To be both loved and exposed : A qualitative study of the tension between social workers' guidelines and practice with children and young people who are exposed to honour-related violence and oppression

The purpose of this study is to investigate the guidelines, methods and strategies of social workers supporting children and young people who live with honour-related problems – in order to deepen the knowledge of tensions between the guidelines of social work and its practices. The result of the study has emerged from qualitative interviews with six social workers working with children and young people and three local authority documents containing guidelines and routines. The social workers were asked questions about their experiences of guidelines and routines and their current work situation. To analyse and understand the results a thematic method was used along with theories on discretion. The result shows that social workers use different assessment manuals in order to assess that a child/young person is exposed to honour-related problems, but their experience is that the manuals are not complete and adapted to children and young people who live with honour-related problems. Therefore, many social workers have a discretion, where they can take available methods and adapt them to the honour-related cases. The social workers have several different voluntary and family-oriented interventions to offer, but in honour-related cases the interventions are not optimal. The social workers experience difficulties with working with the families of children and young people with honour-related problems because they are not receptive to change, which was the first tension that could be identified. The overall experience of the interviewed social workers regarding honour-related cases shows that their work is complex in relation to laws, guidelines and methods. Thereby another tension was discovered in the result and analysis between forced interventions relating to the laws and guidelines and principles of the child's best interests. The social worker experiences are that it is difficult to motivate forced interventions as it does not always improve the situation of the child