Vårdnadsöverflyttningar för barn placerade i familjehem. En kvalitativ studie om socialsekreterares bedömningar av barnets bästa.

Sammanfattning: The aim for this study was to explore how social workers describe their work with children’s placed in foster care when it comes to making desicions about custody transfer to foster parents. The law regulates that a custody transfer should be based on the best interests of the child which requires that an assessment is made by the social worker about the needs of the specific child. The method used in this study was semi-structured interviews which included nine social workers within social services in four different municipalities. The empirical findings were analysed based on Bengt Molander’s theoretical concept of practical reasoning as part of a discretionary assesments as well as two different institutional logics, a judicial logic and a welfare logic, discussed by Lina Ponnert. The results show that the social workers take different aspects into account when they reason about the best interests of the child regarding custody transfer to the foster parents. There seeems to be complex cases that requires discretionary assesments with weak warrants. The results also indicate that the social workers are impacted by the judicial review in district court in their considerations about custody transfer for the children placed in foster care, which can be understood as a consequence of the different logics which the social services and the legal system derrives from.