Barnahus (Children’s Advocacy Center) is a collaboration between authorities, created to increase the quality of crime investigations while promoting the child’s best interest and health. Due to the complexity of detecting domestic violence, it is difficult to investigate and conduct interrogations of children in a legally secure manner whilst avoiding secondary traumatization. This study aims to contribute to a deeper understanding of this process by examining how social workers’ experience cases where there is suspicion of domestic violence at Barnahus in Skåne, Sweden.By utilizing a qualitative interview method, we interviewed seven social workers in Skåne about their experiences within Barnahus. The conducted interviews focused on four areas: (1) the social worker's experience of collaboration with the other authorities within Barnahus (2) the cooperation and building of an alliance with the family after a child’s hearing, (3) the child as a victim of crime from a legal point of view (4) the social workers’ liberty in taking actions in terms of interventions. The material gathered from the interviews was later sorted using an empirically-controlled qualitative thematic method and analyzed using theories of power, ethics and sociology of law.The study concludes that needs and available resources steers Barnahus operation despite national guidelines. Thus, there is a need to assess and create a flexibility regarding whether or not one should take in a child for interrogation. Further on, all social workers were unanimous in the experience that it is more difficult to approach the family, to provide interventions, when the case begins at Barnahus. The informants also confirmed the perception of the legal perspective as primary. Lastly, we found that there is a big gap between compulsive interventions and interventions with consent. We discovered that there is an ongoing discussion based on the social secretaries' desire for opportunities of middle-care and a resistance from those who believe that social services should be built on consent.
| Identifer | oai:union.ndltd.org:UPSALLA1/oai:DiVA.org:mau-25647 |
| Date | January 2019 |
| Creators | Martinsen, Jessica, Vitestam, Hedda |
| Publisher | Malmö universitet, Fakulteten för hälsa och samhälle (HS), Malmö universitet, Fakulteten för hälsa och samhälle (HS), Malmö universitet/Hälsa och samhälle |
| 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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