Children with out-of-home care (OHC; foster family/residential care) experience is a high-risk group for future adverse outcomes. With an ambition of supporting the design of effective preventive child welfare measures targeting children in OHC, the overall aim of this thesis is to examine education as a possible intervention...

The aim of the thesis was to increase knowledge on how to understand the therapeutic process highlighting the importance of the therapeutic relationship as described by therapists and clients in substance use-related dependency treatment. The research questions were related to how the therapeutic process can contribute to a p...

Even though nursing home care in Sweden and Canada takes place in different care contexts and utilizes different organisational models, in both countries, the traditional image of an ideal care worker is characterized by femininity and whiteness. However, today, in both countries, the care workforce is becoming far more diver...

The aim of this dissertation is to describe and analyse the prerequisites and practices of auditing Swedish residential care for children. Residential care is a complex intervention provided to children in vulnerable life situations. The care is extensively delivered by private providers and shows difficulties in demonstratin...

Knowledge concerning the social services’ use of the Care of Young Persons (Special Provisions) Act 1990:52 (CYPA) is relatively scarce, especially when it comes to the protection of adolescents victimized by abuse. The overall aim of this thesis is to investigate and discuss different conceptualisations of abuse, adolescents...

The aim of this thesis is to study how cannabis is constructed in contemporary Sweden, which policy responses are promoted as rational, and how international cannabis trends are received in this context. The four papers are the result of analyzing empirical material from three different sub-studies: 1) a qualitative study of ...

The aim of this thesis was to analyse coexisting disadvantages in the older Swedish population. Coexisting disadvantages are those that occur simultaneously in various life domains. A person who simultaneously experiences several disadvantages may be particularly vulnerable and less well-equipped to manage daily life and may ...

The personal social services in Sweden have undergone major changes during recent decades, partly due to the reforms caused by the influence of New Public Management (NPM) and partly due to the trend towards greater specialisation. These changes have had consequences for both social work management and for social work practic...

The aim of this dissertation is to examine empirically what Evidence-based practice (EBP) and its standardized procedures become when put into practice in social work. EBP builds on the idea that professional practice should be based on systematic and reliable knowledge of the interventions and instruments used in this work. ...

This thesis examines the extent of family care for older people, primarily filial care, and the costs of caring in the Swedish welfare state. Costs of caring are understood as the negative effects of caregiving, primarily on the caregivers’ working life. The analysis is inspired by feminist theories on the importance of welfa...

 The aim of this doctoral thesis is to – from a child perspective and with children as informants – describe and analyze childhood conditions for children whose parents suffer from severe mental illness. The method used is qualitative – 28 children, 10 boys and 18 girls, 7–18 years old, were interviewed about their parents’ m...

The aim of this thesis has been to study boundary-making in addiction care practitioner’s perceptions of substance use and treatment. The four papers are based on three data collections in Swedish outpatient addiction care: a) a survey conducted in 2006 (n=655), b) a factorial survey using randomly constructed vignettes condu...

The aim of the study was to analyse what the law is in social services work with people at risk of a forced move-out from a rented apartment. When processing an application for financial aid when a client is at risk of a forced move-out from a home, a discretionary interpretation of the criteria in the Social Services Act is ...

This thesis analyses the categorisation of adult persons who need help to cope in everyday life as either older persons or persons with a disability. Despite the development of social services in the Scandinavian countries being guided by the principles of universalism and equality, adults in need of care have different right...

The present study analyses the welfare state as employer by studying eldercare workers’ experiences of their work in Sweden and Denmark.  The Nordic welfare states are often described as potentially women-friendly due to the availability of publicly provided services that enable women to combine paid work and caring responsib...

Between the Promise of Specificity and the Demand for Evidence –

A study of knowledge and the approach to knowledge in socially oriented non-profit, private and public sector organizations

In the social work field it is possible to identify two parallel processes in time. On the on...

The aim of this thesis is to examine activation, including support and control, among different groups of social assistance (SA) recipients. Assessments and activation related decisions during one year are analysed for 372 social randomly selected assistance claimants from four municipalities. Data was collected 2002-2003 thr...

This thesis follows a group of youths placed in secure unit care who have participated in a chain-of-care project aiming to better plan their discharge and aftercare. The overall aim of the thesis is to link a detailed description of these young people with an analysis of the project they participated in, and to undertake one...

Even though Sweden is considered a high trust society, research on this topic is primarily based on a few standardized survey questions. It is also known that there is a robust pattern of less trustful young people compared to older ones. Still, a satisfactory explanation of this fact is lacking. Thus, the first aim of this d...

The dissertation analyses access to welfare resources within the areas of schooling, leisure and peer relations for youth in out of home care. The study was conducted in three counties in mid Sweden and is a replication of the recurrent Swedish surveys of living condition of children in general populations. By using the same ...

Avhandlingens syfte är att fördjupa kunskapen om skolsituationen för barn och ungdomar i samhällsvård samt att fördjupa kunskapen om de processer varigenom de unga finner vägar genom skolan och samhällsvården mot ett självständigt liv som unga vuxna. Studien har genomförts i fem svenska storstadskommuner. Materialet består hu...

This thesis investigates gender differences in health and how they have changed between 1992 and 2002 among very old people. It explores gender differences in the association between disability and health, and gender differences in care utilization among our oldest old people. The studies are based on nationally representativ...

This study sought to explain how crime victims emerged as a target group in the Swedish Social Services Act in 2001. The findings, derived from legislative documents, a literature review, and focus group interviews with social workers, showed that the 2001 provisions both duplicated and undermined pre-existing provisions of t...

The overall aim of the thesis was to explore social inequalities in: a) mortality during mid-life, b) health in later life, and c) old-age mortality, from a life-course perspective. The studies are based on longitudinal Swedish survey and registry data.

The results from Study I showed substantial inequalities in health...

The focus of this thesis is on social workers’ role in assessing and making decisions in child welfare cases. The primary aim is to identify factors that influence decisions concerning reports assessed, investigated, dismissed or processed to intervention within child welfare agencies in Swedish municipalities. Social policy,...

In the wake of deinstitutionalization, people with psychiatric disabilities are, to a great extent, living in the community. In this thesis everyday life of people with psychiatric disabilities, living in independent housing with community-based social support to manage their daily life, is investigated. Special attention is ...

The overall aim with this thesis is to describe and analyze women’s and men’s recovery processes. More specifically, the aim is to determine what women and men with experience of mental illness describe as contributing to the personal recovery process. The point of departure for the studies was 30 in-depth interviews conducte...

The aim of this thesis is to elucidate different aspects of Swedish adolescents’ use of alcohol and drugs and how society deals with problems related to their use. The subject has been analyzed in four studies. The first study was based on focus-group interviews with adolescents and aimed at elucidating the meaning of alcohol...

This thesis describes and analyzes the working conditions of child welfare social workers who responded to a comprehensive questionnaire (n=309, dropout rate 3 per cent).

In Study 1, the working conditions of social workers new to the profession (0-2 years) were compared with those of social workers with longer experien...

This thesis investigates health trends among very old people and the allocation of public home-help services. A further aim is to examine methodological issues in mortality analysis. Three data sources are used: (1) The Tierp study of community-dwelling persons (n=421, ages 75+), (2) the SWEOLD nationally representative sampl...

This is a study of parenting and child development in a slum area in a developing part of the world. The aims of the study were threefold. The first aim was to explore the physical and social contexts for parenting in a shantytown in Rio de Janeiro using an ecological perspective. The second aim was to examine parenting and s...

The overarching aim of this dissertation is to study divergences in assessments of social assistance in Swedish social welfare offices. ‘Assessments’ here refers to whether applications for social assistance are granted or not, as well as the size of subsidies. Another aim with the dissertation is to explore whether differenc...

The aim of this thesis is to examine children’s educational conditions in senior compulsory school. The purpose is to compare girls and boys’ conditions on the basis of ethnical background. The thesis includes four articles. The first three are based on questionnaire data from 1,193 children, 13 to 15 years old, at four Swedi...

The aim of the thesis is to describe and analyse the organization, resources and practice of pupil welfare work in municipal compulsory schools. In one study, telephone interviews with head masters from a random sample of 100 municipal compulsory schools have been carried out. A second study is based on material from two case...

Long term care and social services (LTCaS) for older people are an important part of the Scandinavian welfare state. The fast growing number of elderly people in Sweden has caused many concerns about increases in future needs (and particularly costs) of age-related social programs such as LTCaS. The general aim of this disser...

The phenomenon of hearing voices is examined in a communicative way and with a phenomenological perspective. Data consist of talks in focus groups and of written autobiographical texts.

(I) The aim of the first article, “More real than the reality”- A study of voice hearing, is to describe and analyse...

The aim of this thesis is to scrutinise the statements from the social authorities to the criminal courts in the juvenile justice process, and to analyse in what extent these statements influenced the criminal courts in their penalty sentencing for boys aged 15-17 years, suspected and convicted for assault and battery and gra...

Several Swedish studies have suggested that within the group of clients contacting social welfare offices for social assistance, approximately one third are having problems with heavy drinking. The overall aim of the dissertation was to study how social workers approach these problems in single, male clients. That is; are the...

This thesis deals with the question of how Swedish society responds when juveniles commit crimes. The focus is social work co-operating with the legal system and the interaction between these two. The aim of this study is to make visible/analyse factors that affect the choice between treatment and correction of juveniles in a...

This study explores older adolescents’ positive and negative beliefs about illicit drug use from a preventive perspective. By positive beliefs is meant positive expectancies and benefit perceptions. By negative beliefs is meant negative expectancies and risk perceptions. The choice of studying beliefs originates from the assu...

The thesis presents descriptions and analyses of the municipal-based work that precedes service provision in child welfare, i.e. referrals where concerns regarding children and adolescents are made from professionals and general public and the processing of these referrals within child welfare agencies. The central focus lies...

This dissertation examines the relationship between knowledge, practice and policy within a specific area of social work, namely, social intervention to ameliorate the problem of homelessness. In the thesis, the ambition shown in recent years to lay the ground for an evidence-based practice in social work is discussed as an e...

The background to the thesis is the high rate for sickness absence in Sweden since the end of the 1990s. In an international perspective, the Swedish sickness absence appears exceptionally high. This can appear paradoxical bearing in mind the high standard of living and the high average length of life in Sweden, and there is ...

The general aim of this dissertation is to describe and analyse patterns of informal care and support for carers in Sweden. One specific aim is to study patterns of informal care from a broad population perspective in terms of types of care and types of carer. A typology of four different care categories based on what carers ...

The general purpose of this dissertation is to evaluate KrAmi – a correctional program for young offenders – regarding socioeconomic profitability. Evaluating socioeconomic results enables us to examine and reflect upon the possibilities of applying socioeconomic models to social work. The basic data, from a long-term follow ...

The general purpose of this dissertation is to study the causes and the consequences of the formal structure of intake of potential social assistance clients at Swedish social welfare offices. The focus lies on the social welfare offices, their organizational framework and routines concerning intake. A focus on the formal str...

The comprehensive aim of the dissertation is to examine how ideas about mental hygiene have been elaborated and debated within the context of Swedish welfare. The dissertation is a compilation of four articles where issues of mental hygiene are examined in detail through an analysis of texts. In addition, a theoretical and me...

This dissertation aims to examine and deepen the knowledge of family member caregiving where the care recipient is an elderly person who immigrated late in life. It also aims to contribute to the knowledge of the complexities underlying informal care giving and add to our understandings of what it means to be an immigrant in ...

This thesis is based on an empirical study carried out as a case study at a nursing home ward in the region of Stockholm. The aim of this study is to describe and analyse the conditions of ageing and dying for the old persons living in a nursing home, as well as for their relatives. Different methods were used: participant ob...

This dissertation studies factors that predict use of public eldercare, informal care, and purchase of private services in relation to an individual’s needs, social network characteristics, and sociodemographic factors. A further purpose is to examine whether use of public eldercare is correlated to receipt of informal care a...

In this thesis, self-help groups are defined as small, autonomous groups of people that meet regularly to cope with a shared problem through mutual aid. There is reason to believe that self-help group activity is increasing in Sweden. Since no general attempts to map self-help group activity have been made in Sweden, one aim ...

The aim of this thesis is to discover and understand how caseworkers in the social services view and present the phenomenon of young people who run away from and/or are thrown out of their homes. What images of these young people do they entertain and how do they articulate their work with this group?

The data were coll...

One of the assumptions made when mental problems are defined as a medical problem is that certain problems, certain diagnoses, are chronic. Nevertheless, a substantial number of follow-up studies have shown that the course of development in patients with these diagnoses is neither uniform nor chronic. The aim of this disserta...

The aim of the thesis is to study public opinion on social problems, with focus on the problems of alcohol- and drug abuse. Public opin-ion is studied through a sur-vey, distributed to a cross-sectional, ran-domised and represen-tative sample of the Swedish population, aged 18 to 69 years. The survey was distributed in spring...

Compulsory treatment is regulated by the Care of Alcoholics and Drug Abusers Act (LVM; 1988:870), and aims, among other things, at motivating addicts to treatment. Research has, up til now, mostly disregarded the client-perspective on compulsory measures. This dissertation has its starting point in the experiences of 54 alcoh...

The general aim of this dissertation is to describe and analyse how public old-age care in Sweden has developed and changed during the last century. The study applies a provider perspective on how care has been planned and professionally carried out. A broader social policy perspective, studying old-age care at central/nation...

The study presents an overview of the historical growth and deve-lopment of residential care for children and youth in Sweden as well as an analysis of the present-day structure and organisation. The empirical material consists of official statistics, government reports and data from a questionnaire addressed to all registere...

The dissertation is a product of four separate cultural studies, intended to throw light on the changes in Swedish alcohol policy taking place in recent years.

Paper 1 discusses factors contributing to the rapid proliferation of restaurants in Sweden in the 1980’s and the subsequent tensions arising from a restrictive l...

The dissertation includes four different studies which, from different points of departure, aim to illuminate problems and prospects of social work with alcohol problems in contemporary Sweden.

Paper 1 analyses the historical succession of predominant public images of, and societal responses to, alcohol problems in Swed...

The purpose of the study was to analyse the conditions under which the social services work with different types of child welfare families.The questions are:

What conditions within the social services itself and what factors pertaining to the child welfare families are important for 1) the social workers’ experience of ...

This study has been carried out as part of a Swedish investigation within the framework of an international project on the AA movement, The International Collaborative Study of Alcoholics Anonymous (ICSAA). The purpose of the study has been to describe and analyse the Link movement in terms of its character and development as...

The source material for this study is 2,217 letters written by parish priests, describing the system of poor relief existing in almost all parishes in Sweden in 1829. The contents of these letters have been systematically processed in order to give the most complete picture possible of public assistance to the poverty-stricke...