The child protective services in Sweden contains two central parts, child protection and family support/ services. In the proposal for a new Social Service Act the family support is expanded to easier provide support for parents and children without assessments. Since year 2020 the Convention on the Rights of the Child has been accepted as law in Sweden (2018:1197) which includes statements about children’s rights to participation. This master’s thesis aims to examine professional’s description of how and to what extent children gives the opportunity to participate in family support/services offered on voluntary ground and provided without professional assessment. This study consists of mixed methods, one survey combined with semi-structured interviews. The respondents are professionals working within the family support. 50 respondents from five different municipalities responded to the survey and seven interviews were conducted. The empirical analysis was conducted in SPSS and with qualitative thematic analysis respectively. The theoretical framework is social constructionism, sociology of childhood and organization theory such as Lipsky’s theory of street-level bureaucrats. The professional’s within this study is categorized as street-level bureaucrats which broadly means that their work is characterized by different goal conflicts for example between the interest of the clients and the organization. The conclusion in this thesis is that different internal and external factors are central when deciding whether children should participate in family support or not. The professional’s express a need to protect children from potential harm (protectionism) and participation and protection do not seem to fully be possible to reconcile. Different kind of organization culture and guidelines are also central for the children’s participation in family support offered on voluntary ground and the family support is to some extent described as parent oriented. The survey showed that older children (12-17 years) to a higher extent then younger children (0-5 and 6-11 years) are involved in the voluntary family support which is explained by the child’s verbal abilities. Also, the environment and setting are mentioned as factors that affect children’s participations together with older children better responding to the professional’s expectations of a conversation.
| Identifer | oai:union.ndltd.org:UPSALLA1/oai:DiVA.org:lnu-104404 |
| Date | January 2021 |
| Creators | Hallgren, Sanna |
| Publisher | Linnéuniversitetet, Institutionen för socialt arbete (SA) |
| Source Sets | DiVA Archive at Upsalla University |
| Language | Swedish |
| Detected Language | English |
| Type | Student thesis, info:eu-repo/semantics/bachelorThesis, text |
| Format | application/pdf |
| Rights | info:eu-repo/semantics/openAccess |
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