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Negotiating standardized approaches to IPV detection in social services?: previous experiences, degendering, and mandatory reporting
Umeå University, Faculty of Social Sciences, Department of Social Work.ORCID iD: 0000-0002-2098-871X
Umeå University, Faculty of Social Sciences, Umeå Centre for Gender Studies (UCGS).ORCID iD: 0000-0001-7878-4309
Umeå University, Faculty of Medicine, Department of Epidemiology and Global Health.ORCID iD: 0000-0002-8114-4705
Department of Psychology and Social Work, Mid Sweden University, Östersund, Sweden.
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2025 (English)In: Affilia, ISSN 0886-1099, E-ISSN 1552-3020, article id 08861099251340674Article in journal (Refereed) Epub ahead of print
Abstract [en]

Through interviews with 16 social workers, drawing on the concept of “willful subjects”, the aim of this paper is to analyze how social workers working in Swedish municipal social services make sense of, adapt, and/or challenge routine questions about intimate partner violence, and how such routines affect their professional role and agency. We found that participants renegotiated standardized ways of asking by stressing the need to use such questionnaires with care, and stating that the individual judgement and agency of the social worker is paramount. The participants also renegotiated the purpose of asking; while their routine questions about IPV seldom led to a disclosure of ongoing exposure to violence, social workers considered it important to ask because it “opens the door” and signals the possibility of receiving help in the future. We argue that social workers are not necessarily stripped of agency when following standardized protocols and routines, despite increasing efforts to include controlling mechanisms in their everyday practice. However, our results also show that social workers’ legal obligation to report to child protection services, if there are children in the household, limits their room for discretion and how the routine questions about violence are asked and perceived by clients.

Place, publisher, year, edition, pages
Sage Publications, 2025. article id 08861099251340674
Keywords [en]
degendering, intimate partner violence screening, mandatory reporting, men's violence against women, standardization
National Category
Social Work
Identifiers
URN: urn:nbn:se:umu:diva-239101DOI: 10.1177/08861099251340674ISI: 001485516200001Scopus ID: 2-s2.0-105004996188OAI: oai:DiVA.org:umu-239101DiVA, id: diva2:1961871
Funder
Forte, Swedish Research Council for Health, Working Life and Welfare, 2021-01373Available from: 2025-05-28 Created: 2025-05-28 Last updated: 2025-06-25

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Bäckström Olofsson, HannaCarbin, MariaGoicolea, IsabelLinander, Ida

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Bäckström Olofsson, HannaCarbin, MariaGoicolea, IsabelLinander, Ida
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Department of Social WorkUmeå Centre for Gender Studies (UCGS)Department of Epidemiology and Global Health
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Affilia
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