Thesis (Ph. D.)--Washington State University, December 2008. / Title from PDF title page (viewed on July 10, 2009). "Department of Political Science." Includes bibliographical references.

This study aimed to investigate how social workers within the domestic violence team in the city of Stockholm experience their knowledge and discretion. To answer the purpose, three questions were formulated: 1. How do social workers experience their competence in matching interventions with client's needs? 2. How much discretion do social workers experience regarding designing interventions? 3. Which organizational challenges do social workers recognize in their work with domestic violence? This study is based on a qualitative method where six semi structured interviews were conducted with professional social workers. The theoretical point of departure were Lipsky's theory of street level bureaucracy, the term discretion and previous research in the field. The results showed that social workers experienced good knowledge, however they were limited in their interventions which affected the help they could offer. The social workers described their discretion as wide, but the delegation system and limited interventions were factors that restricted their discretion. Economy and cooperation were described as organizational challenges. The economy limited the help social workers could offer. Cooperation was described as necessary but difficult to achieve, both because it required a lot from oneself and because other social work units lacked knowledge about domestic violence.