How can we help her? : Social workers’ experiences of internal collaboration with women who are exposed to domestic violence

The aim of this study was to examine social workers' experiences of internal collaboration in the work with women who are exposed to domestic violence, in order to get more knowledge about conditions for internal collaboration in organizations that are specialized. The study was conducted by qualitative research through semi-structured interviews in two middle-sized and two small-sized municipalities. Seven social workers were interviewed. Three of them are working with drug abuse, two of them are working with domestic violence and one of them is working with financial aid. The results show that the internal collaboration between social workers are working fairly well but there exists both obstacles and opportunities in the work with women who are victims of violence. The social workers describe that collaboration is very important in the work with women who are exposed to violence since they are in need of help from different social workers in the same organization. Result shows that social workers often cooperate in three different ways; daily/informal collaboration, formalized collaboration and shared efforts. Economy/budget, lack of understanding, different approaches, ”downpipes thoughts' ' and different assessments were described as obstacles in internal collaboration. Opportunities that have been identified are a good relationship, consensus and geographical closeness. The result also shows that the descriptions about internal collaboration can be understood in relation to New Public Management (NPM) and Street-Level bureaucracy. Result shows that NPM has brought several obstacles like ”downpipes thoughts”, geographical distance and separated budgets. The municipalities require collaboration which can be related to NPM in the shape of goal accomplishment since there are no clearly formalized routines for what the collaboration should look like. In conclusion this study shows that social workers are in need of discretion to find individual solutions to women's problems which can be understood in relation to Street-Level bureaucracy.