Concern for child maltreatment, research and in the best interest of the child. : From the perspective and actions of educational welfare officers when there is suspicion of child maltreatment.

The Aim of this study was to gain an understanding of how educational welfare officers reason and act when there is a suspicion of child maltreatment. An employee who regularly meets children where there is a suspicion of child maltreatment is required by law to report it to social services. Five educational welfare officers from the Kronoberg county, as well as one from an adjacent county, received vignettes with three fictive accounts of children who were being maltreated. The educational welfare officers were then interviewed and asked questions concerning the vignettes. The results and following analysis showed that if there was a suspicion of child maltreatment, then the educational welfare officers in general reported it to the social services. However, an exception to this was when they believed it not to be in the best interest of the child to report their suspicions. The results further showed that stigma, as described by Goffman (2014), was a factor that could drive the educational welfare officers towards acting in a way that wasn´t in accordance to what was required by the law. The actions they took could further be understood by using Lipsky´s (2010) “Theory of discretion”, which in this study translated to whether they acted in a way that was either fully in accordance to the law or in a more dubious way.