Violence is a serious problem, and social and health care providers are in a key position for implementing successful interventions. This qualitative study of 6 focus groups with professionals (n = 30) examines the health care professionals’ ways of framing a domestic violence intervention. Of special interest here is how professionals see their own roles in the process of recognizing and helping victims of domestic violence. By using Erving Goffman's frame analysis, this study identifies several frames that either: a) emphasize the obstacles to intervention and justify nonintervention, or on the contrary, b) question these obstacles and find justifications for intervention. The possibilities for intervention are further explored by analyzing the ways in which the dynamics between the different frames allow redefinition of domestic violence interventions. Despite the challenges involved in a domestic violence intervention, there seems to be potential for change in personal attitudes and reform of professional practices. The research findings underline the role of social and health care professionals as members of a larger chain of service providers working collaboratively against domestic violence. Implications for practice and directions in policy and future research are suggested.

Social welfare service and health care providers are in a key position to implement successful domestic violence (DV) interventions. However, it is known that DV intervention and prevention work is often lacking in coordination and continuity. In addition, the limited resources, hectic work pace, and changing practices negatively affect the development of successful ways to prevent and intervene in DV. This qualitative study involving 11 focus groups, composed of social welfare and health care professionals (n = 51) in a midsized Finnish hospital, examined the challenges and possibilities within DV interventions and the adoption of good practices produced by a DV intervention development project funded by the European Union (EU). The results show that short-term development projects, amid the pressure of limited time and resources, encounter serious challenges when applied to wicked and ignored problems, such as DV. Developing successful violence intervention practices requires a broad understanding of the challenges that rapid development projects present to professionals and social welfare service and health care practices at the organizational level. Hence, the implementation of good practices requires continuity in managerial and organizational support, distribution of information, documentation of DV, awareness raising, education, training, and agreement on basic tasks and responsibilities. Otherwise, the failure to continue development work derails the results of such work, and short project durations lead to unnecessary work and the need to reinvent temporary work practices time and again. Short-term interventions provide inefficient solutions to the problem of DV, and a built-in organizational structure can prevent the misuse of organizational and human resources.

Although gender inequalities are the main social mechanisms behind the (re)production of domestic violence, policy responses to domestic violence as a gender-related problem vary at both the national and transnational levels. This article examines the interaction between national and transnational policies against domestic violence, focusing on how domestic violence is constructed as a gender-related problem in Finland, a Nordic welfare state that is often cited as a role model in gender equality. Using the conception of policies as historically changing and culturally specific discourses, this article offers an overview of the ways in which the perspective on domestic violence of the transnational feminist movement has been engaged and transformed in the Finnish context over the five last decades. It is shown that transnational pressure has played a critical role in pushing Finland towards a stronger recognition of domestic violence as a gender issue. However, this transformation has taken place rather within the framework of more neutral “women-friendly” welfare policies than within a feminist framework. The article concludes that the Finnish way of translating transnational norms to the national level is characterized by a tendency to modify the transformative meanings underpinning the transnational feminist discourses to a more gender-neutral form.

This article examines social and health care professionals’ views, based on their encounters with both victims and perpetrators, on the division of responsibility in the process of ending intimate partner violence. Applying discourse analysis to focus group discussions with a total of 45 professionals on solutions to the problem, several positions of responsible agency in which professionals place themselves and their clients are identified. The results suggest that one key to understanding the complexities involved in violence intervention lies in a more adequate theorization of the temporal and intersubjective dimensions of the process of assigning responsibility for the problem.

The article examines online discussions in Finland that focus on violence committed by Finnish women, on one hand, and non-white migrant men, on the other. Drawing on the perspective of sociology of value, the article illustrates how these discussions function as sites of struggles over moral worth in a contemporary context characterised by crises of both male and white hegemony. The authors suggest that, through the discussions, these current crises are projected on migrant men and certain groups of women, who thereby become construed as morally reprehensible. The analysis sheds light on processes of (re-)legitimating the moral virtue historically attached to both masculinity and whiteness, and thereby shows how gendered and racialised hierarchies are reproduced in the context of meaning-making around the issue of violence. Also discussed is how these dynamics and the process of reproduction via discourse draw upon historically recurring meanings and evaluations while simultaneously tailored to contemporary circumstances. The tailoring is performed via explicit reference to the value of gender equality, which serves a dual function: re-inscribing moral value in white masculinity while excluding from the circuits of value both racialised masculinities and Finnish women portrayed as doing gender and whiteness in the ‘wrong’ way. These processes give the discussants room for justifying hate and violent exclusion of such women and migrant men while also muting any dissenting voices attempting to resist circulation of the derogatory meanings.

This article explores autistic young adults' experiences of epistemic injustice in healthcare interactions where autism is invoked and a subject of misaligned sensemakings. We take a particular focus on hermeneutical injustice, which refers to the difficulty of understanding and communicating one's experiences due to gaps and biases in sensemaking resources. Earlier research concerning autistic individuals from this perspective is sparse and mostly theoretical. Our study addresses this gap by conducting abductive thematic analysis on interview and questionnaire data from Finnish autistic young adults. This approach enabled us to recognise biases and hierarchies, such as neuronormativity and epistemic hierarchies, while also describing a new, paradoxical kind of hermeneutical injustice not covered by earlier research. Our results indicate how the often‐intertwined forms of epistemic injustices are related to a lack of representativeness in how autism is understood as well as to how the exclusion of certain kinds of knowledge and knowers, along with the devaluations of expressive styles, impact autistic people's epistemic agency, identities and access to care. We argue for more inclusive epistemic approaches in healthcare that appreciate autistic contributions, recognise the diversity of autistic experience and expression, and challenge the reductive assumptions embedded in diagnostic and professional practices.