Different social policies may impact on the effectiveness of one another, yet the few existing results on such complementarities largely stem from macro-level studies and little is known about the actual character of such policy complementarities. A more direct and potentially illuminating approach to studying complementarity is instead to investigate a specific group needing support from several policy areas. One such group is young people who are neither in employment nor in education and training (NEET), and the heterogeneous character of NEETs as well as the complexity and interrelatedness of their problems has been frequently emphasized. We study both the extent and character of policy complementarities vis-à-vis this multi-problem group as well as the relationship between these polices and the local NEET rate. We use a mixed-methods approach in which a quantitative analysis of individual NEET risks using administrative data for the whole Swedish population provides the basis for a qualitative study among local representatives from organizations working with NEETs in 20 strategically selected municipalities. Using multiple informant methodology, we collected unique data on the organization of measures in the areas of education, employment, health and social services from local professionals representing the different policy areas. Analyses using fsQCA show that compared to municipalities with higher-than-expected NEET rates, municipalities with lower-than-expected NEET rates more often provide social welfare support measures and work with a reinforcement mechanism such as multi-professional teams. Policy complementary is thus a result of direct institutional design aiming to promote inter-sectoral coordination.

Coordinated services are often seen as a solution to complex problems spanning organisational boundaries, such as preventing young people from being marginalised in education and employment. Based on secondary sources, we compare the three Scandinavian countries' paths from traditional public administration to new public management and then towards new public governance with its focus on service coordination. Our analysis shows: (A) Although the countries belong to the same welfare and activation regime, their shifts in governance paradigms are materialised in different coordination initiatives. (B) Given that coordination initiatives and their resulting organisational set-up may affect opportunities for delivering coordinated services at the frontline, we expect the Danish, and to some extent, the Norwegian system to provide better opportunities than Sweden, but this is still to be documented. (C) Four specific dimensions of an organisational set-up—authority, organisational integration, departmentalisation, and coordination mandate—can impact on opportunities to provide coordinated service provision.

Ett givet år är det ca 130 000 unga som varken arbetar eller studerar (UVAS) och en del av dem befinner sig utanför arbetsmarknaden och utbildningssystemet under en längre tid. Det har lett till olika initiativ på både nationell och lokal nivå, men det saknas analyser av insatser för att underlätta ungdomars övergång från skola till arbetsliv. Denna rapport syftar till att ge systematisk kunskap om lokala åtgärder för UVAS från kommuner, regioner, Arbetsförmedlingen och Försäkringskassan. Målet är att beskriva under vilka former aktörerna bedriver sitt arbete, hur samspelet mellan dem ser ut, samt hur utformningen av insatserna och organisationen förhåller sig till de lokala problemen. Rapporten sammanfattar tre separata explorativa studier baserade på ett strategiskt urval av Sveriges kommuner som behandlat i) förekomsten av lokala organisatoriska nätverk och vad som kännetecknar samverkan inom nätverken, ii) förekomsten av lokala institutionaliserade samarbeten och de lokala handläggarnas kunskaper om UVAS, och iii) omfattningen och utformningen av de lokala stödåtgärderna och i vad mån åtgärderna inom olika policyområden samspelar med varandra.

Youth not in employment, education or training (NEET) is a heterogeneous group in which many run the risk of long-term exclusion from the labor market and from society. Numerous national and international policy initiatives targeting NEETs have therefore been launched, often involving the creation of new programs and the establishment of new governance structures. Little is however known regarding the relationship between these governance structures and NEET rates. This is here explored using unique data on local governance structures in Sweden, data obtained through qualitative surveys with caseworkers in a sample of municipalities strategically selected based on a quantitative analysis of all Swedish municipalities. The results point to the importance of professional knowledge and problem formulation and question the centrality of organizational structures, but also indicate that there may be multiple ways to achieve a particular outcome.

Introduction. Ideas of internationalization at home and virtual exchange have emerged within the context of travel restrictions due to Covid, and because of increasing environmental awareness. However, digital teaching and learning comes with a new set of challenges, including lack of deep student interaction and a tendency towards unidirectional and passive pedagogical methods. 

The project aims to develop a digital module for facilitating virtual exchange, increasing international and intercultural competences for students in social work in the Nordic countries. Moreover, we aim to increase the interaction taking place between international student peers and students and an international group of teachers. Concretely, our ambition is to develop virtual teaching methods and content for one module in already existing courses at all partner universities, that will enable students to actively discuss, compare and reflect upon knowledge about institutional conditions of social work and their practical implications in Finland, Norway and Sweden.

Method. Taking the social work departments at the universities in Stockholm, Helsinki and Oslo as a case we will organize a small-scale joint virtual module at the bachelor level on Nordic comparative social policy and social work practice. For that we will using cross-national case presentations, discussions and comparative exercises. Our collaborative exchange will explore the historical, institutional and political similarities between the welfare policies of the Nordic countries and the differences in their policies, practices and discourses. Students will learn about the practical implications these similarities and differences have for social work. During fall 2021 and spring 2022 we started with a pilot study generating first results and giving valuable input for the further work.  

Results. As a first result, new virtual teaching methods and content will enable students to actively discuss, compare and reflect upon knowledge about institutional conditions of social work and their practical implications in Finland, Norway and Sweden. Second, a developing a joint platform will enable the provision of collaborative and reflective group portfolio teaching and learning. Third, we will improve student learning across comparative settings and digital student exchange. 

For youth in vulnerable life situations, pathways to employment can bechallenging, suggesting the need for coordinated services. The aim ofthis review is to explore the existing research on coordinated servicesfor youth in vulnerable life situations. Considering the heterogenousnature of the literature, we adopted a scoping review methodology. Weselected works from a base of 92 papers on youth, coordinated services,and pathways to work that were published in English during the periodof 1990–2018. Additionally, to identify research streams, we performeda bibliometric analysis using VOSviewer to create network maps basedon shared terms in the papers’ titles and abstracts. The synthesisedfindings show two streams of research that we refer to by the followingnarrative titles: (1) ‘Enabling transition to adulthood for youth withdisabilities or severe health problems’, and (2) ‘Preventing the socialexclusion of youth at risk’. The first stream seems to represent a moreestablished area(s) of research, while the second stream appears to bemore fragmented. The life situations of the youth in both streams,however, overlap, indicating possibilities for knowledge exchange, suchas social workers engaging in policy practices and advancing effortstowards enacting system changes.

Youth not in employment, education or training (NEETs) have been analyzedfrom either individual or macro-structuralperspectives, while policy discussionshave emphasized national policy. This disregards (i) the substantial variation inNEET rates within countries, and (ii) the importance of local governance for thisvariation. We examine these issues in Sweden through the lens of interactive governance.Theoretically, four aspects of collective action are highlighted: identificationof local NEET subgroups, perceptions of problems and of solutions, andstakeholder relationships. Empirically, an initial multi-levelregression analysis ofall 290 Swedish municipalities provided the basis for semi-structuredinterviewsregarding local work with NEETs in 20 strategically selected municipalities. Thequalitative data are here analyzed using fuzzy-setqualitative comparative analysis.The results suggest that municipalities where local governance combinesthree of the four aspects, namely identifying NEET subgroups and sharing perceptionsof problems and of solutions, have lower NEET shares than predicted.

Service integration—understood as cooperation and collaboration between sectors and organizations—is commonly employed in European countries as a response to internal fragmentation of social security systems. In this chapter, drawing on research from Europe, we show how countries differ on central dimensions regarding service integration aimed at the unemployed. Further, we discuss how service integration depends on countries’ historical and institutional conditions as they follow different reform pathways. We also show how service integration is not a “once and for all” decision but may change over time. We illustrate these points by comparing recent reforms in Norway and Sweden, which, despite being relatively similar welfare states, have developed very different levels of service integration. We conclude the chapter with some broader remarks about service integration and reform pathways.

Youth unemployment is a global issue, with supranational actors calling for policy responses, including early interventions such as outreach. This article examines how EU member states have translated the EU youth guarantee (YG) recommendation, focusing on early interventions in the form of outreach. Combining quantitative content analysis with corpus linguistics, we examined the YG implementation plans of 19 EU member states having differing institutional conditions, comparing if and how they have incorporated outreach in their policy agenda. Overall we found very little outreach in the YG-plans. In the outreach described, guidance and information on education and labour market efforts dominate, whereas social work and local level community work is largely absent. We found type of outreach to be related to institutional conditions. Our results also imply that getting member states to commit to early interventions such as outreach requires that the EU stress this issue with greater emphasis.

EU citizens from Central and Eastern Europe travelling to cities in other countries to make a better living have become an issue of major political concern across Europe. This study explores how professionals from Swedish municipal social service organizations in urban areas construct the phenomenon of poor visiting EU citizens. The impact of social constructions on the practice and design of policies makes it important to analyse how target groups, such as poor visiting EU citizens, are characterized and what normative assumptions are made about them. The study is theoretically based on Schneider and Ingram’s work on ‘Social Constructions of Target Populations’. Interviews with social workers in the three largest cities in Sweden were conducted. The results suggest a clear ambivalence among interviewees regarding how to conceptualize EU citizens. They were careful not to highlight any subgroups, instead defining the group as consisting of different individuals with varying needs. While the interviewees constructed members of the target group in a way similar to what Schneider and Ingram describe as dependents, they also attributed them with some agency. We conclude that this may be a reflection of the political and organizational setting in which social work with poor visiting EU citizens is conducted in Sweden.