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: .. - om de professionellas upplevelser kring sexuella övergrepp mot barn.

Abstract

Our paper is targeting mainly students, but also all other people interested in social work with children.

The purpose of our study was to investigate how the social workers experience and handle their work with children, who have been exposed to sexual abuse, and what kind of support and guidance the social workers are offered, in order to handle their working situation.

We chose to perform a qualitative study, by the use of interviews, since we found it to be the most appropriate way to gather the information.

Our conclusion is that the work with these issues is emotionally burdensome and requires a great commitment, however it is essential for the social workers to maintain a certain distance to their work, in order not to influence their personal lives. It is through experience and knowledge that the social workers learn how to handle their working situation. We also learned that although the work with sexual abuse against children gave birth to different emotions of the social worker, the social workers feel satisfaction with their work, by helping the exposed children.

We hope that our paper will inspire and encourage to further studies in the area, since there is still much to be explored.