Barnets bästa
en studie i hur domstolen avgör frågor om umgänge när det har förekommit våld i familjen
In many of the disputes concerning custody, residence and visitation determined by the court, some form of violence has been performed. The consequence of a child who has witnessed violence in their homes is a problem that is sometimes overlooked. It is not unusual that the violence will continue even after a separation. The law shows that the child´s need of both parents is to be met. This has according to previous studies resulted in the fact that courts do not always see visitation with a violent parent as a risk for the child. This is the reason why we wanted to investigate this further. The aim of our study was to examine and describe how courts argue for decisions regarding a child's contact with a parent who is suspected of having used violence in the family, based on current laws. The method of the study was document analysis and the material consisted of ten Swedish court cases from the years 2010 and 2011. The starting point of the analysis was the sociology of childhood together with the concepts ?child?s perspective? and ?the perspective of the child?. The court cases were analyzed on basis of the law, our analytical framework and previous research. Our study shows that the court considers it important for the child with a near and well contact with both parents. The results also show that the will of the child not seems as important to take into account as the child?s best interests or the risk that the child gets hurt.