“...vi är verktygen för människor som är trasiga och därav måste verktygen också fungera …”: : En kvalitativ intervjustudie om socialarbetares känslohantering i arbetet medbarn som utsatts för traumatiska upplevelser.

Sammanfattning: The aim of this study is to understand and investigate how social workers handle and cope with their emotional management in work with children who have been exposed to traumatic events. And to understand what kind of emotions that can arise before, during and after meetings with vulnerable children. But also to see and understand what kind of support different workplaces offer social workers for emotion management. This study was  conducted through six semi-structured interviews with social workers who work or have worked with children that have been exposed to trauma in Sweden. With the interviews we did an analysis with help from previous research on the subject and by a theoretical framework, Hoschchilds theroy of emotional work. The results prove that emotional work isa subject that some social workers find very difficult to handle. How social workers manage to handle heartbreaking stories from children is something that each social worker handles differently. The analysis also shows that social workers feel that the support in their workplace towards social workers has improved over the years. Emotional work and how to help vulnerable children is a challenging work and therefore is this a subject that needs more attention.