General questions in the search for specific answers : to use standardized questionnaires for questions about domestic violence within the social services' elderly units

To use standardized questionnaires for questions about domestic violence within the social services' elderly units Intimate partner violence (IPV)and the way women are exposed to violence in close relationships has been recognized in recent decades as a problem at a societal level, both nationally and globally. As a result, work on IPV has received new laws and regulations to strengthen women's right to protection in society, which has also led to work with these issues is being developed and prioritized at a municipal level. While IPV has gained more visibility, IPV that affect older women also has received greater attention. IPV and aging can mean a special vulnerability as aging can mean more isolation, greater need for care by or for a violent partner and that the violence may have lasted for a longer period of time. Research on the subject also shows that there is a knowledge gap about the elderly's exposure to violence and the work to discover it, and that there are no specific figures that show how widespread the problem is. Despite the increased focus on older women's exposure to IPV, interest in skills development regarding elderly is lower in comparison with other categories within the group of women exposed to violence in Sweden's municipalities. At the same time, the development of welfare has moved in a direction towards an evidence-based practice and developed standardized assessment instruments. Based on an attempt to combine work against violence in close relationships with evidence-based practice, the assessment instrument FREDA was developed, which social workers and social service agents can use to detect and identify violence and make protection assessments, which is considered an important part of violence prevention and violence protection work. Nevertheless, several studies and evaluations show that there are several obstacles to asking questions about violence, such as insecurity and lack of knowledge. The purpose of our study has been to investigate how social workers at social agencies that works with elders ask questions about violence in IPV and whether underlying factors such as knowledge, experience and supervision affect the tendency for social service agents to ask the question about violence. The purpose is also to investigate the extent to which social service workers use standardized assessment instruments in matters of violence and whether standardized assessment instruments is experienced as a support in their work. With a quantitative method and with a survey design to collect data, we have created a web survey with 49 statements and questions that we have sent via link to social service agents who work with development assistance and the elderly. The survey received a total of 79 respondents and the results have been processed in SPSS and to some extent in Excel. To present the results we have used SPSS to create graphs and crosstabs and through using Cramres V we report the strength of the relationships between the variables. We have also developed a significance measure based on Cramers V. The results of the study shows that a significant proportion of the respondents do not agree that they ask questions about domestic violence to their clients and that there is a connection between not asking questions about domestic violence and not feeling that you have enough knowledge of the subject. The results of the study cannot show where the knowledge about violence comes from, but it shows that within our sample there is a slight tendency for the use of FREDA-short questions to have a positive impact on the experience of knowledge about IPV. The results of the study show that approximately one third of the study respondents use FREDA-short questions at their workplace. The study also shows that of the respondents who stated that they fully or partially agree that they ask questions about violence in close proximity to a greater extent use FREDA-shortquestions. In conclusion, our study shows that there was a tendency for respondents who stated that they did not agree that they ask questions about domestic violence also had the opinion that older people find it more intrusive to talk about IPV