Stress vid orosanmälan En kvantitativ studie om stress vid orosanmälan inom yrkesgruppen skolkuratorer

Abstract: Author(s): Linnea Östermark & Emma Sjölin Title: “Stress when reporting to social services” –A quantitative study on stress when reporting to social services in the profession school counselors. Supervisor: Dolf Tops Assessor: Lotti Ryberg Welander In Sweden, school counselors and other professions who works with children have an obligation to notify social services if they sense a concern for a child, 14 chapter 1 § Social Services Act (SFS 2001:453). We investigated which factors that can affect the counselors work environment, when reporting to social services. The factors we focused on are; how support from colleagues and headmaster where perceived by the school counselors, how the school counselors perceived their collaboration with the social services, if the school counselor where at risk of being exposed to threats and violence. We also considered the aspect of the school counselor’s workload and resources when reporting to social services. We chose school counselors as our respondents because they have an undefined professional roll while working at schools. The choice of method is a quantitative method. Therefore, questionnaires where used to collect material. We sent out 100 questionnaires to school counselors in the municipalities of Skåne. We used questionnaires because we felt that our presence should not affect the responses but also to ensure that the respondents had total anonymity. All respondents are working at elementary schools with children of different ages. The respondents have different length of experience in their profession. They also work at different schools and municipalities. The resources that respondents use differ because it is up to each municipality to allocate resources to schools. Our study showed that the majority of school counselors experienced stress when reporting to social services and this could prove to have a physical and psychological impact, including fatigue, difficulty sleeping, stomach ache, muscles ache, anxiety, depression and frustration. According to Göransson et. al (2016, p. 114), can stress affect health for the worse. About half of the school counselors communicated that they receive the support of colleagues, while more than half communicated that they receive the support of the headmaster. Respondent also communicated that there is room for improvement in the collaboration between school counselors and social services.