Preschool teachers approach in suspected cases of domestic violence

Sammanfattning: Domestic violence is a public health and international problem. Previous research outlined the extensivity of the problem internationally and the missing approaches of professionals who work with young children. The study aims to explore the methods and routines used by preschool teachers in approaching suspected cases of domestic violence among preschool children in Sweden. The results show that there are only a few available methods and routines given by governmental agencies in guiding the preschool teachers to approach such cases. As an alternative, the preschool teachers themselves develop individual approaches like observation, documentation, and collaboration with different actors involved. The interviews were conducted with semi-structured interviews with four preschool teachers to give a deeper understanding of their knowledge about the topic and experiences with suspected cases of domestic violence and methods and routines. The normalization process theory (NPT) was used to highlight the complexity of modifying methods and routines for complex problems e.g. domestic violence. The method of deductive thematic analysis provided pre-determined themes connected to the theory and new themes emerged from the data during the analysis process.