Support and relief: the Swedish contact person and contact family program

The Social Services Act in Sweden allows people with children to be offered a contact person or a contact family to provide help and support in personal matters or in matters concerning the children. This legally regulated intervention is very much liked and the demand for it has increased year by year. Nothing in other countries quite corresponds to it. Virtually no research has been carried out on this, however, and systematic knowledge of how the intervention is used has been lacking. This article focuses on the application of the intervention to families with young children (0-3 years old) and how social welfare inspectors and contact persons and contact families evaluate it.