Epsilon Archive for Student Projects

Abstract

In Sweden we have compulsory school attendance but still, some children and teenagers never graduate from elementary school. There are numerous reasons why, some being problematic home conditions and others that the student has neurodevelopmental problems. Long-term effects of incomplete primary school education for the adolescent are e.g., employment difficulties and additionally cost society a substantial sum of money. A one-year delayed start to working life for one person costs Swedish society around half a million SEK. For a lifelong exclusion the cost is 10–12 million SEK. In addition, connections have been made between school truancy and crime.
Today we have different service dogs that work and help humans with a variety of tasks. Some social service dogs already support the adolescents with problematic school absence and help them graduate, but there could be more support by these dogs in the school sector.
The aim of this study was to investigate how social service dogs can contribute to get students with problematic school absence back to school, how the dogs’ welfare is affected by its work, how to implement the service dogs and explore possible societal benefits. The results from this literature study that collected information from different books and scientific articles, reveals that service dogs may be beneficial for the students. For example, the dogs can motivate students to perform better in school and support students with learning problems. Moreover, an economic gain was seen when comparing the cost of a social service dog with the cost of one students delayed start to working life. No studies have found any concerns for welfare of the service dogs while working in schools. However, the results clearly showed that the work requires a lot from the dogs and that not all dogs would be suitable. Future studies ought to investigate possible implementations of regulations concerning social service dogs and more empiric studies observing both the working dogs and the student together.