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- Mossberg, Linda, 1982-
(author)
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Mellan norm och praktik : Strategisk samverkan och brukarmedverkan inom verksamhetsområdet psykisk ohälsa
- 2018
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Doctoral thesis (other academic/artistic)abstract
- There is a steady critique towards the mental health field stating that people with mental health problems do not get the assistance they need. Often, this critique states that collaboration between different organisations is lacking or non-functional. As an increasingly common part in collaboration, service user participation has also been included in this critique as not being adequately performed. Within the mental health field,many studies has focus on collaboration and service user participation on operational level, with and between professionals in direct interaction with service users. Not as many has studied the strategic level of collaboration, between leaders and managers, planning and structuring the organisation of mental health services. This level has also within the operational level studies often been pointed out as paramount to collaboration on operational level.The present thesis aims to describe and analyse collaboration and service user participation on strategic level. The following research questions are included: how are the strategic collaboration councils composed, and how do the participants handle the work within them? What experiences and opinions on collaboration do the participants have? How do the participants handle possibly contradicting expectations and interests from the surroundings and from their own organisations? How are service users and service user participation socially constructed, and what do such constructions entail? How do the participants handle collaboration as a practically unavoidable way of working?Eight strategic collaboration councils from the north, middle, and south of Sweden were included in the study. The participants in these represented mostly social and mental health services, and in some cases Arbetsförmedlingen (the Swedish Public Employment Service), Försäkringskassan (Sweden's social insurance agency), and service user organisations. 80 participants in all were included in the study, mostly managers. The councils were observed during one year, and the participants were asked to participate inan interview and a questionnaire. The material was analysed with the assistance of NVivo9 and SPSS, and by the theoretical aid of new institutionalism, discourse analytic perspective, and negotiationThe results showed a collaboration between the participants that revolved around norm and practice of collaboration. While all participants had very homogenous opinions and experiences of collaboration, showing of a strong norm supported by laws and regulations, there were also a discussion that showed of the possibility to negotiate that norm. Through negotiation and normative arguments, the participants could adhere to the norm that brings legitimacy to the organisation and the collaboration council, while further own interests and interpretations. Negotiation about collaboration meant that the participants could discuss collaboration in itself. Through choosing normative arguments, they could put forward certain aspects of the collaboration norm which gave latitude within the norm. Here, the norm came forward as collaboration should be done by being or becoming to be united, while having good relationships and an open discussion. The dilemma that showed through the negotiation and normative arguments was that while collaboration must be built on good relationships that can withstand disagreements and criticism, one cannot jeopardize the relationships by bringing up contentious topics. But, if pressing matters because of this are not allowed to be discussed, collaboration is at risk to be perceived as pointless. Collaboration through negotiation showed negotiation as a mean to get things done and to handle interests and interpretations in the collaboration councils. These negotiations were both implicit and explicit and were based in the collaboration norm. Normative arguments also served a purpose in building and strengthening the relationships between the participants, putting relationships as a central part of collaboration. Through normative arguments based in the collaboration norm, participants could preserve consensus and discuss disagreements, interpretations, and interests without risking the relationships. Service user representatives tended to be apart in negotiation about collaboration, but not in collaboration through negotiation. Even so, the service user representatives made a mark within the collaboration councils indiscussions and agendas, showing a plausible increasingly stronger position within in strategic collaboration.
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| 2. |
- Tryggvason, Nina, 1960-
(author)
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Att säga till och höra till : en internationell studie om barns delaktighet i familjen
- 2018
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Doctoral thesis (other academic/artistic)abstract
- Opportunities to participate are seen by many as a keystone of a good life and a well functioning society. Participation by children has primarily been equated with the perception that children should have a ‘voice’, while participation in the sense of interactivity, being part of and doing things and taking on responsibility for others, has been omitted. In the thesis, it is argued that the emphasis on children having a voice is based in an individually oriented manner that may not be applicable to all children. For children living in societies that are more collectively oriented, participation may not primarily be about making decisions on their own or being able to speak for themselves. Rather participation can encompass doing things together and making decisions in a reciprocal way in which the individual is not at the centre. By broadening the concept of participation to include both decision-making processes and activities in the family, the thesis aims to explore how children from different parts of the world perceive their participation and what contextual factors might affect how children’s participation is expressed. Data are collected within the frame of the international research project Parenting Across Cultures (PAC) and consists of structured interviews with children and background data retrieved from their parents. Interviews were conducted with a sample of 1290 children (age M = 10.37, SD = 0.72; 51% girls) from thirteen cultural groups in nine countries (China, Colombia, Italy, Jordan, Kenya, the Philippines, Sweden, Thailand and the United States). The analysis process has included frequency analysis, factor analysis, multilevel analysis and bivariate analyses. The results indicate that the two forms of participation are not mutually exclusive. On the contrary, for most children they are positively linked: the more children participate in activities, the more they take part in decision-making and vice versa. Results also show that variations in participation are not mainly dependent on the cultural group or country to which the children belong. Instead, overall and individual socioeconomic conditions both appear to be decisive to the way participation is expressed. The more children’s rights are realized and the safer children feel where they live, the more children perceive they participate in both decision-making and activities. At an individual level, however, the results indicate that if children live in hard socioeconomic circumstances in their families, there is a risk they will participate mainly in activities and lack influence in decision-making. It is suggested that there are four possible participation positions for children in the family, with the different forms of participation being more or less prominent. Social workers are therefore recommended not to convey a one-sided discourse on participation based on a particular childhood ideology that emphasizes either the children’s individual rights or their mutual obligations. When children of different backgrounds and traditions meet social work, keeping both aspects of participation in the air at the same time can be a more passable way to fulfil children’s rights in their families. The result also has implications for structural social work. One of the main findings is that children’s feelings of safety where they live are clearly positively linked to participation in both decision-making and activities. Social work aimed at creating safe neighbourhoods can therefore be a key factor for children’s participation, not only for increased involvement in the area in which they live but also for giving children greater opportunities to have a say and engage in activities in their families.
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| 3. |
- Rosberg, Susanne, 1951
(author)
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Kropp, varande och mening i ett sjukgymnastiskt perspektiv
- 2000
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Doctoral thesis (other academic/artistic)abstract
- Title: Kropp, varande och mening i ett sjukgymnastiskt perspektiv Author: Susanne Rosberg: suro@fhs.gu.se Keywords: Physiotherapy, practice, video, pain, psychosomatic, body awareness, phenomenology, lived body, meaning, symbolic interactionism. Distribution: Göteborg University. Department of occupational therapy and physiotherapy, Box 111, SE 405 30 Göteborg. Tel: 031 - 773 57 51, mailto: suro@fhs.gu.se ISBN: 91-628-3992-6 ISSN: 1401-5781 Undefined pain and tension is a major health problem in contemporary society and for the health care system. This thesis argues that the physiotherapeutic understanding of the body, and the possibilities inherent in working with bodily experience, can contribute to new perspectives in rehabilitating people suffering from undefined pain and tension. The research seeks to enrich perspectives on the body and physiotherapy by adopting methods influenced by hermeneutic, phenomenological and social constructivist viewpoints. Six physiotherapists, with long experience in treating problems of undefined pain and tension, psychosomatic and psychosocial disorders, were selected and filmed in natural treatment settings with patients. Subsequent dialogues with each physiotherapist, taking its departure from the filmed sessions, allowed different phenomena in the treatment to be identified and given meaning. This understanding was analysed and then discussed in seminars with the physiotherapists. Lastly, the research undertook a phenomenological analysis of the general meaning structure of the understanding reached and placed the body and physiotherapy in existential and social perspectives. The thesis understands the body as a person's existential anchoring in the world. The body is a person’s relation to the world, and expressive of the meaning in that relation. The patients’ main problems, the thesis argues, lie in a lack of contact with the body and thereby a lost ability to create meaning in relation to the life situation. The research concludes that physiotherapy is a socially constructed process in which meaning is created from bodily experience. Physiotherapy opens in this process an opportunity to bridge the gap between biomedical and psychotherapeutic alternatives in the rehabilitation of persons suffering from undefined pain and tension.
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| 4. |
- Johansson, Ing-Marie, 1949
(author)
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Uppdrag med förhinder. Bemötande av familjer med migrationsbakgrund inom den sociala barnavården.
- 2012
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Doctoral thesis (other academic/artistic)abstract
- Abstract Title: Mission with obstacles. Treatment of families with migration background within the child protection organisation Author: Ing-Marie Johansson Key words: Child protection, etnicity, ethnic minority background, culture, migration, teen-agers, social worker, trust, power, discretion, accountability, empowerment, social work Distribution: University of Gothenburg, Department of social work, Box 720, S-405 30 Göteborg. ISBN: 978-91-86796-85-3 ISSN: 1401-5781 Internet: http://hdl.handle.net/2077/28840 This thesis examines the impact of ethnic minority background in child protection. The main objective is to discuss the social and economical situation of migrant children placed in out-of-home care. Additionally it discusses how children and their family members view treatment they receive in the human services organisations in general and especially in child protection. The research combines a quantitative and a qualitative approach and three different data sets are used to achieve the aim of the thesis. The quantitative study is based on data from several national registers for ten entire birth cohorts (n>1 million) and examines the representation of first generation immigrant children among first time entries into out-of-home care (foster/residential care) at ages 7-12 and 13-17. The second is a qualitative study based on in-depth interviews with seven young men aged 14-22 in out-of-home placements or with a recent history of out-of-home care in, with social workers in charge and with social pedagogy staff. Four adult carers volunteered for an interview. Altogether 25 interviews were performed. The third data set draws on material from joint Nordic (Nordplus) master courses that were arranged in order to promote a more inclusive and empowering way of working with children and families in child welfare. The thesis investigates the relationship between power and trust in child protection where the aim is to change problematic situations for disadvantaged children. To achieve that, trustful relationship between family members and social workers are of crucial importance. Trust is an essential element on a societal as well as on a relational level. However, establishing a trustful relationship means that the family members have to put themselves in a state of vulnerability as they are dependent on the goodwill of the social worker. Thus the social worker needs ample time in general, especially in relation to service users with ethnic minority background as they might have experiences from distrust and deceit in previous encounters with civil servants in Sweden or elsewhere. Another important element in the establishment of trustful relationships is discretion. The Swedish social services act is vaguely expressed and allows a high level of discretion. However the level of discretion is dependent on allocated resources and a supportive climate in the organisation. The thesis concludes that conditions on a structural level have a major impact on people’s lives and the socio-economical background of the families are of greater significance than ethnic background in placements in out-of-home care. Still, the social workers in my research study do not emphasize the importance of structural conditions in the life of the ethnic minority families. Being a political organisation, child protection is guided by legislation and a set of governmentally sanctioned perspectives and theories. In this complex context the social workers act in two ways. Either they treat all service users equally irrespective of cultural background or they apply an ethnically sensitive approach. The common denominator of the positive narratives of the family members is reciprocal trust between family members and social workers. The young men and their families stress the importance of trustful, sensitive and confirming relationships within the child protection context. A trustful and reciprocal treatment can possibly contribute to a better integration in the Swedish society by creating opportunities for exchanging information about each others cultures and views. Social work with children and families with ethnic minority background brings the competence of the social workers to a head. Besides the need of solid general knowledge in social work there is also a need for knowledge of the cultural background and experiences of the families. The latter kind of knowledge is often obtained in a good working relationship with the family.
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| 5. |
- Liljeholm Hansson, Susanne
(author)
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Berättelser om ungdomsgäng i förorten. Genus, makt, moral
- 2014
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Doctoral thesis (other academic/artistic)abstract
- Abstract Title: Narratives about youth gangs in the disadvantaged suburban neighbourhood. Gender, power, morality Author: Susanne Liljeholm Hansson Key words: Youth gangs, criminality, disadvantaged neighbourhood, codes of conduct, social constructionism, narrative analysis, interpretive repertoire, categorization, social exclusion, relative deprivation, moral differentiation, gender, positioning, hegemonic masculinity, protest masculinity, power relations Distribution: University of Gothenburg, Department of Social Work, Box 720, S-405 30 Göteborg ISBN: 978-91-86796-93-8 ISSN: 1401-5781 E-publishing: http://hdl.handle.net/2077/37234 This thesis concerns local actors’ understandings of gangs and crime among adolescents in socio-economically disadvantaged neighbourhoods in Gothenburg, Sweden. The general aim is to investi-gate different interpretations of local realities and to study in which ways they are used, communi-cated and negotiated in a local context. The study has been conducted in neighbourhoods, which occasionally have been depicted as especially challenged with crime and hostile confrontations be-tween local youth and legal authorities. The empirical material comprises field notes from observa-tions and recorded and transcribed individual or group interviews with professionals (e.g. police of-ficers, social workers, and youth centre staff) and adult as well as youth residents. From a general social constructionist perspective, this empirical material is subjected to a narrative analysis. Inter-pretative work and meaning making concerning human categorizations and balance of power be-tween groups are fundamental analytical themes, and theoretical concepts such as social exclusion, relative deprivation and moral differentiation are used to analyse the data. Another main analytical theme is gender. In this respect, narrative formulas for constructing femininity, hegemonic mascu-linity, homosociality and protest masculinity are central concepts. The examined narratives are to a large extent focused on problematic events and situations, in most cases with a group of teenage boys – “the gang in the local square” – placed in the centre of the story. These boys are blamed for a number of problematic behaviours such as misconduct, crime and riots. Other characters in the stories are the decent tenants and representatives for authorities, espe-cially the police. Roles as victim, perpetrator – and perhaps rescuer and accomplice – are placed dif-ferently by the narrators. Teenage girls are in the research participants’ stories often assigned rather inconspicuous and stereotypical roles. One chapter in the thesis addresses how the girls are portrayed in these stories and are positioned in relation to the boys as girlfriends, cheerleaders, nurturing mothers, saving angels, sisters and so on. In the interviews many participants tell about rules of con-duct, which gang members (the Gang Code), and sometimes also inhabitants in general (the Street Code) have to follow. The analysis reveals that the “telling of the codes” is used in different ways, for example for self presentations, masculinity construction and in account production. In the thesis three main interpretive repertoires are identified – the normality oriented, which is based on a notion that youth crime can be explained by negative background factors (in the family, peers, individual development or neighbourhood deficiencies) manifested as deviations, the justice-oriented one, where youth crime is regarded as socially excluded groups’ external response to unfair treatment and unequal living conditions, and the goal-oriented repertoire, which focuses on the entice-ments, incentives and motives of criminality and on the profits of crime in terms of better economy, popularity, thrill and amusement. Depending on the interpretive repertoire, the situation and its problems linked can be defined in different ways, which alters the meaning of the story. By arranging the characters of their stories in different role sets, connecting them to certain meta-narratives and making factual claims about “how things really are”, the narrators express morality and try to make their own interpretations credible and accurate. The dissertation single out the importance of, in situ-ations like this, putting oneself in a reflexive and listening position and of exposing one’s personal and taken-for-granted interpretations to scrutiny and criticism from other perspectives.
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| 10. |
- Alstam, Kristina
(author)
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Parents, Power, Poverty: On choice and responsibility on two parental communities
- 2016
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Doctoral thesis (other academic/artistic)abstract
- This dissertation explores discourses about parenthood and subject ideals as they manifest in two Swedish parental web communities. The aim is to examine the perceived division of responsibility between the parents themselves and the institutions of the welfare state and furthermore to map out and deconstruct tensions between demands understood to be assigned to the parent and to society, respectively. The empirical material consists of extracts from web community conversations collected between 2006 and 2015. They are analysed using a deconstructive approach and by applying analytical tools stemming from discourse psychology. This means that the texts inserted in the parental web communities are investigated both for how they are rhetorically composed as well as for how the writer in question positions herself in relation to ‘facts’. Theoretically, the material is probed by three large concepts that have guided the analysis – those of discourse, power and distinctions. They are broken down to more delimitated concepts such as governmentality, discipline and technologies of the self, derived from the works of Michel Foucault, and distinction and misrecognition, which originate from Pierre Bourdieu. Perspectives of class and gender are intertwined in the analysis. The analysis reveals a core metaphor about parenthood that seems to organise the content: Parenthood is conceptualized as work. The notion about parenthood as work is a residue from a more comprehensive ideal of the citizen-subject as morally upright, self-interested and hard-working, and from a view point about the world that emphasises the mental capacities of the subject and downplays structural inequalities or maldistribution of resources. In the web community conversations the parent appears to have a particular task assignment: To deliver human raw material (in the shape of the child) to a society full of demands. Hence, there is a bond established between the parent and the state/the society. In community conversations a notion of a particular societal promise manifests: If the subjects receive equal possibilities of refining themselves they now have the responsibility of transforming the possibilities into a good life. The ideals for how to achieve the proper moral refinement are visible in the interpretative repertoires of the communities. The repertoires are versions of the world and prescriptions for how the world idealistically ought to function. The core repertoire was labelled Mind over matter. It summarises community opinions about the relation between interior qualities of the subject and external factors of the world and it stipulates that things that take place inside of the human being (in the psyche or the soul) affect the material world, not the other way around. Three other repertoires regulate conceptions about the ideal subject. The first, Morality comes first, regulates the preferred constitution of the subject (who should focus on becoming morally sound and self-interested instead of formulating demands directed at the welfare state). The second, You should reap what you sow, revolves around expectations (the subject should expect returns that relate precisely to the amount of time or work that she invested in a particular venture). The third repertoire, Don’t take the easy way out governs the discursively preferred work ethic of the subject (when working on one’s refinement and when wanting to achieve something one cannot allow oneself any type of short-cuts). In the empiric material no repertoires are found that regulate society’s tasks or responsibilities. Municipalities, political parties, boards and committees, law enforcement or taxes are absent as perceived prime movers of a subject. This discursive soil is the foundation of the prevailing community contempt for poor subjects, long-term ill, or unemployed, who are considered manifesting defect subjectivity and having neglected the duty to work with oneself. Economic situation is disentangled from the structural position of class and class is instead read as culture and behaviour, which is thought of as possible to modify. The dissertation finds analytical connections between the preferred ideals and the transfer of a societal crisis embodied in neoliberal austerity programmes to a sense of uneasiness amongst the parents in community conversation, who imagine society falling apart, not because of austerity regimes but because of the people depending on them.
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