Services to Families with Children. A Study of Community Work in Uppsala

This article describes some of the results of a study of services to families and children in a suburban district, Sweden. Services included in the study were: maternal and child health care, child psychiatry, services for handicapped children, school health care, day care services, community social services and family counselling services. The baseline studies comprised analyses of official goals expressed in legislation and recommendations, interviews with local politicians and administrators, record studies, studies of working time distribution and questionnaires to field professionals and families. The results indicate that services with traditional goals and well-defined tasks (e.g. health supervision) were more satisfied with their goal attainment, less inclined to collaborate with other services, and more occupied with direct client work than services with non-traditional goals and vaguely defined tasks (e.g. strengthening democracy).