To Örebro University

Knowledge about children’s experiences of staying at domestic violence (DV) shelters, and their quality of life while living there, is limited. This study aims to examine how children describe staying at DV shelters in Sweden, and to identify important aspects of such experiences, both positive and negative. Thematic analysis was used to analyze 12 interviews with children aged 7–17 years. The findings show that the shelter environment, activities, and social relations are important for their quality of life, and that when these are lacking there is a risk that children will feel bored and isolated. Thus, although staying in a DV shelter for a period of time may be necessary to ensure children’s safety, it often comes at a cost; therefore, shelters need to be adapted to meet children’s needs.

Research on domestic violence shelters, or refuges, for abused mothers and children is limited, especially research with a focus on children’s lives and living conditions. To make the research that has been done historically visible, this chapter compiles and describes previous research that focused on children with experience of living in domestic violence shelters. The chapter chronologically describes how the field has grown over time and included new research topics and been extended to several different national contexts. The chapter concludes, despite the valuable research that has been done in the field, that it is nevertheless desirable if the field can grow to include new questions and perspectives, to further develop the knowledge regarding children who must flee their home and seek shelter because of violence.

Information about violence in the family can be challenging for child welfare (CW) workers to assess when parents are simultaneously involved in a family law dispute. The aim of this study is to analyse how assessments of suspected violence in the family are described in CW investigations in Sweden when the child's parents are involved in a family law dispute. Text analysis of 32 CW investigations from six municipalities in Sweden was conducted using a version of a multiple case study. Both physical, sexual and psychological violence against the child, including experiencing violence against a parent or a sibling, were included. Our analysis revealed that the CW workers made individual violence assessments. They assessed either that the child had experienced violence, that the presence of violence could not be definitively established, or that the child had not experienced violence. However, even if the main reason to investigate was violence, the CW workers also discussed aspects of the family law dispute, which impacted the final determination and assessment of risks and the child's primary needs. The violence thus sometimes became less important than the parental conflict. It is important for CW workers to be aware of this and to treat violence as no less important than the parental conflict.

This edited collection provides a detailed picture of children’s lives when living at domestic violence shelters (also termed refuges) which provide a safe space for victims. It draws on original empirical research from countries including the UK, USA, Sweden, Norway, Denmark, Israel and Australia to examine how domestic violence shelters are managed and understood in various social systems. The key themes of the book are school and everyday life, agency and transitions, and support. Using a range of methods including ethnography, interviews, mental health surveys, this book draws on the voices of children, mothers, and workers and explores a range of issues affecting particularly marginalised groups (e.g. infants and teenagers). It includes recommendations for practice and speaks to those in law, social work, nursing and criminology.

This chapter highlights the challenges that mothers and children face in the different phases of leaving their home to escape violence, staying at a shelter, and then leaving it to start a new life. Based on interviews with mothers and children, it discusses the different perspectives and preconditions that mothers and children have for coping with a stay at a DV shelter in Sweden.

Summary: Dialogues between professionals and clients in social work are central to identifying and providing support for violence in close relationships. How professionals approach dialogues about violence in close relationships with clients with cognitive disabilities, and associated challenges to making them accessible, are understudied. Semi-structured interviews with 18 professionals in disability services, domestic violence shelters, social services, and health services in Sweden were conducted. Previous findings and gaps in theory motivated an inductive content analysis which generated four categories that illustrate challenges to accessible violence in close relationship dialogues.

Findings: The four categories comprise challenges about : understanding and reasoning about violence; self-determination and protection; adapting assessment tools and approaches; and urgent and long-term approaches. These challenges entail difficulties in creating shared understandings and handling conflicting rights of clients. Furthermore, they included the need to adapt and maintain the validity of assessment tools, as well as organizational restrictions on the use of long-term approaches.

Applications: The findings shed light on how professionals must simultaneously handle various aspects of violence in close relationship dialogues. Verbally adhering to a given description of a situation was restricted by the need to maintain a professional-client relationship. When motivating the need to accept support, professionals had to avoid manipulating clients. Furthermore, the findings indicate several weaknesses in current practice that professionals struggle to address individually, such as, overly extensive assessment tools and little guidance on identifying less overt forms of violence in close relationships. Professional guidance is required in social work practice and related fields.

Children interviewed by the police in cases of suspected child abuse may experience emotional distress. Simultaneously, parents face the dual challenge of being suspects in the investigation while also striving to support their child’s well-being. To offer children and their parents information and support in such cases, social workers in Sweden developed the model After the Child Forensic Interview (ACFI, sw. Efter barnförhöret). This study aims to explore the model from the perspective of family social workers to understand its relevance for supporting children and parents. Twenty family social workers from eleven Swedish municipalities were interviewed about their experiences of working with ACFI. The analysis revealed that working with ACFI (a) requires preconditions such as resources and cooperation, individual/professional knowledge and experience, and the parents’ receptivity, (b) demands adaptations such as changes and additions, and (c) entails side effects. Overall, family social workers describe the model as beneficial as it can improve client-worker relationships and facilitate further interventions. However, it is required that the municipalities have a plan for implementation and allocation of resources.

Barn som förhörs av polisen vid misstanke om barnmisshandel kan uppleva känslomässig påfrestning. Samtidigt möter föräldrar den dubbla utmaningen att både vara misstänkta i utredningen och att försöka stödja sitt barns välbefinnande. För att ge barn och deras föräldrar information och stöd i sådana situationer utvecklade socialarbetare i Sverige modellen Efter barnförhöret (EBF). Denna studie syftar till att utforska modellen utifrån familjebehandlares perspektiv för att förstå dess relevans i arbetet med att stödja barn och föräldrar. Tjugo familjebehandlare från elva svenska kommuner intervjuades om sina erfarenheter av att arbeta med EBF. Analysen visade att arbetet med EBF: (a) kräver förutsättningar, såsom resurser och samverkan, individuell/professionell kunskap och erfarenhet samt föräldrarnas mottaglighet, (b) kräver anpassningar, såsom förändringar och tillägg, och (c) medför bieffekter. Familjebehandlarna beskriver EBF som gynnsam, då de uppfattar att den kan förbättra klientrelationer samt underlätta vidare insatser. För gynnsamhet krävs dock att kommunerna har en plan för implementering och resursfördelning.

The first chapter in the book Children in Domestic Violence Shelters: International Perspectives introduces the consequences of domestic violence for mothers and their children, and the importance of support and safety. The introduction also presents the UN Convention on the Rights of the Child (UNCRC) and Agenda 2030 as a framework for the book, both stressing that children need to be protected from violence. The introduction ends with a disposition of the book, and the 12 chapters included.

In this final chapter of the book Children in Domestic Violence Shelters: International Perspectives, the authors discuss the similarities between the chapters of the book and what can be learned from them when brought together, allowing for a broader analysis. In addition to this, the UN Convention on the Rights of the Child and Agenda 2023, are central threads throughout this chapter in order to help us understand the importance of involving children in research on domestic violence shelters in relation to their rights, and thus serve as a common base when discussing what needs to be improved regarding children’s situation while living in domestic violence shelters from an international perspective.

Background: Childhood neglect has been associated with various negative short- and long-term consequences. To make sense of difficult experiences, individuals often seek internal and/or external explanations. Children’s explanations for why they experience neglect have been identified as a potentially important factor in relation to different adjustment outcomes.

Objective: This study examines how young adults explain the childhood neglect they experienced and how these explanations are connected to health problems in adulthood.

Methods: The study utilizes retrospective data from a representative Swedish sample of 2,500 young adults, of which 7.5 % reported having been neglected as a child.

Results: Our findings revealed that emotional neglect was the most common form of neglect, while physical neglect was the least common. Most participants attributed the neglect to their parents or family circumstances. However, self-blame during childhood significantly increased the risk of self-harm and PTSD symptoms. Blaming either oneself or one’s parents was associated with a higher likelihood of self-harm and PTSD, while blaming parents for the neglect was linked to more suicide attempts. Those who attributed neglect to family circumstances showed higher levels of alcohol use as adults.

Conclusions: It́ s important for professionals to recognize that, in addition to neglect itself, children’s tendency to assign blame—especially self-blame—can have lasting impacts on their mental health and behavior.