"Boy or girl, all adolescents want to be seen" : A qualitative study on newly graduated social workers' reflections on gender being done in HVB and how they act in the treatment work with adolescents.

Socialstyrelsen (2021) reports that 8300 children and young people in Sweden were placed on a so called HVB during 2020. HVB stands for hem för vård eller boende which in english terms is equal to a home for care or housing. HVB was during 2020 the second most common form of placement for children and adolescents. Socialstyrelsen (2018) reports that social workers working within HVB are responsible for meeting young people's care needs in the form of various treatments. Research done by Mattson (2010) suggests that HVB is a closed environment, which can result in social workers that are active in these care homes become identification objects for the young people who are placed in these care homes. Treatment staff in HVB homes work with adolescents who are in need of support and help. Social workers are expected to work gender-consciously to meet the individual needs of adolescents. Previous research shows that HVB is a complex environment that requires flexibility on the part of treatment staff and that interventions do not always lead to the best results. Newly graduated social workers are expected to possess knowledge as critical awareness of how gender affects treatment work. We have chosen to investigate how newly graduated social workers who are active in HVB homes reflect about the fact that gender is done in treatment work and how they act with adolescents as gender awareness is part of the newly graduated social workers' education. The results of the study showed that the reflections of newly graduated social workers confirm previous research's explanation that gender is made in the treatment work with adolescents and which in turn affects how the staff's treatment work is designed. The result highlights that norms, stereotypes and gender perceptions that society produces affect the treatment work despite the social workers' gender awareness through education. Through the study, we also see the desire to counteract these gender notions and its ability to influence treatment work but that it is difficult