Tina Olsson

Tina Olsson is Professor of Social Work and Head of Discipline at the Department of Social Work and the Research School of Health and Welfare. Professor Olsson's work centers around issues relevant to the development, implementation, and testing of social interventions in practice settings and how the study of issues relevant to this line of research may be advanced. This interest grew out of over 10 years of direct service experience in the United States and Sweden with primarily youth populations and their families including: youth at risk of removal from the home, youth in out-of-home care, youth involved with the juvenile justice system, pregnant and/or parenting youth, and youth without stable housing. 

Tina Olsson has worked with various policy making bodies interested in improving the life chances of a variety of vulnerable populations such as: the Administration for Children and Families, Department of Health and Human Services, Washington D.C., USA; the World Bank Group, Washington, D.C., USA; the National Board of Health and Welfare, Stockholm, Sweden; the National Board of Institutional Care, Stockholm, Sweden; the Swedish Agency for Health Technology Assessment and Assessment of Social Services, Stockholm Sweden; the Ministry of Health, Riyadh, Saudi Arabia; and, the Ministry of Labor, Riyadh Saudi Arabia.

Professor Olsson is co-editor-in-chief of Nordic Social Work Research and editorial board member of Research on Social Work Practice. Professor Olsson is developer and author of the prevention program My Choice-My Way! (sve. Mitt val-min väg!), which aims to prepare youth and boost their success in transition from out-of-home care to independent living.

Current scholarly work

Tina Olsson is currently investigator, co-principal investigator or principal investigator of several externally funded projects. In addition, Tina Olsson is an active member of the Social work, Actors, Living conditions, research VEnue (SALVE) at the School of Health and Welfare, Jönköping University, the Nordic Network on Longitudinal Child Welfare Research (NORDLOCH) at the Department of Social Work, Stockholm University, the Research Network on Applied Developmental Psychology at the Department of Psychology, Stockholm University and the Network for Collaborative Research at the University of Borås. Tina Olsson was previously chair of the Intervention and Implementation Research platform at the Department of Social Work, Gothenburg University (2018 – 2022).

Current ongoing projects

• Promoting successful schooling for young offenders with ADH(D). A co-produced evaluation of the Homework, Organization, and Planning Skills (HOPS) intervention in Swedish social services;
• Leaving Care--a comparison study of implementation, change mechanisms, and effects of transition services for youth who leave societal care;
• Talking Mats to support involvement and choice and decision making around home care services for older people living with mild to moderate dementia;
• Suicide prevention through active measures – an evaluation of Agape 2017-2020;
• Early social emotional competence promotion and its prospective importance to preventing later mental illness;
• Pathways to employment.

Completed projects

• Take Charge for youth in their transition from societal care to independent lving: a feasibility study;
• The cost-effectiveness of MultifunC in Sweden;
• Quality of effectiveness studies in Swedish PhD theses across seven disciplines;
• Preschool Promoting Alternative THinking Strategies (PsPATHS);
• Five-year follow-up of the cost-effectiveness of MST;
• Resource use and costs for women with a double diagnosis in compulsory care;
• Cost-effectiveness of municipal and non-profit shelters’ work with women who have been victims of violence in the home, children that have witnessed violence in the home, and men that have perpetrated violence in the home;
• PREVIDENS - Prevention via evidens: a national multi-center, multi-site transportability study of Multisystemic Therapy (MST) in Sweden.