The municipal social services under the Social Services Act is responsible for the municipality’s citizens, but is at risk because of the situation in social services as social secretaries choose professions other than the exercise of authority. Social service work may be compromised on the basis that there will be a heavy workload for those social secretaries that stays when there are not enough resources. How social secretaries experience control in their work affects the way to trade and manage their work situation and the perceived control may be a discretion. The purpose of this study was to investigate how social secretaries perceive their work situation. The study was conducted based on a qualitative method and consisted of interviews of five social secretaries that all work in the same municipality. It was revealed from the qualitative content analysis that the social secretary job situation may seem complicated and the social secretaries tend to ”end up trapped” on the basis o fits position between the organization and the client. The conclusion of the study show that social secretaries work situation is characterized by frustration, both from the client and from the social secretaries own frustration to feel limited in their role as street-level bureaucrat. The framework constituting the discretion consists of organizational and social factors that the social secretaries needed to relate to. The discretion was perceived limited but constituted mainly a security in the complex work. / Kommunens socialtjänst har enligt socialtjänstlagen det yttersta ansvaret för kommunens medborgare, men detta riskeras på grund av den situation som råder inom socialtjänsten då socialsekreterare väljer andra yrken än myndighetsutövningen. Socialtjänstens arbete kan äventyras utifrån att det blir en hög arbetsbelastning för de socialsekreterare som arbetar kvar och att resurserna inte räcker till. Hur socialsekreterare upplever kontrollen i arbetet påverkar deras sätt att handla och hantera sin arbetssituation och den upplevda kontrollen kan utgöras av ett handlingsutrymme. Syftet med studien var att undersöka hur socialsekreterare upplever sin arbetssituation. Studien genomfördes utifrån en kvalitativ metod och bestod av intervjuer av fem socialsekreterare som arbetar inom samma kommun. Det framkom av den kvalitativa innehållsanalysen att socialsekreterares arbetssituation kan upplevas som komplicerad och att socialsekreterare tenderar att ”hamna i kläm” utifrån sin position mellan organisationen och klienten. Slutsatsen av studien visar att socialsekreterarnas arbetssituation präglas av frustration, dels från klient och dels från socialsekreterarnas egen frustration i att känna sig begränsad i sin roll som gräsrotsbyråkrat. Ramen som utgör handlingsutrymmet består av organisatoriska och sociala faktorer som socialsekreterarna behövde förhålla sig till i arbetet. Handlingsutrymmet upplevdes begränsat men utgjorde till största del en trygghet i det komplicerade arbetet.

There are an increasing number of unaccompanied children coming to Sweden. Sweden is one of the countries in the world that receive many of them. This awoke my interest to investigate the assessment of financial assistance and “other living expenses” considering unaccompanied children. My approach was a qualitative study including interviewing five social secretaries working in five different districts in Malmö. Theories used to analyze collected data were: organization theory, bureaucracy school, decision making and cognition and Sence of Coherence. Eight themes were identified: briefing profession, knowledge, values, the individual needs in centrum, assessment of "other living expenses", Malmö City Guidelines, Framework as working tool and finally labour division. These together increase our understanding of the assessment of financial assistance.The result of my study shows that three factors contribute to the assessment of financial support. 1) Social Service law which is a frame law. 2) The national and local rule tools that complement the law. 3) The social secretaries personal view of the law, frameworks and unaccompanied children. The social workers did not have an internal or external education about the unaccompanied children’s situation or the child perspective. They rather took personal responsibility to help them.

The purpose of this study was to develop an understanding of how social secretaries in childwelfare service (CWS, in swedish BoF) work with children with symptoms ofneurodevelopmental disorder (NDD, in swedish NPF) and how they experience that the longcare queues at Child and Adolescent Psychiatric Services (CAP, in swedish BUP) affect theirwork. The empirics were collected through six semi-structured interviews with socialsecretaries from CWS in six different municipalities in a county in Sweden. The empirics wereanalyzed through a qualitative content analysis, and the professional logic has been used as atheoretical framework in the analysis of the results. In summary, the study showed that thesocial secretaries felt that they often came into contact with children with NDD problems. It isfurther explained that, based on their area of responsibility, they handled different problems inthe child's social situation. The results also showed that social secretaries experienced that theyhad many different opportunities to handle these children's social situation. However, the socialsecretaries wanted more alternatives of interventions directly to the child and that they couldwork more preventively and less in an emergency situation. The social secretaries' workclimate, workload and cooperation between the two organizations are some examples of areasthat the results showed were negatively affected by the care queues for CAP. One conclusionwas that social workers did not experience working differently with children with suspected ordiagnosed NPF, in comparison with other children. Their work was instead guided by the child'sneeds. Another conclusion is that the social secretaries had different experiences about how thecare queues affected their work. The results of the study provided valuable experiences fromthe social secretary and invited further studies of the staff on CAP's experiences, in order tothen solve the problem areas that are also highlighted in the study. / Syftet med denna studie var att utveckla förståelsen för hur socialsekreterare på Barn-ochfamiljeenheten (BoF) arbetar med barn med misstänkt eller diagnostiserad neuropsykiatriskfunktionsnedsättning (NPF) samt hur de upplever att de långa vårdköerna till Barn- ochungdomspsykiatrin (BUP) påverkar deras arbete. Empirin insamlades genom sexsemistrukturerade intervjuer med socialsekreterare på BoF i sex olika kommuner i ett län iSverige. Empirin analyserades genom en kvalitativ innehållsanalys, och den professionellalogiken användes som teoretisk utgångspunkt vid analys av resultatet. Sammanfattningsvisvisade studiens resultat att socialsekreterarna upplevde att de ofta kom i kontakt med barn medNPF-problematik. Vidare förklarades att de utifrån sitt ansvarsområde hanterade olika problemi barnets sociala situation. Resultatet visade även att socialsekreterare upplevde sig ha mångaolika möjligheter att hantera dessa barns sociala situation. Socialsekreterarna önskade dock fleralternativ av insatser direkt till barnet och att de kunde arbeta mer förebyggande och mindre iett akut läge. Socialsekreterarnas arbetsklimat, arbetsbelastning och samarbetet mellan de tvåorganisationerna var några exempel på områden som resultatet visade påverkas negativt avvårdköerna till BUP. En slutsats var att socialsekreterare inte upplevde sig arbeta annorlundamed barn med misstänkt eller diagnostiserad NPF, i jämförelse med andra barn. Deras arbetestyrdes istället utifrån barnets behov. Ytterligare en slutsats är att socialsekreterarna hade olikaupplevelser om hur vårdköerna påverkade deras arbete. Studiens resultat gav värdefullaupplevelser från socialsekreterare och inviterade till vidare studier av personalen på BUP:supplevelser, för att sedan lösa de problemområden som också har lyfts i studien

Children who experience violence is one aspect of the work of social secretaries and is a complex assignment in their work. The purpose of this essay has been to understand how social secretaries describe their work within their discretion on children who experience violence. More specifically focus has been on cases where there is a lack of consent to voluntary interventions according to the Social Services Act and when compulsory care is not possible. Previous research about this specific situation is limited which makes this study necessary. The questions of this study had a focus on how social secretaries use their discretion in these cases, which challenges they meet in their work and also their reasoning on today´s legislation regarding children who experience violence. The method of this study has been qualitative semi-structured interviews with five social secretaries in three different municipalities in Sweden. Our results have been analysed with previous research and two theoretic starting-points, discretion and caring power. This study shows that knowledge about children who experience violence is an important part in the work of social secretaries and is a crucial factor in children’s right to protection. It also shows that parental rights to refuse interventions is a major aspect that prevents the possibilities of social secretaries to protect children who experience violence which the social secretaries describe as a difficult challenge. Another difficult challenge described was when parents deny that their children are experiencing violence and there is a lack of proof in the same time. The social secretaries in this study expressed a wish to have a possibility in the law to force parents of children who experience violence to receive interventions even though there is a lack of consent.