In this master’s thesis, we are looking into the welfare of vulnerable children; specifically children who are being placed in care. The aim of our master’s thesis is to find our what motivates, influences and is important for the social worker when choosing and matching a child and a foster placement.

Our information retrieval has shown that there is limited research and literature which can be used to answer our particular problem statement. Therefore, we have chosen the inductive way of reasoning as the basis of our study. Based on the inductive way of reasoning, we are very aware that no matter how open and curious we are when studying the informants’ lives, our own way of making sense of the world will influence our study.

Our starting point was qualitative interviews with four social workers, whereafter we have defined and divided our empirical research into themes, based on an open coding; then we have defined three general categories and lastly four different theory-based concepts. The four concepts are seen in the dedicated social worker, the self-assured one, the cooperative one and the methodical one. Together they represent some of the traits that the informants/social workers in this field of work have in common.

Our conclusion points to the fact that the social worker’s personality is important for the process of choosing and matching a child and a foster placement. Moreover, our conclusion points to the fact that not only is the social worker’s personality important, there are also external factors playing a part in the choice and match of a foster placement.

Finally, our conclusion shows that the way we thought about this field before working on our master’s thesis has not been proven. This discovery has been elaborated at the end of the thesis together with a newly published survey from Ankestyrelsen (the Danish board receiving and treating complaints about administrative decisions).