Violent prevention research findings suggest different key aspects for the application of a powerful prevention strategy. The project tries to tackle the complexity of supporting a healthy mental development in children while also meeting the requirments for succesful prevention. Resilience promotion proved to be a suitable concept for implementing a violence prevention strategy in secondary schools.  This two-year practice-oriented research project, with international partners from five contries had the aim of supporting schools in developing a resilience-promoting and violence-preventing strategy in a multi-level and multi-setting approach. As a result, a toolbox for resource-oriented training in schools for teachers and pupils was created. The measures undertaken during the project have been evaluated empirically and the iflunce of resilience-promoting acivities in school has been assessed. Different national implementations in easch country are presented as well as international comparisons, reflections and perspectives.

This article contains a presentation of experiences gained of research circles as a participant-based method for the development of knowledge and the creation of change in practice. The starting point is two international projects whose aim is to develop knowledge about the professional work being done with young people who exhibit violent behaviour. In the Swedish sub-studies, research circles are used as a method for developing such knowledge as well as for creating change in practice. The research circle as a method has its theoretical starting point in action research and participant-oriented research. The results of the study illustrate how research circles can contribute to the creation of a knowledge process through the dialogue in the group and the facilitation of reflection over different work approaches in one’s own work, even if it is a method that does not suit everyone. The results also show that the research circle can lead to a change process in the actual work by enhancing transprofessional collaboration and leading to an increase in the participants’ awareness and evaluation of their work with violent children and young people.

The results of an erlier project "Implementation and evaluation of quality criteria concerning the professional support for violent children and adolescents" indicate that professionals in the context school (e.g. teachers) show an increased need of acquiring a wider range of options for dealing with phenomena related to violence in their schools. Within this project, a comprehensive conception which consider both the need for prevention and the need for intervention. The Main objecti was prevention of violence or violent behavior in schools by promoting pupils’ resilience and life skills. With focussing on the strengths of the children and adolescents a contribution to counteract social processes of exclusion and stigmatization which also use to occur in the organizational framework of the “institution school”. The project coaching the “institution school” in dealing with the great variety of the phenomenon of violence. In the Swedish part of the project used the method of research circles with teachers and other school staff, interviews with principals, interviews and questionairs with pupils, toolbox, mapping.

In most European countries, there is a great need for further education and competence development of professionals supporting young people with violent behavior. To fulfill this need, innovative approaches based on quality guidelines are required. In a comparative research-practice transfer project, partners of Germany, France, Poland, Sweden and Switzerland co-operated for two years to implement and evaluate two different strategies for further education based on the quality criteria developed in a previous study. These quality criteria aim at improving co-operation between different help systems, describe necessary changes in professional attitudes and methods and present more effective strategies for institutions to support young people with violent behavior. The project has resulted in a validation of such pivotal criteria, and driven forward recommendations for the implementation of competence development measures.

During later years it has become more common that young adults with intellectual disability organize themselves. Together they try to increase the power over their own lives and at the same time influence the community (local society) in the direction for increased participation. Those self-organized activities, self adovacy, can be understood as resistance against the society’s views and treatment of people with intellectual disability and against traditional ways to offer and organize support and service. The aim is to increase the knowledge about the new self-organized activities for young adults with intellectual disability in Sweden. 

The study will map/chart, describe and analyze 1) the meaning for the members and how the participation in the organization influence their identifications, self-determination, relations and daily life 2) the character of the organization and its activities, how they are organized and what they contain and 3) how the organization has influenced/changed the societies/environments attitudes and treatment. A strategically sample is based on the organizations relations to the established disability movement, i.e. both self-organized movements that exist as a section in the disability movement and those that are free-standing. With case studies, four organizations will be observed closely by using interview, group-interviews, observations and documentation analyzes. The self-organized movements indicate an important change in society and the project is expected to find results that are of importance for the target group and for shaping future support and treatment from society to persons with intellectual disabilities.