Dokumentationens betydelse i matchningsprocessen - En kvalitativ studie om familjehemssekreterares syn på dokumentation

Sammanfattning

Foster care placements constitute a central intervention within Swedish social services. Matching children with suitable foster families is considered essential for ensuring a stable living environment for the child. This matching process relies heavily on documentation and the transfer of information between professionals. This study aims to examine how foster care secretaries use and evaluate documentation in the matching process, how the quality of documentation affects professional assessments, and how the child’s perspective is expressed in the process. The study is based on a qualitative research approach using semi-structured interviews with six foster care secretaries from three municipalities in southern Sweden. The collected data were analyzed through Michael Lipsky’s theory of street-level bureaucracy in combination with a child’s perspective from the sociology of childhood. The results show that documentation plays a crucial role in the matching process and serves as an important foundation for the documentation. Documentation may affect the ability to gain a comprehensive understanding of the child’s needs and circumstances. The results further indicate that the child’s perspective is often mediated through interpretations made by professionals rather than through the child’s own voice. Consequently, foster care secretaries emphasize the importance of complementary information to create more accurate and sustainable matches between children and foster care families.