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.

The aim of this study is to explore how schoolchildren reflect on children's help-seeking in the context of family adversity after participating in lessons about the child welfare services. A thematic narrative analysis was conducted, building on participating pupils' shared reflections on a fictitious story about two siblings living in adverse family circumstances. The analysis suggests that the pupils held a strong belief on children's rights to a safe home with supportive parental relationships, and they expressed an optimistic view on children's opportunities to receive help to achieve positive change when their rights regarding these issues were not met.

The article highlights the experiences of introducing an educational programme about social services in schools, with a focus on the perspectives of children and young people. The aim is to describe how the students’ knowledge of and attitudes towards social services have changed after participating in the teaching activities as well as how the students reflect on the teaching and on their acquired knowledge. The results show that the students appreciated the information they had received. They emphasized the value of knowing the social services, learning about what the social services do, and learning that children and young people can contact the social services when they are in need of help or support. The results also indicate that the students’ knowledge of the social services was strengthened and that their attitudes towards the social services were more positive after participating in the teaching activities. The students themselves described how their image of the social services had changed and the social services was described as a possible alterna-tive for help-seeking, should they be in need of help or support.

Vi, 1 620 forskare samt lärare vid universitet och högskolor, är eniga med de unga bakom Auroramålet: De drabbas och riskerar att drabbas allvarligt av klimatkrisen under sin livstid. De klimatåtgärder vi vidtar i närtid avgör deras framtid. Sverige måste ta ansvar och göra sin rättvisa andel av det globala klimatarbetet. 

I strid med Parisavtalet ökar utsläppen av växthusgaser i en takt som gör att 1,5-gradersmålet kan överskridas om några år. De globala effekterna blir allt mer synliga med ständiga temperaturrekord, smältande isar, havshöjning och extremväder som torka, förödande bränder och skyfall med enorma översvämningar, som i Pakistan nyligen. Försörjningen av befolkningen utsätts för allvarliga hot i många länder.

Minskningen av den biologiska mångfalden är extrem. Klimatkrisen är enligt WHO det största hotet mot människors hälsa i hela världen och barn utgör en särskilt sårbar grupp. Med Sveriges nordliga läge sker uppvärmningen här dubbelt så fort som det globala genomsnittet. Det förskjuter utbredningsområden för växtlighet och sjukdomsbärande insekter och ökar förekomsten av extremväder såsom värmeböljor, skogsbränder och översvämningar samt av många olika sorters infektioner och allergier. När extremväder ökar, ökar även stressen och risken för mental ohälsa. Värmeböljor ökar risken för sjukdom och död hos sårbara grupper som äldre, små barn och personer med kroniska sjukdomar. De negativa effekterna på hälsan kommer att öka i takt med klimatkrisen och barn riskerar att drabbas av ackumulerade negativa hälsoeffekter under hela sina liv. Redan i dag är mer än hälften av unga mellan 12 och 18 år i Sverige ganska eller mycket oroliga för klimat och miljö. Detta är förståeligt när våra beslutsfattare inte gör vad som krävs.

Den juridiska och moraliska grunden för arbetet mot klimatförändringarna är att varje land måste göra sin rättvisa andel av det globala klimatarbetet. Centralt i det internationella klimatramverket är att rika länder med höga historiska utsläpp, däribland Sverige, måste gå före resten av världen. Dessa länder måste också bidra till att finansiera klimatomställningen i länderna i det Globala Syd, som är minst ansvariga för klimatkrisen men drabbas hårdast. Denna rättviseprincip är tydlig i Parisavtalet och var en het diskussionsfråga under COP27 i Sharm el-Sheikh, men lyser med sin frånvaro i det svenska klimatarbetet. 

Sverige har satt mål för att minska sina utsläpp. Men de är helt otillräckliga: minskningstakten är för låg och målen tillåter samtidigt att åtgärder skjuts på framtiden. Dessutom exkluderas merparten av Sveriges utsläpp från de svenska nationella utsläppsmålen; bland annat utelämnas utsläpp som svensk konsumtion orsakar utanför Sveriges gränser, utsläpp från utrikes transporter och utsläpp från markanvändning och skogsbruk, exempelvis utsläpp från förbränning av biobränslen eller utsläpp från dikade våtmarker (Prop. 2016/17:146 s.25-28).

Sverige saknar dessutom ett eget mål för att öka upptaget av växthusgaser genom utökat skydd och restaurering av ekosystem, något som krävs för att begränsa de värsta konsekvenserna av klimatkrisen (IPCC s.32). Trots dessa låga ambitioner misslyckas Sverige med att nå sina utsläppsmål, konstaterar både Klimatpolitiska rådet och Naturvårdsverket. En klimatpolitik i linje med Parisavtalet kräver både att alla typer av växthusgasutsläpp minskar samtidigt som – inte i stället för – upptaget av växthusgaser maximeras: i dag misslyckas Sverige på bägge fronter.

Slutsatsen är tydlig. Sverige vidtar inte de åtgärder som krävs för att skydda barns och ungdomars rättigheter enligt Europakonventionen till skydd för de mänskliga rättigheterna. Detta medför allvarliga risker för liv och hälsa för unga generationer, människor i andra länder och särskilt utsatta grupper. Detta kan inte fortsätta. Därför ställer vi oss bakom Auroras krav att Sverige börjar göra sin rättvisa andel och omedelbart sätter igång ett omfattande och långtgående klimatarbete som vilar på vetenskaplig grund och sätter rättvisa i centrum.