The thesis deals with psychosocial aspect of premature birth, to which our society does not still pay the attention they would deserve. The aim of the thesis is to emphasise the need to provide specialized psychosocial care to families with prematurely born children within a neonatology ward and to evaluate the possibilities to apply the role of a social worker to provision of such care. The thesis is conceived as a qualitative research. The techniques of semi-structured interview and data content analysis were applied on data collection. The research sample consisted of 11 specialists of various professions involved in the care about prematurely born children and their families. The work partly continues in the research of 2007 where I dealt with the psychosocial issues of premature births from the point of view of parents of prematurely born children. The research results definitely confirmed that striving for creating a conception of specialist psychology care forming a link between health care staff and parents is necessary. Such care should be based on the following forms of assistance so as it supports family function and child{\crq}s healthy development: provision of crisis intervention, support of early relation between the mother (parents) and the child, support and strengthening parent competences, advisory on care about a prematurely born child or perhaps a handicapped child, social law counselling, mediation of related services, support of sharing experience among parents. A social worker is fully competent to provide such care. As the research shows no unified legislation dealing with his/her activities within a multidisciplinary team of a neonatology ward exists. The Social Service Act defines the conditions for the profession; separate activity would probably be subject to special regulations dealing with the activity of a social worker in hospitals. The work may be useful to all professionals pushing for rendering complex care about families of prematurely born children, i.e. care naturally involving specialist psychological care.

The diploma work addresses the topics of old age and ageing that are becoming more and more noticeable facts in the human society. Ageing population and its social consequences constitute the framework significantly reinforcing the importance and urgency of the topics of old age and ageing of an individual. We have to be aware of the needs of elderly persons and to offer them such services that will help to solve their life situations at the individual level. The subject of the diploma work is the social profile of a senior citizens' home client in the Písek district. The main aim of the work is to map selected events in the life of a senior citizens' home client and to frame his/her social profile. The theoretical part defines the basic concepts in the old age and ageing area, their classification, and their manifestations. Other points in that part include family and family system in care for the elderly and social support and social services systems. The research within the practical part took place in five senior citizens' homes in the Písek district in March through July 2011. To achieve the objectives of the work, qualitative research was performed using the inquiry method technique of semi-standardised interviews with senior citizens' homes clients and social workers. The research intention was to define the decisive events in the senior's life that had influenced substantially his/her leaving the natural social environment; to map the social relations in the senior's family before his/her placing in the senior citizens' home; and to find out the particularities of the social worker's work when accepting the client with regard to the client's individuality and his/her previous way of life. Based on in-depth analysis of the testimonies obtained and secondary analysis of data, hypotheses were set up. The results of the diploma work can be used when drawing up the Community Plan for the Písek district. They can help to identify who uses residential social services for senior citizens and in what way, and what are the senior citizens' needs. The work points out the fact that non-residential social services for the elderly must be developed to enable them to stay in their natural social environment as long as possible; the main aim being to increase the availability of such services in the whole district. Support to family relations of senior citizens' homes clients seems also very important, which puts emphasis on high quality of social workers' work, not only with the clients, but also with their families.

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.

Children have the right to participate in matters concerning them. The Swedish Child Welfare Services constitute an arena in which a significant portion of open care interventions for children and their families take place, and thus a context in which children’s participation should be realized. The overall aim of this licentiate thesis is to explore how child participation is constructed in interventions provided by Swedish Child Welfare Services. The study is based on social constructionist theory and includes semi structured interviews with 11 children aged 7-16, whom had experience of receiving open care interventions provided by Swedish Child Welfare Services over a period of time and focus group discussions with 14 family social workers who provide suchlike interventions. The data were analysed using Thematic Analysis.     The first article, which has been published in a peer-review journal, is based on semi structured interviews with the children and focus group discussions with the family social workers. The article explores how child participation is constructed in interventions provided by Swedish Child Welfare Services and which elements are of importance to this process. The results suggest that child participation is a collaborative process in which both the child and the family social worker have an active role to play. Participation is done through a series of seemingly small, everyday actions by the child and the family social worker. By actively asking questions and allowing the child to practice participation and influence the process, the family social workers can, together with the child, work toward increased child participation in interventions.     The second article explores children's actions of participation and how these can be understood in relation to situational constraints using the concept of agency. The article is based on the interviews with the children. The findings suggests that children's actions, as described by the children, are formed in relation to the context. Some actions of participation can be described as permissible and some, when children behave in a way that exceeds the boundaries permitted by their position as children, disturb the existing order. The results suggest there are situational constraints, such as limited range of options available to influence the intervention, limited access to apply for support and limited ways to find new solutions when the children are not satisfied with an intervention.     The overall contribution of the study lies in the enhanced understanding of the collaborative process through which participation is done, as well as the increased knowledge of children’s actions of participation in a social work context. / <p>Paper II in dissertation as manuscript</p><p>Paper II is not included in the fulltext online</p>