Skolkuratorers samverkan med socialtjänsten : En kvalitativ studie om skolkuratorers upplevelse av samverkan och möjligheten att utveckla samverkan utifrån den egna yrkesrollen

The aim of this study was to investigate how school counselors experienced collaboration with social services and whether they felt they have the ability to improve upon this collaboration. The empirical data consists of qualitative interviews with eight school counselors from public schools, ages 13 to 15, in eight separate municipalities in the Stockholm area. The main results showed that the school counselors recognized the positive benefits from collaboration, but that they in practice experienced difficulties turning this into a high-quality collaboration. The school counselors experienced that due to uncertain expectations in the collaboration it led to unclear distribution of areas of responsibilities. The school counselors expressed small or no possibilities for them to improve upon collaboration but pointed out that higher commitment and a positive attitude are valuable attributes to improving collaboration. The results of the interviews were analyzed using the new institutional theory of organization and the role theoretic perspective. The conclusion states that the school counselors can help improve collaboration by taking initiative to better communication in order to clarify the collaborators expectations and conditions. The study highlights importance of school counselors trying to overcome obstacles and difficulties presented by different conditions of different organizations.