Föräldrastöd som "samhällsproblem" : Tankar, idéer och erfarenheter från Norrbotten

This study aimed to examine how parental support has been implemented in both a large and a small community in northern Sweden. The study also aimed to describe different parenting actor´s thoughts, ideas and experiences in regards to parenting, since these are likely to be relevant to the actions implemented. The focus in this study was to study universal and selective preventive parenting interventions. In addition, the boundaries of this qualitative and comparative study were to describe parental support in a smaller and larger municipality in Norrbotten, from a strategic level as well as a more operational level. The study also describes parental support in Norrbotten from a county perspective as well as that of an NGO. The theoretical framework consists of Carol Lee Bacchi´s "What's the problem?" - approach, which is complemented with previous research on the welfare state and parental support, enabling the society's offer of parenting support interventions to be illuminated from both a social con-structivist and a historical perspective. The results of the first survey shows mainly that there are some different prerequisites for implementing parenting interventions in a smaller or a larger municipality, the results also show that the conditions of the various universal parenting interventions studied are different. Finally, the outcome of the second study shows mainly that the conditions differ between the smaller and the larger community. For this part it appears also that various social changes are some of the reasons that parental support is needed. To sum up my conclusions of the study: The informants believe that parental support is needed for various reasons and that the perspectives of the organizations differ. The informants felt that there was a difficulty to get parents to devote time to attending parenting circles. The major difficulty that parenting actors described was about reaching the parents of those children who need it most.Validerat; 20110727 (anonymous