Stability is vital for the development, health and relationships of children in family foster care. Instability can lead to social and school issues, low self-esteem and diminished trust in caregivers. This article examines the risk and protective factors for stability for these children. Data, drawn from case files in six municipalities (n = 116), combine qualitative and quantitative analyses for a comprehensive understanding. Twenty children from each municipality were selected, with 10 in stable placements (lived in one family foster home for over a year) and 10 in unstable placements (lived in at least two different family foster homes). Quantitative results highlight the importance of factors like familiar placements, a child's age at the time of placement, behavioural challenges and the number of children in the foster home. Stable placements were more common in homes with fewer children (including foster and biological children). Qualitative findings show that in some instances, breakdowns in foster care placements could not be foreseen, often arising from stressful events within the foster family's life after the child's placement. Additionally, we observed that breakdowns sometimes resulted from foster parents lacking the necessary resources to address the child's requirements, particularly in cases involving children with behavioural challenges or extensive needs.

Children have the right to be informed and to express their views on all matters affecting them. When children are placed in foster care, social services are responsible for ensuring that the child receives 'good care'. This requires a matching process. Matching means that children and foster families must 'fit together'. Matching can be understood as a multistage process in which the child has the right to participate. With Sweden as the case in point, this article examines children's participation in the matching process and addresses the following research questions: What factors are associated with children's participation? How and when are children involved in the matching process? When children are involved, which aspects of matching are important to them, according to the professionals? Data was drawn from case files in six municipalities (n = 90) and interviews with professionals (n = 50) working with foster care. Quantitative and qualitative analyses were combined to provide a comprehensive understanding. Quantitative analysis shows significant associations between child involvement and certain child characteristics, including gender, age, and whether the child has a diagnosis. Qualitative analysis shows that children's involvement is limited, and when they are involved, it is generally at a late stage in the process.

The concept of matching refers to the process of selecting a family foster home to fit an individual child in placement. Matching is important for the quality of care, as the carers need the necessary resources to meet the child's needs. Failure in matching can have negative consequences, such as a 'breakdown'. The aim of this article is to explore the social workers' practice when matching children and foster carers to ensure the children will receive good care and avoid a placement change. The article uses a qualitative approach and is based on interviews with 31 participants. Social workers and managers at municipal social services, as well as consultants, were interviewed about their work. The professionals reflected on what aspects they perceive as most important in matching and what challenges they encounter that complicate the process. Narratives of successful matches often focused on the characteristics, competence and experience of the foster carers to meet the needs of the children. Some of the challenges highlighted were time pressure and a lack of family foster homes to choose from. This means that professionals have to compromise and prioritise what is most important in relation to the needs of the child.

Children with disabilities are over-represented in foster care and exposed to more disruptions. This is unfortunate because they need long-term relationships and predictability, as well as access to special schools and health care. Disruption can be the result of a poor match between the child and the foster family. In this article, we focus on the matching process in relation to children with disabilities. Zeijlmans et al. describe matching as the process by which social workers move from principles of good matching to realistic matching, depending on existing premises. Using their model, we analyse the matching process for children with disabilities in Sweden. The study is based on 31 individual interviews and six group interviews with social workers and social work managers. They describe how they take into account the family climate, family composition and prior knowledge and/or experience of disability in the foster home. However, disruptions occur even when these conditions are met. Stable placements seem to be more related to the fostered child's progress when the family's efforts are rewarded. We also address the complex issue of what disability actually means in the context of foster care, given the interrelatedness of trauma, maltreatment and impairment.

Matching a child with a foster home is a professional practice with considerable room for discretion since there are no specific guidelines in Sweden. The aim is to describe what knowledge do social workers’ assessments build upon in the matching process. The material consists of matching investigation files of 116 children from 6 municipalities in Sweden. A data form was used to assemble excerpts of descriptions of the child’s needs and how the family would be expected to meet the child’s needs. The findings show that social workers describe the child’s basic needs in line with the theory of Maslow and the ability of foster parents to form attachment and take a child perspective. Specific needs of the child are motioned regarding medical diagnoses and challenging behaviour of the child. This focus on basic needs is due to several circumstances, a shortage of available foster homes and that the matching social worker seldom meets the child, hence the child’s interests and wishes are seldom known. Implications for practice concern the right for children to be involved in the decision-making process and for the social worker to take in to account the specific needs of the child.

During the last decade, it has become a practice in child protection in Sweden, to hire private consultants to perform child protection investigations. The aim of the present study is to investigate what consequences the use of consultants and the organisation of their work have for the use of professional discretion in child protection practice. Social service managers, social workers, and private consultants from 22 municipalities and 10 town districts were interviewed. The findings show that in most child protection units, the hired consultants are organised separately from the social workers employed by the municipality, but they work under close control from managers. In a few units, the consultants have been invited to work in pairs with social workers. The chosen strategy has consequences for how the consultants can apply epistemic discretion in the workplace and the room for discretion, conditions which in the long run pose risks for the development of professional practice with the diminishing use of discretion.

Under det senaste årtiondet har det utvecklats till en etablerad praktik att hyra in privata konsulter som genomför barnavårdsutredningar i socialtjänsten. Syftet med artikeln är att undersöka vilka konsekvenser användning av konsulter och speciellt hur deras verksamhet organiseras, får för professionellt utövande och utveckling av kunskap i barnavården. Socialchefer, socialsekreterare och privata konsulter från 22 kommuner och 10 stadsdelar har intervjuats. Resultaten visar konsulter oftast organiseras i en separat verksamhet åtskild från kommunens socialsekreterare men med en nära övervakning av enhetschefer. I några kommuner har konsulter arbetat tillsammans med socialsekreterare. Den valda strategin får konsekvenser för hur kunskap kan utvecklas i arbetsgruppen och för konsulternas utrymme att använda sitt professionella diskretionära utrymme. Detta får i sin tur konsekvenser för utsatta barn. Avslutningsvis diskuteras vilken betydelse utvecklingen av privata konsulter i barnavårdsutredningar har för kunskapsutvecklingen i det sociala arbetet där frågan reses om risk för en de-professionalisering.

This article explores the occurrence of turning points in life courses structured by co-occurring psychiatric disabilities and addiction. Persons with co-occurring psychiatric disabilities and addiction tend to live vulnerable lives regarding their housing, economic resources, and personal and professional relations, and often require extensive, collaborative care. The present aim is to discover how turning points appear throughout life courses structured by co-occurring psychiatric disabilities and addiction. We draw upon a life course approach and the theoretical concept of turning points, focusing on how turning points appear throughout life courses. Using a narrative method, twelve persons were interviewed about their experiences of turning points. The findings based upon a narrative analysis suggest that turning points develop starting points, such as new starts or re-starts in life courses. Findings imply that turning points develop through crucial changes in persons' life courses, contributing to personal progress, improved mental health, and reduced or ended addiction. Narratives further reveal how turning points emerge in individual and structural contexts; the most common individual factors were personal circumstances, such as mental and physical resistance, one's own motivation to change one's life situation, and relationships with children, while the most frequent structural and contextual circumstances were in narratives about compulsory care, rejection from authorities, and experienced trauma. This study demonstrates the need for professionals to consider persons' wishes and to offer individualized support when it is requested - which we term timing - in order for these persons to develop healthier lives that include children, employment, and hobbies.

För att möta dagens och morgondagens samhällsutmaningar krävs kunskap ur ett bredare och större perspektiv. På Linnéuniversitetet samlar vi därför framstående forskning, utbildning och samverkan i något vi kallar kunskapsmiljöer. Våra kunskapsmiljöer är tvärvetenskapliga för att ta ett mångsidigt grepp om utmaningarna.

Inom kunskapsmiljön Hållbar hälsa arbetar vi för att främja hälsa och välbefinnande för alla människor i alla åldrar. Några av de utmaningar som vi tar oss an är:

·        Demografiska förändringar

·        Ändrade mönster för funktionshinder och sjukdomar

·        Traumatiska händelser 

·        Brist på delaktighet 

·        Organisatoriska utmaningar

Men med en åldrande befolkning och fler personer som lever länge med kroniska sjukdomar både ökar och förändras vårdbehoven samtidigt. Dessa faktorer, tillsammans med ökad migration, globalisering samt förändrade behov av hälsovård, är de demografiska utmaningar vi behöver inrikta oss mot. De förändringar i livsstilar som vi ser idag, till exempel näringsbrist på grund av mindre hälsosamma matvanor och en ökande psykisk ohälsa måste också adresseras. 

Den digitala utvecklingen ger oss helt nya möjligheter till en mer effektiv global hälsovård. Men även här finns utmaningar; ökad digitalisering kan leda till att människor stängs ute på grund av att de saknar kompetens eller den digitala utrustningen som krävs.

För att svara upp mot dessa utmaningar arbetar vi inom kunskapsmiljön brett med forskning, utbildning och samverkan inom en rad olika forskningsområden såsom:

·        e-Hälsa 

·        Palliativ vård 

·        Livsmedelsvetenskap

·        Ögon, syn och optometri

·        Humaniora, hälsa och medicin

·        Åldrande och handikapp

Vanligtvis kommunicerar vi i kunskapsmiljön vår forskning genom artiklar i vetenskapliga tidskrifter, på konferenser eller genom pressmeddelande till media. Denna bok tar ett annorlunda grepp och använder konstens metoder för att illustrera kunskapsmiljöns arbete. Boken har kommit till genom ett samarbete med Det kulturella universitetet som arbetar med att koppla samman konst och vetenskap för en fördjupad förståelse av komplex komplexa och ibland motsägelsefulla förhållanden

In Sweden, a practice has developed where the social services have started to hire private consultants in child protection investigations. This article analyses and compares the handling of child protection investigations carried out by private consultants and municipally employed social workers with regard to the reasons for the reports, the investigations, the assessments, and the decisions taken about interventions. The concepts funnel and filtering and children's participation are used in the analysis. The study has a mixed-methods design, where qualitative and quantitative data and analysis are combined and integrated. Data consists of 120 case files regarding the social service's handling of investigations as well as interviews with managers of social service departments. Findings: The results show several differences in the handling of child protection investigations carried out by social workers and private consultants in the municipalities studied. The private consultants worked to a greater extent with investigations that were initiated due to concerns about violence. Investigations conducted by consultants contained less information and specifically concerning children's perspective. These children also received interventions to a lesser extent than children assessed by the municipal social workers. Application: The study indicates that from a child's perspective, it matters whether a municipally employed social worker or a private consultant performs an investigation. Consultants generally work temporarily in a workplace, and it may therefore be more difficult to establish a trusting relationship with the children, which can be a barrier to children's participation and the implementation of a child's perspective.

I artikeln fördjupas kunskapen om den privata konsultens väg in i arbetet som konsult, tiden som konsult och väg ut mot andra uppdrag. Resultatet visar att vägen in och vägen ut, utifrån ett tidsgeografiskt perspektiv, vilar på samma restriktioner, det vill säga brist på makt och inflytande och krav på samordning. Tilläggas kan en önskan om frihet som sedan övergår till en längtan efter trygga anställningsvillkor. För studiens respondenter blev tiden som konsult ett tillfälligt mellanrum och det är viktigt att det blir så även för socialförvaltningar. Risken finns dock att det blir en mer permanent lösning på svåra situationer.