This study aims to shed highlight on the challenges social workers faced in autumn 2015 with the management of solitary refugee children. In the recent years due to war and conflict around the world Sweden have been one of the countries receiving thousands of refugee children fleeing from their homelands. The study is conducted with six qualifying interviews together with the social workers at the social administration of Örebro and Västerås.Throughout the study theories such as street-level bureaucrat’s dilemmas by Micheal Lipsky regarding survival techniques are presented together with ideas about rational democratic administration. The results of our informants are analyzed with the presence of this theory and this idea to find how well they correspond. With the help of our chosen theories it is our inclination that it will be possible to present the challenges and dilemmas these social workers were inflicted by during this time of great pressure and also the effect they can bring upon the legitimacy and the fundamental democratic values of our bureaucracies.