"Det som är mest påtagligt är att man aldrig fått frågan om man är våldsutsatt, man ses primärt som ett missbruksproblem" - en kvalitativ studie om socialarbetares resonemang kring att arbeta med kvinnor som utsatts för våld i nära relation där det också

Sammanfattning: “What is most tangible is that you have never been asked if you are exposed to violence, you are primarily just seen as an addiction problem” - A qualitative study on social workers' reasoning about working with women who have been subjected to intimate partner violence where there is also a substance abuse problem. The aim of this study was to investigate how social workers in women's shelters reason about working with women who have been subjected to intimate partner violence where there is also a substance abuse problem. The study was based on semi-structured interviews with six social workers working at women's shelters in Sweden that welcome women with substance abuse problems. We analyzed our data from the interviews with Ervin Goffman's theory about stigma and Kimberlé Crenshaw's theory about intersectionality. The results of our study show that the social workers who were interviewed describe it as challenging to work with abused women with substance abuse problems. The social workers point out that there are few women's shelters that take in women with substance abuse problems. When they identify various reasons that may be the cause of this, they partly address practical challenges that addiction can bring, but also that there is a stigmatizing view of women with substance abuse problems that leads to it not being a prioritized target group. Something that is consistent in the social workers' reasoning, regarding working with the group, is that they view the women's substance abuse problem as secondary, and believe that the focus primarily should be on their mental health and exposure to violence. The social workers believe that it is problematic that authorities who get in touch with these women tend to focus on the women's substance abuse problems rather than their mental health problems and problems with exposure to violence.