Hemlösa Barn i Sverige

Sammanfattning: The purpose of this essay was to examine social worker´s opinion about the causes of homelessness and it´s consequences for children (11-18 years old), from a social worker´s point of view. More specifically; what are the reasons for children to become homeless and what does it mean for the child´s daily life to be homeless? We also wanted to know what consequences the child´s homelessness can get, in short term and long term and the importance of risk and protective factors. The analysis was based on two perspectives; one helps us understand how the environment can affect an individual´s development in society and the other perspective focuses on describing and understanding the individual patterns of abnormal development, where time is a valuable factor. For the study we performed nine individual partly structured interviews on different categories of people. We interviewed four people from volunteer organizations, two social welfare secretaries, one book writer and two researchers in the field of homeless children. The result of our study shows that most children broke up from home because of a conflictual relationship with their parents. For the most part, it was about deficiencies in the home in one way or another. Our study also shows that the society needs to be better at capturing the children and put into measure earlier than is done today. There are far too many children who do not have a secure environment.