Four months of opportunities : School success in child care investigations from the social worker’s perspective

The purpose of the study was to examine how social workers view their role's responsibilities, opportunities and challenges in young people's school success, in child care investigations. This important aspect in society has not, according to the authors of this essay, been sufficiently addressed in the past, especially not in child care investigations. The study consists of qualitative semi-structured interviews with nine social workers within two municipalities' individual and family care. The result was analyzed against the background of the systems theory and street-level bureaucracy. The result was compared with previous research, based on the concepts of school success, social workers's responsibility, cooperation, efforts, time frame and reporting of concerns. The results showed that school success includes grades, attendance and well-being. The opposite; school failure, seems to be a structural societal problem and not at all the young person's responsibility. In child care investigations, social workers, social services, parents, schools and psychiatry are responsible, but the boundaries within the system are sometimes very diffuse. The informants believe that they themselves, in individual conversations with the young person, and in collaboration with parents, the school and, to some extent, psychiatry, have opportunities to influence school success in child care investigations. Cooperation works to some extent with the school, but is lacking with psychiatry. The challenges with school success are further that school affairs have low interest among social workers, also in the organization, it’s not prioritized as an educational area, lack interventions and involve legal limitations