När socialsekreteraren möter ett barn som är gift : En studie om moraliska dilemman och handlingsutrymme.
(2017) SOPA63 20162School of Social Work
- Abstract
- The aim of this study was to examine how social welfare workers identify, reason about and handle the moral dilemmas that can occur in the assessment of the child’s best interest when the child is married. Due to the increased presence of unaccompanied children that are married when seeking asylum in Sweden, the social services were challenged during the fall in 2015. There was no clear direction on how to handle the situation and the social services has been criticized by a large public including politicians and authorities.The criticism was founded upon the fact that child marriage is illegal in Sweden and the fact that social welfare workers placed the married child together with its spouse. As a response the National Board of Health... (More)
- The aim of this study was to examine how social welfare workers identify, reason about and handle the moral dilemmas that can occur in the assessment of the child’s best interest when the child is married. Due to the increased presence of unaccompanied children that are married when seeking asylum in Sweden, the social services were challenged during the fall in 2015. There was no clear direction on how to handle the situation and the social services has been criticized by a large public including politicians and authorities.The criticism was founded upon the fact that child marriage is illegal in Sweden and the fact that social welfare workers placed the married child together with its spouse. As a response the National Board of Health and Welfare formulated guidelines for the social welfare workers on how to handle the target group. The guidelines emphasize individual assessments based on the best interest of the child. We have completed seven semi-structured interviews combined with a vignette with the social welfare workers most likely to encounter married children in their profession. The theoretical frame of this study is mainly street-level bureaucracy to analyze what shapes the social welfare worker’s discretion and how they use it when dealing with dilemmas.We found that most social welfare workers identify a dilemma in the assessments, both when it comes to the child’s best interest and cultural consideration. We have identified varied strategies in dealing with the dilemmas that occur and categorized these into four actors (moral actor, bureaucratic actor, ambivalent actor and principled actor). We further discovered a lack of individual assessments in many of the actors. The actors illustrate the difference in treatment the married children could possibly experience. We argue that individual resources are the main reason behind the difference in how they use their discretion and approaches. (Less)
Please use this url to cite or link to this publication:
http://lup.lub.lu.se/student-papers/record/8899595
- author
- Hagnell, Linnéa LU and Kyrklund, Liz LU
- supervisor
- organization
- course
- SOPA63 20162
- year
- 2017
- type
- M2 - Bachelor Degree
- subject
- keywords
- moral dilemmas, social welfare workers, discretion, child marriage, vignette, semi- structured interview, street- level bureaucracy, social work
- language
- Swedish
- id
- 8899595
- date added to LUP
- 2017-01-19 09:12:35
- date last changed
- 2017-01-19 09:12:35
@misc{8899595,
abstract = {{The aim of this study was to examine how social welfare workers identify, reason about and handle the moral dilemmas that can occur in the assessment of the child’s best interest when the child is married. Due to the increased presence of unaccompanied children that are married when seeking asylum in Sweden, the social services were challenged during the fall in 2015. There was no clear direction on how to handle the situation and the social services has been criticized by a large public including politicians and authorities.The criticism was founded upon the fact that child marriage is illegal in Sweden and the fact that social welfare workers placed the married child together with its spouse. As a response the National Board of Health and Welfare formulated guidelines for the social welfare workers on how to handle the target group. The guidelines emphasize individual assessments based on the best interest of the child. We have completed seven semi-structured interviews combined with a vignette with the social welfare workers most likely to encounter married children in their profession. The theoretical frame of this study is mainly street-level bureaucracy to analyze what shapes the social welfare worker’s discretion and how they use it when dealing with dilemmas.We found that most social welfare workers identify a dilemma in the assessments, both when it comes to the child’s best interest and cultural consideration. We have identified varied strategies in dealing with the dilemmas that occur and categorized these into four actors (moral actor, bureaucratic actor, ambivalent actor and principled actor). We further discovered a lack of individual assessments in many of the actors. The actors illustrate the difference in treatment the married children could possibly experience. We argue that individual resources are the main reason behind the difference in how they use their discretion and approaches.}},
author = {{Hagnell, Linnéa and Kyrklund, Liz}},
language = {{swe}},
note = {{Student Paper}},
title = {{När socialsekreteraren möter ett barn som är gift : En studie om moraliska dilemman och handlingsutrymme.}},
year = {{2017}},
}