Imperfekta våldsoffer och behovet av en normkritisk socialtjänst - en kvalitativ intervjustudie om normer inom socialt arbete med våld i nära relationer

Sammanfattning: This study aimed to explore Swedish social workers’ experiences of the influence of social norms in their work with people subjected to intimate partner violence. The aim was also to explore how social workers relate to norm-critical perspectives within social services. We used convenience sampling and recruited six social workers, all of whom specialized in intimate partner violence. We approached this qualitative study from a social constructivist research paradigm. We decided to use reflexive thematic analysis deductively, based on gender- and queer theory, to illuminate our aims. For data collection, we conducted semi-structured interviews, two of which were paired interviews and two were individual. We constructed four themes to reflect our participants’ experiences: elevated vulnerability in imperfect roles of violence, the workplace as counterparty, overwhelming demands creating inner conflicts, and strategies of the lone enthusiast. The first theme described how social workers try to sort their clients into simplistic binary roles of victim and perpetrator. These roles were strongly connected to norms of femininity, masculinity, and sexuality which contributed to further marginalization of vulnerable clients. The second theme captured the challenges of working in a social service organization that did not take responsibility for implementing norm-critical perspectives. The social workers described feelings of loneliness and conflicted interests, which made the individual worker tempted to resort to equality ideals instead of developing norm-critical perspectives and working toward equity and social justice. The third theme illuminated how social workers appeared to oscillate emotionally and cognitively between insecurity and self-affirmation about meeting victims of intimate partner violence and incorporating norm-critical perspectives in their work. The fourth and last theme described the strategies used by individual social workers to cope with the challenging position they were in striving for more knowledge, exercising critical self-reflection and humility, and seeking support from colleagues. Our findings illustrate how all parts of social services are interconnected, as the (limited) norm-critical competence of other authorities restricts access to specialized interventions for non-normative groups. Systemic change is necessary for social services to better mitigate vulnerability and promote the safety of imperfect victims, who currently appear to be overlooked. The implementation of norm criticism is a critical area for development of the Swedish social services in general and in the work with intimate partner violence in particular.