"Vi når inte ut till alla barn som behöver oss"

Sammanfattning: Children witnessing domestic violence is a major social issue where many children lack protection. Previous research indicates that children who witness domestic violence have a hard time talking about the violence as it is considered a private matter. The current research highlights that social services experience shortcomings in their work with the target group and that many children who witness domestic violence miss out on support and protective measures. This study aims to understand how social workers within social services describe how children are affected by witnessing domestic violence. The aim was achieved through the qualitative research approach where six interviews were conducted with social workers who work with children and families in the social service in Sweden. The results have been analyzed with the help of systems theory and the following theoretical concepts: street-level Bureaucracy, action space theory, and vocational competence theory. The results reveal that social workers gain knowledge about the consequences that affect children who witness domestic violence in their various areas of life. The results also show that social workers raise their understanding of how witnessing domestic violence affects the child's self-image as well as their attachment relationships. In addition, the results show that social workers explain that their understanding of the consequences that affect children who witness domestic violence influences their decision during the preliminary assessment to initiate an investigation or not. In essence, the results show that the social worker highlights how their understanding of the consequences that affect children who witness domestic violence affects their way of working in supporting these children by using a mapping of the children's needs to make an individual assessment of which interventions are suitable to offer.