There is a lack of studies about elderly with mental illness. Previous studies show that care managers tend to construct needs together with the client based on a standardized range of aid (Olaison, 2009; Jönson & Harnett, 2015; Dunér & Nordström, 2005). Further the social needs tend to disappear during the need investigation. This study is based on semi-structured interviews with care managers that work according to the Swedish Social Services Act towards elderly people in Sweden. The purpose of the study is to understand what strategies care managers have and use in the work alongside elderly with mental illness. The interviewed care managers come from different municipalities in the southern and middle Sweden. The interviews are analysed through the theoretical model of street-level bureaucracy (Lipsky, 2010; Johansson, 2007) and Agevall’s (2000) types of autonomy. The study indicates that care managers experience that they work a lot towards elder clients with mental illness of various kinds. The description of the profession however doesn’t say much about how to work with this clientele. Further the organization doesn't have guidelines specified for mental illness in older people, therefore the care managers need to create their own strategies in order to meet the mental needs in clients. The study shows that the care managers have different strategies in their work. For example, some of them describe how they go beyond the aid guidelines to meet mental needs in their clients.

Background: In Sweden the national labour market policies are administered by the Public Employment Service which is in charge of assessing job-seekers’ need for support in the process of reaching employment. Equality is a fundamental principle for the administration. Neither ethnicity nor the person’s economical situation should influence the assessment. At the same time job-seekers are entitled to an individual assessment. Although the state has a national responsibility for labour market policy since the 1990s different municipal labour market interventions have also developed.   Aim: To investigate the impact of different income support systems (unemployment benefit/activity support or social assistance) and ethnicity on the assessments made by public employment officers.   Method: The study used a quantitative method with a questionnaire in the form of a factorial vignette experiment with fictitious cases in which only one factor/variable changed. 118 respondents at eight employment offices completed the survey between 20 January and 1 April 2020. Correlation analyses were performed using crosstabs (Cramers V) and Chi2-tests. Wilcoxon signed-rank tests were used to compare data at two different times (first and second phase of the survey).   Results: Employment officers advocated support at the employment service/external operator as their first choice in 86 per cent of cases, against municipal labour market interventions as first choice in 14 per cent of cases. There were statistically significant differences in the assessments based on the form of income support in all three vignettes. Unemployment benefit/activity support and social assistance resulted in statistically significant different assessments. Employment officers want to refer job-seekers with social assistance to municipal labour market interventions more often than they do with those with unemployment benefit or activity income. No significant differences in the assessments were observed regarding the ethnicity of job-seekers.   Conclusions: The study shows that in the process of labour market policy assessment not only the job-seeker's ability to work and the need for support to find a job is evaluated, but the income support system of the job-seeker plays a role. The differences in assessments based on the job-seekers' form of income may be due to categorisations. These categorisations may spring from stereotypical views of job-seekers benefiting from social assistance, or may be due to institutional factors with two different income support systems for the unemployed, or lastly spring from a lack of clarity regarding borders and distribution between national and municipal labour market policies. Regardless the reason, the categorisations might lead to significant consequences for job-seekers with social assistance, who in addition to a lower level of economical compensation also risk being referred to municipal labour market interventions. These are sometimes designed to be a demand for activity in return for receiving social assistance and do not always have as their primary purpose to strengthen working capacity. Based on the results of the study, Sweden thereby does not live up to being a universal welfare state with social citizenship, since social rights do not apply equally to all job seekers.

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.

Young people are the most crime-active group in society, and in the recent decade juvenile delinquency has emerged as one of the central problem areas in Swedish public debate. How the work of preventing crime among children and youths should be designed is therefore a highly relevant question. In the city of Stockholm, so-called “serious talks” with young people who are suspected of crime for the first time, are used as a method to reduce recidivism. However, such initiatives have no clear scientific support based on previous studies. The overall purpose of this study was to examine professionals' perspectives on the work with serious talks in the city of Stockholm. To interpret and conceptualize the results, Lipsky's theory of street-level bureaucracies has mainly been used as a theoretical perspective. Key informant interviews were conducted with professionals in 12 of Stockholm City's 13 district administrations. The overall results show that discretion does not necessarily become or is perceived as desirable due to two main reasons. The first is about the practical, that is, vague guidelines and definitions as well as ambiguities regarding implementation and cooperation with the police. The second is about the value of the intervention, ie that the professionals do not really see any concrete meaning with serious talks due to the lack of knowledge support and that there is a low risk of continued criminal behavior among the majority of young people who are called for serious talks. The discretion given to the professionals is thus not perceived as fulfilling, facilitating or meaningful, but as aggravating and something that creates confusion and undermines work motivation. Finally, the results are also discussed in relation to what can be interpreted as the underlying assumptions that justify serious talks among political decision-makers in the city of Stockholm.

This thesis examines teachers' discretion during the COVID-19-pandemic. Unlike many other countries, the Swedish government chose its own way and implicated public restrictions that made it possible for preschools and elementary schools to remain open. While high schools and higher educational institutions, during certain parts of the pandemic were forced to distance education. Drawing on insights from street-level theories and street-level-bureaucraty in crisis, the study explores how the teachers have experienced that the coronapandemic, and the policies pursued as a result of it, have affected their discretion over time. This study adopts a qualitative research design and the data is retrieved from newspaper articles from the two trade unions for teachers. By applying Gioias et al. (2013) method to group the data into overall concepts and dimensions the results of the study show that teachers have constantly had to pay attention to new restrictions and guidelines decided by politicians with input from the Public Health Agency based on the current spread of infection in society. The lack of experience and knowledge of similar situations was limiting the teachers' discretion at the beginning of the pandemic, but as the crisis developed so did the teachers' experience and knowledge which increased their discretion. The teachers have also experienced that their discretion has been limited by the lack of financial resources, lack of time, and lack of information about the virus. They have developed coping strategies into their work to balance the contradictions in their work during the pandemic. Finally, the findings confirm that the teachers have acted on the basis of what has been possible in the current situation at the current time within the framework of the regulations. / Den här studien studerar den del av förvaltningsforskningen som innefattar tjänstepersoner som arbetar närmast medborgarna, närbyråkrater, och hur de agerar utifrån politiska styrdokument under tid av kris. Studien syftar till att studera hur lärare, som räknas in i epitetet närbyråkrater, har upplevt att coronapandemin, och den politiken som förts till följd av den, har påverkat och format deras handlingsutrymme över tid. Med utgångspunkt i Lipskys teori om närbyråkrater och handlingsutrymme presenterar den teoretiska refererensramen vidare forskning om kris och lärares upplevelser av pandemins inledande månader. Denna fallstudie har genomförts med en kvalitativ metod för att djupgående kunna ge en analyserande bild av närbyråkraters agerande i kris. Datainsamlingen har genomförts genom en kodnings-och tolkningsprocess av tidningsartiklar från de två fackförbunden, Lärarförbundet och Lärarnas Riksförbundet. Den studerade tidsperioden är februari 2020- februari 2022. Studiens resultat visar på att lärarnas handlingsutrymme under coronapandemin har reglerats av de nya restriktioner och riktlinjer beslutade av politiker med input från Folkhälsomyndigheten (Fohm) som grundats i den aktuella smittspridningen i samhället. Bristen på information, finansiella medel och tid har begränsat lärarnas handlingsutrymme vilket har resulterat i ett sämre möte mellan lärarna och eleverna. I takt med att pandemin har fortlöpt har lärarnas handlingsutrymme formats av deras växande erfarenhet och kunskap om att bedriva undervisning under en pandemi. Slutligen visar studien att lärarna har agerat utifrån vad som varit möjligt i den aktuella situationen vid den aktuella tidpunkten inom ramen för regelverket.

The following study aims to study how social workers in the processing of social assistance relate to child perspective after the incorporation of the Convention on the Rights of the Child. It has been also examined how organizational guidelines and rules affect the processing of social assistance. This study has a qualitative research approach, and the empirical data has been collected through five interviews with social workers, who are working with social assistance in two different municipalities in Sweden. The empirical material has been analyzed through Michael Lipsky´s theory of street-level bureaucrats and discretion. All the social workers in this study consider that taking into consideration to child’s perspective is very important in the processing of social assistance but it is somehow ambiguous and complex. As a result, sometimes the social workers do not have the opportunity to consider child perspectives, even though there is now a law stipulated after the incorporation of the Convention on the Rights of the Child into Swedish law. Some of these factors that make the work difficult for social workers in the processing of social assistance are lack of time, rules and laws, indistinct organizational guidelines, etcetera. The results of this study also show that the social workers do not want to talk to or meet the children during the processing of social assistance and the working process can differ between the municipalities, where one municipality has much more difficulty in considering child perspectives due to too much workload and lack of time.

I dagsläget finns det forskning om socialsekreterares handlingsutrymme. Men det saknas forskning som besvarar frågan hur socialsekreterare upplever sitt handlingsutrymme givet de organisatoriska utmaningar som tidigare forskning belyser. I relation till detta saknas forskning som mer specifikt analyserar vilka organisatoriska faktorer och sammanhang som påverkar handlingsutrymmet att agera som policy makers. Den här studien bidrar till att fylla detta forskningsglapp genom att genomföra kvalitativa intervjuer med socialsekreterare. För att vidare tolka det empiriska materialet med hjälp av ett teoretiskt ramverk byggt på Michael Lipskys teori om gräsrotsbyråkrater som policy makers och Roine Johanssons vidareutveckling av Lipskys teoretiska ramverk. Syftet med denna studie har varit att undersöka socialsekreterares upplevelse av vad som påverkar deras handlingsutrymme att utreda och bedöma risk och behov för barn och unga som riskerar att begå eller återfalla i brott. Detta upplevda handlingsutrymme har vidare tolkats och förståtts med hjälp av Johanssons tre teoretiska begrepp grad av regelbundenhet, specialiseringsgrad och avstånd. Begreppen topdown och bottom-up perspektiv används för att förstå hur gräsrotsbyråkratens,handlingsutrymme skapas i mötet mellan organisationens bestämmelser, riktlinjer och praxis (top-down) och deras egen möjlighet att tolka och tillämpa dessa riktlinjer och praxis (bottomup). För att besvara syftet har sex kvalitativa intervjuer med socialsekreterare från den sociala barn- och ungdomsvården genomförts. Studiens resultat visar att det som påverkar socialsekreterarnas upplevda handlingsutrymme är förankrat i vilken grad de ges möjlighet att anta rollen som policy makers eller inte. Vår studie har uppmärksammat gräsrotsbyråkraten, i det här fallet socialsekreteraren, som möter klienten och som samlar in underlaget för en riskoch behovsbedömning. Deras upplevelser är betydelsefulla för att se över det organisatoriska sammanhanget inom socialförvaltningar. Detta för att möjliggöra risk- och behovsbedömningarna som i enlighet med socialnämndens uppdrag verkar för att barn och unga växer upp under goda och trygga levnadsförhållanden.

Tvångsvård är ett omdiskuterat ämne i dagens samhälle och Sverige. Många debatter råder där betoningen ligger på de tvivelaktiga omhändertaganden där barn och unga far illa. I denna studie undersöker vi hur socialsekreterare resonerar kring LVU med fokus på handlingsutrymme, makt samt överväganden och osäkerheter i LVUhandläggning i syfte att undersöka socialsekreterarnas egna tankar och upplevelser vilket är ett perspektiv som i nuvarande forskningsfält är svagt behandlat. Med utgångspunkt i Lipskys teori om gräsrotsbyråkrati har vi utfört semistruktureradeintervjuer med åtta socialsekreterare vid fyra barnenheter och två ungdomsenheter. Vi fann att socialsekreterarna i vår studie beskrev en komplex bild av deras arbete. Stundom upplever de att de har makt och handlingsutrymme, och stundom inte. Detta kunde bero på LVU-handläggningens utformande, samt hur mycket ansvar den enskilde socialsekreteraren fick från sin organisation. Deras arbete genomsyras även av flera genomgående osäkerheter som uppstår i svåra överväganden i LVUhandläggning. Vi såg även att makt hade en stor roll i socialsekreterarnas arbete,framför allt när det kommer till samarbete med familj och hur mötet med barn och unga struktureras. Samtidigt beskrev socialsekreterarna hur LVU-handläggning ibland följs av en känsla av maktlöshet när det inte går som planerat.

The purpose of the study is to seek an understanding of social workers experiences in working with children who have witnessed violence. The study aims to study and analyze what efforts the social services offer children who have witnessed violence, and what difficulties there are for social workers to help children who have witnessed violence, with the ambition to increase knowledge about what support children who have witnessed violence receive from social services and whether there are factors experienced that make it more difficult for social workers to work with children who have witnessed violence. To answer this purpose, the following questions were asked: According to the social workers, how are children affected by witnessing violence? How does the social service work with these consequences and what support does the social service offer to children who have witnessed violence? According to the social workers, what are the obstacles to being able to give children that support after they have witnessed violence? To pursue the study, we chose to do a qualitative method and we interviewed five social workers. The essay's results show that the social workers think that the consequences of witnessing violence are very different for each child. But there is a common picture among the social secretaries that children who witness violence are exposed to great psychological stress. It will also have a negative effect on the children's social, mental and physical well-being. Several times the child has their basic safety removed. The study also shows that social workers experience that they can not always help the children although they want to and believe that the children are in need of help. The result has been analyzed using theories about coping and street level bureaucracies. The coping strategies were mainly helpful in analyzing the first question regarding children's consequences. Street level bureaucracies were especially helpful in explaining the support provided by social workers to children and the obstacles that may exist in helping children who have been subjected to violence and who have adopted the various coping strategies.

The aim of the thesis is to explore how national street-level bureaucrats perceive their role when implementing EU soft law in a Europeanised environment. Existing studies have focused on the role perception of public servants working within implementation of EU hard law, or being diplomats or working on ministerial level. These studies find that there is an additional EU servant role perception, beyond the national servant role perception. It provides the theoretical and empirical expectation that the public servants on the street-level and within EU soft law are national servants and do not hold an additional EU role perception. The study uses theories on Europeanisation, identity and role perception, and street-level bureaucracy to further understand the case. The thesis is based on 13 semi-structured interviews to understand the role perception. The selected case is a least-likely study as it explores role perception of street-level bureaucrats within EU soft law. More precisely, the field of higher education and its internationalisation, as the study selects the Erasmus+ programme and street-level bureaucrats who work with its implementation in Sweden. This, to understand how they perceive their role when implementing an EU programme and in a Europeanised, but also national, environment. The findings of the thesis show that the street-level bureaucrats hold a national role perception but there are respondents who also present a perception of an additional EU role perception, for example five respondents who presented to be working for the EU in addition to the Higher Education Institution. Thus, it does not provide enough support for the theoretical and empirical expectations to be confirmed that street-level bureaucrats within EU soft law only hold a national servant role perception. Hence, it shows that it also exists a perception of also being an EU servant and holding loyalty to the EU.