School attendance problems (SAPs) have received increased attention internationally in recent years; however, there are still few qualitative studies that explore attendance promotion from the perspective of young people with such experiences and who have managed to increase their attendance. This study contributes by focusing on six young people's experiences of and perspectives on pathways to increased attendance and support related to SAPs in Sweden. Qualitative interviews were conducted with young people with experiences of SAPs, and a thematic analysis was conducted. The results reveal that a combination of relational (informal) and formal support, mainly in the social and learning environment in school, but also from actors outside school, stood out as helpful in increasing their attendance. The young people emphasized that schools should listen to them, understand, offer inclusive support and hope in order to promote attendance. The results might be understood in light of recognition theory by stressing the significance of individual recognition in school in order to promote attendance and that SAPs might be understood as a way for young people to protect themselves from a lack of recognition in different spheres within the school context.

This article contributes to understanding school attendance during and after the COVID-19 pandemic in Germany and Sweden. Sweden presents a unique European case, as compulsory schools largely remained open with only brief closures, while Germany, opted for extended school closures. This study explores how changes in lower secondary students’ attendance – and schools’ efforts to support attendance – can be understood in relation to each country’s education and welfare systems, and their policy decisions during the pandemic. Focus-group interviews were conducted with school personnel in both countries and analysed by an international research team. The findings suggest that the pandemic and the measures implemented in schools affected students’ opportunities, challenges and willingness to attend school regularly. The described experiences highlighted how consequences varied across student groups, including those in different school grades, with differing access to digital tools, special educational needs (SEN) or previous school attendance problems (SAPs).

Introduction: School attendance problems (SAPs) affect both the education and development of young learners. There is a need to better understand what supports are needed to overcome and prevent SAPs from students’ perspectives. The aim of the current study is to explore students’ perspectives on what challenges they faced, and what they perceived as helpful in overcoming attendance challenges on their pathways towards completing their education.

Method: We conducted interviews with students (n = 9) in a local comprehensive school (Stadtteilschule) in the city-state Hamburg in Germany. Students were in their final year before obtaining a certificate that qualifies them for possible admission to post-secondary education. Data was analyzed using qualitative content analysis.

Results: Findings show that students experienced complex challenges to school attendance that were associated with emotional distress, negative school experiences, and reduced well-being. Our findings point to common protective mechanisms in students’ perceptions of what helped them overcome SAPs. The key drivers of school attendance are located within students and their social contexts, including personal resilience, supportive relationships at school, and the social environment.

Discussion: Based on students’ views, we present a model that illustrates the interconnectedness of perceived challenges and supports in the function of risk and protective factors moving across ecological systems in the development of SAPs. We highlight how these areas can guide prevention and intervention to support students in successfully completing their education and transitioning into multiple post-secondary pathways.

This article explores which students–with regard to gender, socio-economic background and migration background–skip school in Germany, Japan, Sweden and the United Kingdom (UK) according to PISA data. Students who skip school are observed in many countries, but there is not much systematic research that studies this across countries. Comparable data is to a large extent missing. PISA data offers an opportunity to use comparable data. In PISA, students were asked in 2018, 2015 and 2012 whether they had skipped school a whole day in the last two weeks prior to their completion of the PISA student questionnaire. Patterns of how absence relates to sociodemographic factors vary in countries and school systems. In the comparison between the four countries the UK stands out as having a higher percentage of students who have reported that they have skipped school than in the other countries. This does not seem to be related to any specific group of students. Japan also stands out with a lower percentage of students who have reported that they have skipped school. According to PISA data, skipping school is more related to socio-economic background than any other of the variables studied. The socio-economic background seems to be related to skipping school in all three PISA studies in Sweden and the UK. Gender seems not to be an important factor in the four countries. In Sweden and Germany there is a lower percentage of non-immigrant students who report that they have skipped school than first-and second-generation immigrant students. In the UK the figures are more ambiguous. When the percentages of students skipping school are compared over time and in the countries, it is difficult to find any trends, but the data only covered three measurements during a period of six years, which may be too short a time span to see trends.

School absenteeism is a challenge in many countries. Still, there are few comparisons between countries, which is partly due to a lack of shared definitions of concepts. This article makes use of PISA data to compare self-reported student absenteeism in Germany, Japan, Sweden, and the United Kingdom (UK). Three data sets are used, from 2012, 2015, and 2018. The self-reported absenteeism, which is referred to as truancy in the PISA studies, was measured as having skipped a whole school day at least once in the two full weeks before students completed the PISA student questionnaire.

The results show great variation between the studied countries, from 24.4% in the UK in 2015 to 1.5% in Japan in 2012. The percentage of students who reported having skipped school is much higher in the UK than in the other three countries. The differences between the countries concerning the percentage of students reporting having been absent from school are significant for all years, except between Sweden and Germany in 2015. Germany and the UK have a similar pattern in development, with the highest percentages in 2015, while Sweden and Japan have small (albeit not significant) increases from 2012 to 2018. The UK is the only country where the changes between 2012 and 2015 as well as between 2015 and 2018 were significant.

It is not possible to see any obvious patterns between the countries that might be linked to differences related to their welfare regimes, education systems, or values. To find such patterns, it may be necessary either to include more countries in a study or to conduct more in-depth studies on each country.

The purpose of this study has been to investigate and analyze what characterizes the group of unaccompanied youth who are referred to the Swedish secure care system (The National Board of Institutional Care), what causes the referrals and what charac-terizes the care in the secure care units, and how unaccompanied youth themselves perceive and understand both the referrals and the care. This has been investigated th-rough statistical analysis of SiS documentation and register data, interviews with SiS staff and social service staff, as well as interviews with unaccompanied youth referred to secure care.

The results show that unaccompanied youth are a heterogeneous group with a wide range of problems, and problems that partly differ compared to other youth referred to SiS. One the one hand, unaccompanied youth are perceived to have less extensive social problems compared to other youth in secure care, but on the other hand some have both heavier and more complex problems that have occurred for several years. The latter group is often referred to the specific category called “street kids”. The unaccompanied youth are also perceived to have more mental health and migration related problems in addition to limited understanding of the Swedish society.

The study indicates that both SiS and the social services have organizational limita-tions to meet the needs of unaccompanied youth, and that these limitations lead to con-flicts about how the problems should be defined, and which organization should have the main responsibility for the care of unaccompanied youth.

The study highlights differences both within and between the secure care units re-garding the staff’s expressed views and attitudes towards unaccompanied youth. The study indicates the importance of the management’s values and norms, and how they support common and professional approaches in the daily work with unaccompanied youth. SiS staff highlights language barriers as a significant obstacle in the work with unaccompanied youth, but they also provide strategies for overcoming these barriers through conscious communication and trust building approaches, and the recruitment of multilingual staff, Swedish education and translation of treatment programs.

Powerlessness and the unknown future, together with the lack of freedom, appear to be the most difficult part of the SiS placement for unaccompanied youth. Although edu-cation and regular school activities seem to be the most helpful support, school within SiS is also perceived as not a “real” school, because of too few teachers and subjects. The significance of the SiS care can be understood as linked to both relational aspects and treatment content, but also to relations, or lack thereof, outside SiS. In both staff and youth interviews, lack of supportive and trustful relations in addition to repeated break-ups from both professionals and other social contexts are highlighted as proble-matic for the unaccompanied youth referred to secure care. Compared to all secure care referrals, unaccompanied youth were more often acutely referred to SiS and a large proportion of the acute unit placements exceeded the SiS gui-delines for maximum care time in acute care units. Acute unit placements mean longer and indefinite time in secure care. For youth without a residence permit, the uncertain-ty that comes with the asylum process is also added to their uncertain life situation. The language barrier and lack of knowledge about Swedish rules and norm system also re-duces these young people’s ability to understand what is happening in their life, which increases their vulnerability in the secure care situation.

Syftet med den här studien har varit att undersöka och analysera vad som kännetecknar gruppen ensamkommande ungdomar som placeras inom Statens institutionsstyrelse (SiS), vad som föranleder dessa placeringar och kännetecknar insatserna från SiS, samt hur ensamkommande ungdomar själva uppfattar och förstår placeringen. Detta har undersökts genom analys av befintlig dokumentation inom SiS, intervjuer med personal från socialtjänst och SiS, samt med SiS-placerade ensamkommande ungdomar.

Resultaten visar att ensamkommande ungdomar som placeras på SiS är en heterogen grupp med stor spännvidd i problemens karaktär och omfattning, och att problemen delvis skiljer sig från andra SiS-placerade ungdomar. Inom gruppen ensamkommande ungdomar fanns både de som uppfattades ha mindre omfattande sociala problem än andra SiS-placerade ungdomar, och ungdomar som beskrevs ha en tyngre och mer komplex problematik. Till den senare gruppen nämndes ofta "gatubarn" som definierad kategori. Som specifikt för de ensamkommande ungdomarna framhölls också mer "psykiatrisk" och migrationsrelaterad problematik, samt att dessa ungdomar har liten kunskap om det svenska samhället.

Studien tyder på att både SiS och socialtjänsten har svårigheter med att organisatoriskt möta de ensamkommande ungdomarnas behov inom ramen för befintlig verksamhet, samt att detta lett till konflikter om hur problemen ska definieras och vilken organisation som ska bära det huvudsakliga ansvaret för att praktiskt ta hand om dem.

Syftet med artikeln är att analysera organisering av och synen på mottagandet av ensamkommande barn inom socialtjänsten våren 2016 – en tidpunkt då antalet asylsökande ensamkommande barn nyligen nått en extrem omfattning under kort tid. Artikeln baseras på en totalundersökning (enkät) av socialtjänstens resurser, organisering och insatser i arbetet med ensamkommande barn och ungdomar. Resultatet visar att trots en statlig ambition om normalisering och integrering av mottagandet i den sociala barnavården, har en tydlig respons från socialtjänsten varit att specialisera verksamheten utifrån den ökande klientgruppen. Den här studien ger inget belägg för att specialiseringen lett till bättre kvalitet, tvärtom indikeras ett positivt samband mellan kvalitet och en integrerad organisation. Främst tyder studien på att resurser, övergripande samverkan och engagerade politiker har varit viktigt för hur man inom socialtjänsten uppfattar möjligheten att anpassa stödinsatser efter behov och att följa upp insatser. Noterbart med tanke på tidpunkten för studien är att  en majoritet av respondenterna (företrädesvis chefer inom socialtjänstens verksamhet för ensamkommande barn) var förhållandevis nöjda med det stöd som erbjöds till ensamkommande barn/ungdomar, dock påtalades brister i möjlighet att följa upp och tillgång till insatser som matchar målgruppens behov.

The number of unaccompanied minors arriving in Sweden has grown rapidly in recent years and the care of these children has become a significant part of the Swedish child welfare system. In this article, we discuss what has happened to the residential care market (known as HVB for short) in which most of these children are placed by the municipal social services. The specific questions we seek to illuminate are: Which type of residential care actors have expanded their operations? Have new actors entered the residential care market for unaccompanied minors? How can we understand changes in the residential care market in the current situation? The study is based upon the Health and Social Care Inspectorate’s registry of all licensed residential care units in Sweden. We compare data for all residential care units that targeted unaccompanied minors in 2014 with an updated register from March 2016. The residential care units are categorized based on organizational type (municipal, large and small private companies, municipal entrepreneurs, and non-profit organizations) and the article illustrates the composition of organizational type. The results show that despite the growing need for residential care for unaccompanied minors, the composition of organizational type has not changed significantly since 2014. However, the number of beds for unaccompanied minors is higher than for traditional HVBs, and it has increased between 2014 and 2016. The study also indicates that the composition of residential care for unaccompanied minors differs from the residential care market for other groups of children and young people.