Kritiska faser i samverkan : En studie om logiker, spänningar och vakuum i institutioners samverkan kring skolgång för placerade barn och unga

Sammanfattning: The aim of this study is to contribute to an understanding of the need for collaboration in creating education plans and school placements for children and youth placed in out-of-home care. By interviewing nine representatives from social services, the municipal education department and primary and secondary schools, this study addresses tensions that arise in school planning in the critical phases for this target group: prior to placement in out-of-home-care and upon return home.Previous studies have found that children and youth placed in out-of-home care receive insufficient support for their education, and that collaboration functions better when the collaboration is well-anchored in organizational management, but worse, at an operational level, when there is less understanding of the collaborating partners’ competences and guidelines. This study has used the theory of institutional logics as a framework to highlight the material practices (routines and role descriptions) and symbolic constructions (intentions and values) that constitute each institution’s motive for organizational collaboration in providing schooling for children and youth in out-of-home-care. Through qualitative semi-structured interviews inspired by narrative method, it has emerged that social services are driven by an urgent logic, the education department by a judicial logic and the schools by both a pragmatic and a holistic logic. By creating procedures based on the interviewees' statements regarding prioritized tasks, the framework of institutional logics has clarified the tensions that arise when contrasting logics compete in the critical phases of child and youth placement. These tensions consist of a dichotomy between care and education, neither party seeing the entirety of the needs of the clients/students and shortcomings in communication. This study has also highlighted the presence of institutional voids in the collaboration process. There are elements in collaboration that the parties cannot influence, such as laws and guidelines on confidentiality, approaches to guardians of children and youth in placement as well as difficulties in collaborating with other municipalities as each one has different routines and expectations.