hinder the transformational leadership process in this context.

The Swedish Social Services Act (2001:453) states that crime victims should be a priority group for the social services and that they have a responsibility to ensure that victims receive the needed help and support. The aim with this study was to examine how the Swedish municipal social services fulfil their responsibility for the psychosocial wellbeing of crime victims, by examining the collaboration between Victim Support and the social services. Interviews were conducted with crime victims, crime victim coordinators and social workers. The social services have an overall responsibility for the psy-chosocial support to crime victims. However, the study show that in reality the social services, in many cases, do not provide this help and support, as there is a view that it is not their responsibility. Instead, the victims are referred to various support organisations such as Victim Support, without really knowing what kind of support they are offering. Furthermore, the social services in some mu-nicipalities argue that there is no opportunity for them to collaborate with Victim Support due to con-fidentiality, even though it is possible in other municipalities. Through collaboration resources can be saved, and knowledge and awareness of the victims’ needs can be increased. This can eventually lead to that victims’ receive better care, which can result in shorter recovery time for crisis that may have occurred due to the experience of crime. / I socialtjänstlagen (2001:453) framgår att brottsoffer ska vara en prioriterad grupp för socialtjänsten och att de har ansvar för att se till att brottsoffer får hjälp och stöd. Syftet med denna studie var att un-dersöka hur socialtjänsten uppfyller sitt ansvar för det psykosociala stödet till brottsoffer, genom att undersöka samverkan mellan socialtjänsten och Brottsofferjouren. Studien genomförs genom intervju-er med brottsoffersamordnare, socialsekreterare och brottsoffer. Det framkommer att socialtjänsten, enligt socialtjänstlagen, har det övergripande ansvaret för det psykosociala stödet till brottsoffer. Re-sultatet från studien visar dock att socialtjänsten i många fall inte ger hjälp och stöd till brottsoffer, då det finns ett synsätt att de inte har ansvar för detta. Istället hänvisas brottsoffren till olika stödorganisa-tioner såsom Brottsofferjouren, utan att socialtjänsten har någon djupare kunskap om vad dessa orga-nisationer erbjuder för stöd. Vidare menar socialtjänsten i vissa kommuner att det inte finns någon möjlighet att samverka med Brottsofferjouren på grund av sekretess, trots att andra kommuner kan göra det. Samverkan kan vara ett bra sätt att spara resurser, samtidigt som kunskapen och medveten-heten kring brottsoffers behov ökar. Detta kan på sikt göra att brottsoffer får ett bättre omhänderta-gande, vilket i sin tur kan resultera i kortare återhämtningstider efter den kris som kan ha uppstått i samband med brottsupplevelsen.

Syftet med vår studie har varit att öka kunskapen om hur socialsekreterare upplever sitt arbete med barnavårdsutredningar och hur de beskriver hanteringen av olika intressen i utredningsprocessen. Inom detta område har vi studerat vilka intressen som kan finnas i en barnavårdsutredning, hur socialsekreterare hanterar dessa och hur de upplever sitt arbete. Vi har använt oss av en kvalitativ metod där vi har intervjuat sex yrkesverksamma socialsekreterare. Utifrån dessa intervjuer har vi fått ett resultat som har visat att det finns många intressen i en barnavårdsutredning. Socialsekreterarna beskriver hur de företräder barnets intresse samtidigt som de behöver förhålla sig till föräldrarna, den egna organisationens, lagstiftningen och andra aktörer som skola, förskola och Barn- och ungdomspsykiatrin, BUP. Ibland kan det uppstå motsättningar mellan dessa intressen och för att hantera detta har vi sett några strategier som socialsekreterarna använder sig av. De har betonat betydelsen av ett fungerande samarbete med andra aktörer och belyser även vikten av att det egna ansvarsområdet är tydligt. Det är viktigt att veta vad som är socialsekreterarens egna uppgifter och vad som är andras uppgifter. I resultatet har det även framkommit att informanterna upplever sitt arbete som svårt och komplext, men samtidigt upplever flera det som meningsfullt att arbetet innebär att de kan bidra till förändring och att de företräder människors rättigheter. Den här beskrivningen från informanterna har vi också kunnat se genom tidigare forskning. Socialsekreterarens arbete beskrivs som komplext och som ett motsättningsfullt uppdrag, samtidigt som det också beskrivs som meningsfullt. De resultat som vi har fått har vi analyserat med hjälp av begrepp tagna från organisationsteori, nyinstitutionell organisationsteori, KASAM samt tidigare forskning. Vi för sedan också en diskussion kring resultatet då vi bland annat ställer oss frågor om socialsekreterarens roll och innebörden av meningsfullhet i arbetet.