Jämvikt i systemet eller barnets röst? : En studie i socialt arbete om familjebehandlares arbete med barn som upplever våld i nära relationer

Equilibrium in the system or the child’s voice? – A study in social work on family counsellors’ work with children who experience domestic violence The aim of this thesis was to explore family counsellors’ work with children who experience domestic violence, to gain a greater understanding of the opportunities and limitations they face in capturing the child’s view and voice. The empirical data consisted of nine semi-structured interviews with family counsellors working in five different municipalities in Scania, Sweden. We applied the General System Theory to analyse interactions between and within systems that were made apparent in counsellors’ descriptions and reasoning about their work, using concepts such as equilibrium, closed and open systems, and hierarchies. The study showed that the family counsellors based their treatment’s programme on the parents’ perspective. As a result, the child’s own experiences of domestic violence tended to disappear from the outset and throughout the counseling process. It also showed that parents tended to shift focus by pointing to issues concerning the child’s behaviour – a deviation that covered up the violence. By lifting other problems, the parents maintained the equilibrium within the family system, keeping the system closed even during treatment, never addressing the violence and never opening up for the child’s voice. The interviewees also pointed to structural hindrances within the social services, mainly in terms of resources and time, for example, lack of follow-ups with families that had undergone and terminated counselling. Due to the hierarchical system of the social services, lower levels (i.e. counsellors) depend on that upper levels (i.e. politicians) are informed about their working conditions so that proper backing can be allocated. Insufficient connections between upper and lower levels lead to unsatisfactory resources. This, in turn, limited the counsellor’s scope of action and ultimately resulted in a perceived inability to properly see and support children who experience domestic violence