"...if you are under 18 you cannot be exposed." : A qualitative study on social workers experiences of violence in young people's relationships.

Våld i ungas parrelationer är ett problem som fått ökad uppmärksamhet bland annat ur ett politiskt perspektiv de senaste åren. Syftet med denna studie är att undersöka socialarbetares erfarenheter av att arbeta med våld i ungas heterosexuella parrelationer med ett fokus på unga tjejers våldsutsatthet. Studien ämnar undersöka hur socialarbetare beskriver sin egen samt unga tjejers kunskap kring och syn på våld, vilken form av våld socialarbetare beskriver att unga tjejer blir utsatta för samt om socialarbetare ser några särskilda utmaningar i arbetet med unga våldsutsatta tjejer. Studien grundar sig på en kvalitativ metod och tematisk analys av tio semistrukturerade intervjuer med socialarbetare från olika verksamheter. Studien behandlar även teorier såsom kunskap i socialt arbete, normaliseringsprocessen, strukturell feministisk förklaringsmodell samt ett intersektionellt perspektiv. Resultatet visade att intervjupersonerna upplever att de själva besitter god kunskap kring ämnet men att det finns en avsaknad av kunskap bland unga tjejer samt andra professionella som arbetar med målgruppen. Vidare framkommer det i resultatet att fysiskt, psykiskt, sexuellt samt digitalt våld är de våldsformer som unga tjejer främst blir utsatta för. Utmaningar som intervjupersonerna beskriver samt som återfinns i resultatet är att identifiera samt nå ut till unga våldsutsatta tjejer. Ytterligare beskrivs machokultur och normer vara en utmaning i intervjupersonernas arbete. Violence in young people’s relationships is a problem which has received an increased amount of awareness in the last years, especially in a political sense. The purpose of this study is to investigate social workers experiences of working with violence in young people’s heterosexual relationships, focusing on young girls’ exposure to violence. This study aims to examine how social workers describe their own knowledge of and view on violence, as well as how they experience the knowledge of young girls. Furthermore, this study aims to see which type of violence young girls are exposed to according to social workers and if social workers identify any challenges in their work with these young girls. A qualitative method has been used and a thematic analysis of ten semi structured interviews with social workers from different establishments has been performed. The study also makes use of knowledge in social work, normalization process theory, structural feminist theory and an intersectional perspective. The results revealed that the social workers who were interviewed experience that they themselves have good knowledge on the topic. However, they described a lack of knowledge among young girls as well as among other professionals who work with the target group. Furthermore, the result showed that physical, psychological, sexual, and digital violence are the most common types of violence which young girls are exposed to in their relationships. Challenges which are described by the social workers who were interviewed, and which are presented in this study’s result, is to identify and reach out to young girls who are exposed to violence. Macho behavior and attitude and social norms are furthermore described as challenges by the interviewees.