Sweden is nowadays a multicultural society. This also means that Swedish social services increasingly come in contact with ethnic minority families. This study aims to examine the ways in which social workers consider and talk about the clients’ ethnic background in relation to child welfare cases. Further, the aim is to reveal the ways in which ethnicity is done and reproduced in social work practice. To reach this goal, a qualitative vignette study is applied. The research participants, Swedish social workers in the field of children and family, were invited to focus groups interviews and asked to react to vignettes constructed around three notices of child abuse. Different focus groups received vignettes with different names of the child: Erik represented ethnic majority name, while Ali represented ethnic minority name. The application of qualitative content analysis resulted in the differentiation of the following themes: worry, description of the case and construction of the family. The results in this study demonstrate that depending on the child’s name, social workers viewed the case and the family differently and ascribed different levels of worry to their respective cases. These findings are discussed through the perspective of social constructionism and the concept of ethnicity as being socially constructed to demonstrate the mundane ways in which ethnicity is constructed in social work practice. This study emphasizes the complexity and challenges that may accompany social work practice with ethnic minority families.

In the United States, asthma remains a major cause of frequent urgent care visits, hospitalizations, and preventable deaths among children. Nationwide, the chronic disease continues to fall disproportionately on minorities, mostly residing in urban localities. When a child is diagnosed with asthma, the parents are typically tasked with managing the child's condition. Establishing a collaborative partnership between parents and their child's primary physician is significant for improving asthma self-management among youth. Using the theory of reasoned action as a theoretical framework, this mixed-methods study examined whether a relationship exists between parental perceptions of physician cultural sensitivity and parental care in asthma treatment adherence. Phenomenology was used to explore the real-world experiences of study five ethnic minority parents and one guardian grandparent of asthmatic children aged 0–17 who shared similar perspectives. Descriptive surveys were used in combination with in-depth interviews to develop an understanding of parental perceptions on physician cultural sensitivity related to asthma treatment adherence. Overall, 108 minority parents were eligible to complete the survey. The study findings revealed that parents who feel recognized, valued, and respected by their child's physician were more likely to be engaged in shared decision-making about treatment. The findings support the potential for positive social change in terms of modifying the health care behaviors of minority parents with asthmatic children, increasing parental self-efficacy in managing their child's asthma, and improving the cultural sensitivity of physicians who serve the needs of diverse minority families.