“Antingen så blundar man kanske för det eller så vill man inte tro att det händer äldre” Hemtjänstens förhållningssätt till att arbeta med äldre kvinnors våldsutsatthet.

Sammanfattning: The aim of the study was to investigate how municipal home care workers can determine whether an elderly woman in an ordinary home has been or is being subjected to violence, of any kind, by her partner, and how the home care workers respond to their findings. My two key questions were: how do staff detect that an elderly woman is being or has been subjected to some form of violence by her partner in her home and how do staff respond to the suspicion of violence based on their knowledge, training, and workplace procedures. I used a qualitative method based on semi-structured interviews with four people working in the municipal home care service. The results revealed that the concept of violence is vague and subjective. It was found that violence among the elderly is not easily detected and that the occurring violence can be legitimised based on a dementia disease of the perpetrator. To be able to identify violence, the respondents highlighted the importance of their own experiences of domestic violence. It was found that health workers do not ask about violence regularly, but rather when they become aware of a physical sign of potential violence. A strong perception was that older women do not disclose their exposure to violence, and therefore the personnel do not ask either. Time constraints in home care were seen as an aggravating factor in the detection of the occurrence of violence. The actions taken afterward varied among the respondents. Although routines exist, it is unclear how they are implemented as they have not been used. The care workers consider themselves to have insufficient knowledge in this field and that they instead use their personal experiences and training instead of proven knowledge and experience. Due to the lack of explicit routines and guidelines in the organisation and the lack of sufficient knowledge among the personnel, they are left to their interpretations and judgements that are anchored in their own experiences and feelings regarding the detection and response to violence. The results were analysed using Habermas's theory of communicative action and, in particular, the concepts of the system and social environment.