Aim
The paper discusses what the practices of family law social workers and school staff mean for children’s vulnerability and victimization at school (including preschool).
Background
While there has been considerable discussion of issues about child protection and the cooperation between school and social services in that context, studies on the intersection between school and family law proceedings seem virtually non-existent. This is also the case when it comes to family law proceedings, school and different forms of childhood adversity.
Methods
The analysis draws on a survey to 110 preschool managers and 110 school head teachers in two counties in Sweden, as well as qualitative interviews with school staff, individually or in groups (22 interviewees).
Findings
Victimizing practices range from staff neglect of children’s possible fear due to previous exposure to violence, and the invalidation of experiences of violence, to outright dangerousness as when staff exposing children and their abused mothers to risks for further violence. Not just the children who are the objects of a family law dispute are subjected to victimising practices at school, but other children as well. A key example is when children with disputing parents are subjected institutional violence by social workers trying to enforce contact, and this is witnessed by other children.
Conclusion
The pattern of victimizing practices can be linked to institutional and professional hierarchies, as well as dominating discourses in the domain of education constructing domestic violence as a problem of order affecting the collective, rather than as a threat to the rights of individual children.
2015.
1st European Conference on Domestic Violence, Queen’s University Belfast, Belfast, 6th-9th of September 2015