Increased concern was raised globally at the outbreak of COVID-19 that victims of domestic violence would be even more at risk when isolated with a violent partner and out of reach of support due to restrictions. Swedish staff in violence against women services prepared for increased calls for help. Instead, a worrying silence arose in a time and place of high uncertainty. This article analyzes the narratology of risk, when staff members in violence against women services, reflect upon their accounts, responses, and experiences, during the pandemic. The analysis is based on three themes, accounting for expected increased influx, making sense of silence and accounting for mobilization. The findings are discussed by applying the relational theory of risk.

Ingress: I socialtjänstlagen finns höga ambitioner, men för att kunna leva upp till dem krävs åtgärder. Utbildningen till socionom behöver förstärkas och det krävs mer resurser till forskning inom området, skriver flera sakkunniga gemensamt.

Purpose: To evaluate the long-term effects of an Arts on Prescription (AoP) programme on sense of coherence (SOC) in Sweden.

Design: A controlled intervention study with a quasi-experimental prospective design, including questionnaires at baseline, with follow-ups at 6 and 12 months. Participants were on sick leave due to common mental disorders (CMD) and/or non-specific musculoskeletal pain, recruited from primary care in six regions. The intervention group also included participants from open psychiatric care. The study sample comprised 586 participants (335 in the intervention group and 251 in the control group).

Results: Both groups showed a significantly stronger SOC at follow-up, with a medium effect size for the intervention group and a small effect size for the control group. No statistically significant difference in SOC change over time was observed between the groups. Participants from open psychiatric care in the intervention group showed a significant improvement in SOC compared to those from primary care. Concerns about finances had a significant main effect on SOC for the entire study population.

Originality: Unlike most AoP studies, this controlled study with a relatively large sample provides insights into the long-term effects of AoP on SOC, with results reported using p-values and effect sizes.

Aims: Involvement in arts has shown potential to promote mental health. Thus, arts may be able to complement conventional healthcare to address common mental disorders (CMD). The aim of this study was to evaluate the long-term effect of a 10-week Arts on Prescription program regarding CMD (stress, anxiety, depression), compared to conventional healthcare. The study also aimed to examine whether CMD differed between groups.

Methods: A quasi-experimental prospective design with intervention and control group and 6- and 12-month follow-up was used to evaluate an Arts on Prescription program in Sweden, focusing on the effects on stress, anxiety, and depression. Participants were on sick leave due to CMD and/or musculoskeletal pain. Data was collected using questionnaires.

Results: The study population consisted of 479 participants (n=247 intervention group, n=232 control group). The result indicates a greater effect size (ŋ) in the intervention group compared to the control group for reduction in stress, anxiety, and depression at follow-up after 12 months. The difference in depression was significant.

Conclusions: The results indicate AoP could be an adjunct to conventional healthcare interventions to address CMD, especially depression.

The deinstitutionalization of psychiatric care has not only altered the living conditions for people with severe mental illness but has also greatly affected social services staff. In the Mental Health Act launched by the Swedish government in 1995, a new kind of service called ‘housing support’ and a new occupational group, ‘housing support workers,’ was introduced. However, housing support does not currently operate under any specific guidelines regarding the content of the service. This study explores housing support at local level in various municipalities of one Swedish county. The data is based on discussion with three focus groups: care managers, managers for home and community‐based support, and housing supporter workers. The perspective of institutional logics as a specific set of frames that creates a standard for what should or could be done, or alternately what cannot be questioned, is applied to analyze the constructed meaning of housing support. The meaning of housing support is constructed through three dichotomies: process and product, independence and dependence, and flexibility and structure. These dichotomies can be understood as dilemmas inherent in the work and organizing of housing support. With no clear guidelines, the levels of organizational and professional discretion create a space for local flexibility but may also contribute to tremendous differences in defining and implementing housing support. We discuss the potential consequences for housing support users implied by the identified discrepancies.

Since the 1990s, social work has been subject to requirements for monitoring and quality assurance. Here we examine one of the monitoring systems: Open Comparisons (OC). Gradually expanded and published online by a national agency, the OC now has around 350 indicators that cover major areas within social work in Sweden. We use program theory to clarify the operational idea in which OC is based. To do this, we analyse domestic violence data gathered from two social service organizations, from the regional level and from governmental agencies. The results show a strong normative support for OC within national level. However, OC is time consuming, its data are questionable, and its reliance on name-and-shame seems dubious. OC represents a trend in social work that may influence changes in routines and provide new kinds of performance measurements that affect how social work is organized.

Since starting over a hundred years ago social work has been occupied with the division into academic and practical knowledge. A common theme in scientific journals of social work is how this gap can be understood and resolved. The initial purpose of this article was to carry out a systematic review to find out if and how the gap could be bridged. Because few independent studies could be found, the study instead took the form of a scoping review with more included articles. The results show concrete suggestions as to how to bridge the gap, but also three discourses with dissimilar problem definitions and solutions. The emergence of proposals such as the evidence-based practice and its diverse combinations, the formation of new institutions, and today’s globalisation triggers this fragmentation. The consequences are vast confusions of opinions and explanations which illustrate competing knowledge positions. The authors propose that researchers and practitioners should orient themselves in this landscape when building bridges between academia and practice. Instead of taking the research–practice gap for granted, they suggest that social work should relate more closely to these three discourses.

In this study we explore to what extent COVID-19 affected victims of domestic violence regarding the quality of support received. Thirty help seeking women receiving support from a specialized department or a women's shelter were interviewed. The analysis revealed that the experiences of receiving support was dependent on access to digital solutions, treatment phase and relationship with the therapist. Varied experiences among the respondents were identified. Some experienced that contact with helpers became more distant, that trust was affected as a consequence of the pandemic, and conversely, others expressed that the quality of contact was very good and was not affected by the pandemic. Quotes from respondents will be presented and implications of the findings discussed during the session.

Over the past two decades, social workers’ assessment and decision-making skills in client cases have been the subject of increased attention. The profession’s ability to conduct accurate assessments has been questioned. One way to seek to improve assessment work has been to implement various risk assessment tools. This article describes how social workers reason in risk assessment situations involving women exposed to violence by a previous male partner. The assessments studied here have been carried out with the assessment tool FREDA. The analysis reveals three logics in the social workers’ reasoning: the addiction logic, the normalization logic and the safety logic. These logics illustrate how social workers’ deliberations and assessments are not governed in a rectilinear manner by the standardized tool but that risk is negotiated also by drawing on other knowledge sources. Although standardization can be seen as a way for professionals to strive for more secure social work, the participants at the same time acknowledge the uncertainty associated with assessment work in which future violence is to be predicted. This however can have consequences for how the victims of violence are expected to live their lives.

I detta föredrag presenteras resultat från ett avslutat forskningsprojekt om framväxten av arbetsmetoder inom området våld i nära relationer i två kommunala kontexter. Syftet med den aktuella studien var att undersöka hur idén att använda riskbedömningsverktyg manifesteras och processas i socialtjänstens arbete med våld i nära relationer. Analysen baseras på intervjuer med olika aktörer (socialarbetare, chefer, politiker, utvecklingsledare) och på dokument. Resultaten visar att en relativt liten grupp av socialarbetare i organisationerna varit framgångsrika i att föra fram sina anspråk och besluta hur riskbedömningsarbetet ska genomföras, utan särskilt mycket inblandning från chefer eller politiker. Resultaten visar också att en alltför stor tilltro till riskbedömningsverktyg paradoxalt nog kan leda till en professionell osäkerhet och instabil praktik där andra kunskapskällor underbetonas. Dessa resultat sätts i relation till, och diskuteras utifrån, tidigare forskning som knyter den tilltagande standardiseringen inom socialtjänst och angränsade fält till en de-professionalisering av välfärdsprofessionella. 

This multiple case study examines how the idea of using risk assessment tools is manifested and processed in Swedish social services. Based on the analysis of interviews with different stakeholders and of organizational documents in two social service organizations, we investigate the actors who control local risk assessment practices. The findings illustrate that a relatively small group of social workers in the organizations have been able to forward their claims and decide how risk assessment work should be carried out without much intrusion from local managers or politicians. The findings also validate other studies that found that increased standardization can strengthen social workers’ ability to perform their professional task rather than lead to de-professionalization. This article ends with a discussion of what risk assessment practices might mean for domestic violence victims.

Since the winter of 2020, COVID-19 has significantly changed the lives of many people. The aim of the present study is to explore how social workers specialised in the field of domestic violence (DV) balance the expectation and need to protect themselves from infection with the expectation and need to protect their clients and how this balancing affects their discretion. The method was qualitative interviews with social workers, team leaders, and managers in two Swedish municipalities. The results offer insights in how professionals experience and respond to changing conditions of social work and the potential consequences for victimised women. Three street-level responses to pandemic restrictions are presented: professionals who complied with new restrictions, professionals who negotiated some far-reaching restrictions, and professionals who resisted restrictions. Consequences for the social services, women experiencing DV, and civil society are discussed. The authors suggest that the results provide learning opportunities for managers and social workers to better understand the complex everyday life that surrounds their mission.

This paper investigates the challenges domestic violence social workers face when balancing between protecting themselves, their co-workers, and clients from sickness while at the same time providing support. Drawing on interviews with eleven professionals and theories of discretion we analyzed how and why responses to COVID-19 restrictions were formed. Three responses were revealed. First, professionals complied with pandemic restrictions. Second, professionals negotiated practices to counter the negative effects of restrictions. Third, professionals also resisted restrictions altogether – i.e., they claimed to break the rules for a higher moral purpose. Awareness of the three different positions social workers occupy and their need to balance different demands provides insight into the negotiations that the work entails. Managers directives seem to be transformed into negotiations to protect interests of the social workers or of their clients.

Hur förstår och hanterar professionella inom människobehandlande organisationer män som utsätts för våld? På vilket sätt påverkar föreställningar om män och manlighet och om offer och sårbarhet hur män bemöts?

Det här är den första svenska boken där författarna utifrån forskning tar ett samlat grepp om brottsofferfrågan ur ett genusperspektiv och särskilt fokuserar på mäns våldsutsatthet. Tanken är att innehållet ska vara en utgångspunkt för kritiska reflektioner kring hur våld som socialt problem förstås och hur genus hanteras inom brottsofferområdet. En central fråga i boken är på vilket sätt föreställningar om män och maskulinitet(er) påverkar upplevelsen av utsatthet för våld och även det stöd och den hjälp som ges.

Att möta våldsutsatta män riktar sig till alla som studerar inom socialt arbete men också till exempelvis socionomer, psykologer, sjuksköterskor och andra yrkesverksamma inom människobehandlande organisationer.

This article investigates how social workers’ interpretations of contextual factors and the relationship between victim and offender affect their understanding and assessment of male violent victimization. The study was designed as a multiple case study with a qualitative comparative approach. Focus group interviews supported by vignettes were used to collect data. Interviews were carried out with professional Swedish social workers working with victimized men and women at support units for young crime victims in Sweden. The results show that the social workers consider the violence that the young men are subjected to in cases of street violence and interpersonal violence to be unavoidable or even ‘natural’. The violence was in some cases considered to be dependent on the men’s own agency and in others on their lack of agency, when displaying traits of both more traditional and less traditional forms of masculinity respectively. The social workers’ talk about young male crime victims is interpreted as contributing to making the men appear as less legitimate victims. Even though the social workers argued that the victims’ own behaviour should not lead to any special considerations concerning help efforts, the possibility of upholding such a demarcation between explanations ascribed to the violent incident and help measures offered is problematized in the article. 

This article reports findings from a case study of the practical application of a standardisation tool in everyday social work practice. The example tool used herein is the Swedish version of the UK-based Integrated Children's System, which in Sweden is known as Children's Needs in Focus (Barns Behov i Centrum; BBIC). The study analyses group and individual interviews with social workers, managers and politicians using concepts from implementation research and the micro-sociological concept of accounts. The findings demonstrate how participants describe and explain their deviations from the BBIC manual and from the more informal intentions of the tool. Such deviations are conditioned by the fact that professionals often employ their own discretion in their work, which is necessarily inherent in human service occupations such as social work. Although the BBIC was initially well received, the professionals describe how that reception eventually turned to scepticism and a more critical stance toward the manual. This can be attributed to both absence of significant necessary implementation conditions and key organisational factors as well as a lack of compatibility between the tool's construction and users' needs and expectations. This article also discusses the general socio-technical and organisational implications of these findings.

When the COVID-19 pandemic broke out there was an expressed concern for women and children exposed to interpersonal violence. U.N. testified that violence against women, was highly intensified during this time, and described the situation as a shadow pandemic. A concern expressed was that abused women’s possibilities to reach out for help and support now were being limited. We have interviewed volunteers and staff at women’s shelter, to create a picture of how they navigated in the silence that arose in the wake of the pandemic. We are particularly interested in how they understood and acted in relation to this situation of uncertainty. We will present how uncertainty is transformed to risk and how risk is managed when giving support to women exposed to violence during the pandemic.

This article focuses on the complexities of using a new intervention when parents are suspected of child physical abuse. Children leaving a child forensic interview due to suspected child physical abuse are often handed over to their parents, who sometimes are the suspected perpetrators. The Efter barnförhöret (EB) [After the child forensic interview] intervention was developed to aid children in this stressful situation by providing professional support from child welfare services to the child and parents. The article is based on interviews with 11 respondents working with EB. Narratives reveal how respondents use their discretionary space to navigate different institutional logics. In the themes Focusing on the child, Getting parents motivated, The challenges with organizational boundaries and Demand trumps resources, respondents argue that EB, despite organizational challenges, is considered an important intervention that meets the needs of children and families after the disclosure of child physical abuse.

Older persons with dementia have several risk factors for being exposed to domestic abuse, for example dependency on others to manage daily life. The purpose of the study was to explore how staff act and reason when suspecting domestic abuse perpetrated by informal caregivers of persons with dementia. Eight semi-structured group interviews were conducted with staff (n = 39) working with persons with dementia living in their ordinary homes. A thematic analysis generated two themes; Missing a map for guidance and Being left to one’s own inner compass for direction indicating that staff experienced a lack of guidelines and protocols to work from when suspecting abuse. This resulted in staff taking actions based on their own norms, values, and experiences when suspecting domestic abuse. Not knowing how to act risks leading to staff ending up doing nothing or being unable to identify effective interventions, accompanied by feelings of guilt and ethical stress. The results highlight the necessity of providing staff with tools for how to act when they suspect domestic abuse, such as collaboration with others, colleagues, and other organisations where different options for interventions can emerge.