Over the past decade, several studies have been conducted on the extent to which social workers are subjected to threats and violence from clients. The results of these studies indicate that approximately one-third of social workers have experienced threats or violence from clients. Previous research also shows that social workers in the field of child and family services are at a higher risk of facing client-initiated threats and violence. Based on this statistics, along with the recent disinformantion campaign against the social services' work with the LVU-legislation, we found it interesting to focus our study specifically on social workers in the child and family domain. The purpose of our study was examine the experiences and perceptions of threat and violence from clients that social workers in the child and family domain have, and how these experiences have affected their professional approch. Additionally, we wanted to investigatethe strategies social workers use to feel secure. Our study is based on six semi-structured interviews with participants from two municipalities in southern Sweden. Threats and violence from clients are defined in various ways by the participants, with the main difference in the definition being where one draws the boundaries for what is acceptable. Many participants speak about a process of normalization of violence becomes a stratagy to cope with their work. It is also evident that when social workers are exposed to threats or violence from clients, there is a risk that it may affect the objectivity in assessments and decisiions.
| Identifer | oai:union.ndltd.org:UPSALLA1/oai:DiVA.org:mau-65016 |
| Date | January 2024 |
| Creators | Forsberg, Therese, Pedersen, Emma |
| Publisher | Malmö universitet, Fakulteten för hälsa och samhälle (HS) |
| Source Sets | DiVA Archive at Upsalla University |
| Language | Swedish |
| Detected Language | English |
| Type | Student thesis, info:eu-repo/semantics/bachelorThesis, text |
| Format | application/pdf |
| Rights | info:eu-repo/semantics/openAccess |
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