Summary: This article explores children's learning experiences from taking part in an educational intervention about social services in school. Data were collected from six group interviews with 27 children after they had participated in lessons about social services. Following a narrative evaluation approach, the analysis focuses on the narratives of change that are made visible through the children's shared reflections about their learning experiences. Findings: In their narratives of change, the children presented the educational intervention as meaningful for them because it increased their knowledge about social services as a possible support function for children and families. Some of the children related their previous more negative perceptions of social services to a collective story building on the idea that social services take children away from their families. Through the educational intervention, this collective story changed in part into another collective story building on the idea that social services help children and families to improve their relationships. Applications: The study shows that an educational intervention about social services in school has the potential to increase children's knowledge about social services and to influence in a positive direction the collective stories that shape public perceptions of social work. Although such changes in collective stories can be expected to benefit social work practice, welfare professionals must be careful to promote opportunities for children to share experiences of social services that challenge, as well as align with, any of these collective stories. 

Boken analyserar det skolsociala arbetet ur flera perspektiv. Den handlar om skolan och elevhälsan som organisatorisk och institutionell kontext för det sociala arbetet, om skolsociala problemområden samt om metoder och perspektiv i skolsocialt arbete. I denna andra upplaga har innehållet i antologin uppdaterats utifrån det aktuella kunskapsläget samt utifrån förändringar i lagstiftning och riktlinjer både relaterat till skola och socialtjänst.

Children who grow up in an environment of substance abuse are at risk of developing mental ill health and own substance abuse – and even of dying at a young age. The current study aims to go behind these risks and examine what young people who grow up with addictive parents tell about their childhood experiences. Drawing on a narrative theoretical framework, narration is understood as a meaning-making and self-forming process, which is socio-culturally sensitive and have real inter-relational consequences. From a narrative approach it is explored how children of addictive parents through youth and early adulthood make sense of their parents’ addiction, how their self-image has been shaped in light of their childhood experiences, and how their relationship with the addictive parent is negotiated. Of particular interest is to identify possible turning points in these narrative processes and to explore their significance. Narrative analyses will be conducted on a longitudinal interview material consisting of interviews with 19 young people (12 women and 7 men) who grew up with at least one parent suffering from alcohol addiction. The participants attended a support group for children of parents with alcohol addiction in the early 1990s and were subsequently interviewed on 2–3 occasions from their teenage into adulthood.

There is an emphasis on user participation in social work. The arguments derive from both a democratic and a consumerist approach, aiming on the one hand to equalize power between users and professionals, and on the other hand, for more efficient and legitimized services. However, research shows that there is a lack of knowledge about methods and conditions for realizing user participation in social services. In this exploratory study, grounded in participatory design, a set of four workshops took place, enabling young people, social workers and researchers to participate in the design process. The data were analysed with affinity analysis, a technique whereby the data are sorted with “I” labels, to stay close to the material. Also, written feedback and reflections from participants as well as oral feedback and reflections were generated, documented and integrated with the affinity analysis. The main findings concern how the participatory approach revealed tensions between the participants’ different perspectives on user participation, which in turn contributed to the shaping of a dynamic tool. The findings imply that the tool needed to be both “fair and square” to ensure equality for all young people, and dynamic and flexible to meet the uniqueness of each young person. Moreover, the tool needed to be both rich and contextualized to meet the need for information and participation throughout the transition process, and simple and accessible to meet the acute nature of many transitions as well as the overall time constraints within social work practice. The research process reached the level of contribution, with involvement in some but not all stages labelled as collaboration. The wide range of expertise involved in the design process provides a good basis for the tool to be able to address the need for increased user participation in social work practice. 

This article compares Swedish and German social work, including policy documents, and discusses the policies of these two countries regarding the implementation of children’s rights in social work practice. The analysis focuses on two main concepts that are used in social work practice: the concept of a child perspective in Sweden and the concept of participation in Germany. This study aims to investigate the ideas, values and guidelines mediated by political institutions to social workers in the field. The results showed that both the Swedish and German policy documents gave the distinct impression that the concepts had been properly implemented and formed part of child welfare practice. In the Swedish context, the idea of both making children visible and the formal aspects were highlighted, whereas in Germany, participation was related to an educational discourse. However, it is argued here that the discourses suggest that there is unequal relationship between children and adults, and we conclude that social workers must contribute to the child’s status as an active subject.

Children’s invisibility, non-participation or limited participation can be associated with social workers’ experiences of losing focus of the child in their work, while at the same time navigating organisational and legal demands where a child perspective is strongly promoted. This article sheds light on social workers’ experiences of workingwith a child perspective and with children’s participation. Six in-depth interviews were conducted with professionals from social services and ngo s and from different child welfare services in Sweden. Our findings indicate that losing focus of the child is a common phenomenon that relates to the dominance of adult-centred practice and that child-centred methods need to be developed. Social workers from NGOs described having better opportunities for working in a child-centred way. Losing focus of the child mirrors the subordinated position of child-centred practice, proving that a child perspective and children’s participation are still inadequately anchored in social work practice.

Participatory research designs are often used to improve the opportunities of marginalized groups to participate in knowledge production. This article is based on experiences from a research project, where participatory design was used to develop and implement user participation for children and young people in out-of-home care. The aim is to discuss opportunities and challenges within different stages of this research project to problematize which participation in participation research involves. Special emphasis is placed on the power relations between researchers, professionals and users through the different stages of the research process – from research design and co-creation to the implementation of co-created knowledge – and to explore how the opportunity maintaining epistemic justice varies among participants throughout this process. This article shows that the conditions for maintaining justice and epistemic justice change when the participatory research process goes from knowledge production to implementation of co-created knowledge. The implementation of knowledge takes place in a context of complex and competing interests, where the responsibility and power of researchers are weakened in favor of the responsibility and power of professionals. At this stage, users' opportunities for power and responsibility is also weakened. This shift of responsibility and power has ethical implications, which users at this stage may feel let down about their expectations of change that were raised in the past stages of the process, are not met in practice.