Domestic Violence and Protecting Children

New Thinking and Approaches

Cathy Humphreys, Nicky Stanley

• Publisher: Jessica Kingsley Publishers
• Year: 2015
• ISBN:
  9780857008756
• Topic: Social Sciences
• Subtopic: Social Work
• Index: Social Sciences

In this volume, the authors present an overview of the innovative work taking place in relation to domestic violence and child protection.

This book looks at new prevention initiatives and how interventions for children exposed to domestic violence have been developed. It shows how services for abusive fathers have evolved and provides discussion and critique of a number of new initiatives in the field of interagency risk assessment. With international perspectives and examples drawn from social care, health care and voluntary sectors, this book brings together established ideas with recent thinking to provide an authoritative summary of current domestic violence and child protection practice.

As a valuable source of guidance on how to work safely with children living with domestic violence, this is a key reference for social workers, health professionals and policy makers.

PART ONE

Children’s and Young People’s Perspectives

CHAPTER 1

Children’s Views of Safety and Adversity When Living with Domestic Violence

Anita Morris, Cathy Humphreys and Kelsey Hegarty

Introduction

He held her down when she was like three months old, held a knife to her. He wouldn’t have killed his own kid, but he was just trying to scare Mum. (Michelle, 16, talking about her younger sister and her stepfather)

In 1924, a paediatrician, Dr Ira Wile, wrote of children raised in a ‘brawling home’ (Wile 1924, p.474). Nearly a century later, there are still too many children and young people like Michelle who grow up in homes where there is domestic violence. Figures can convey the magnitude of the problem: one in four children in the UK and Australia has experienced domestic violence by 18 years of age (Indermaur 2001; Radford et al. 2011). Prevalence rates in the United States are similar (Finkelhor et al. 2009), whilst indigenous Australian young people and children in developing countries experience domestic violence at much higher rates (Indermaur 2001; Kishor and Johnson 2004).

Despite so many children and young people growing up in households marred by violence, opportunities for these children to talk about their experiences and to receive the support they need are limited (Murray and Powell 2012; Wilcox 2007). Yet studies that have directly sought children’s perspectives have shown that children want to be able to talk to someone and will seek out the support of trusted adults and peers when it is safe to do so. Moreover, where such support is available, it is known to be of benefit to children’s safety and well-being (Buckley, Holt and Whelan 2007; McGee 2000; Mullender et al. 2002).

This chapter draws on the findings of a qualitative Australian study known as the SARAH project, which involved interviews and focus groups with children and their mothers from a primary care population. All the participants had experienced domestic violence although no children were living with the violent father or stepfather at the time of the interviews. However, some of the younger children had regular, usually court-ordered, contact with their biological father. The SARAH project aimed to bring to light the experiences of children drawn from a primary care population, a group of children often hidden from view. It provided children and their mothers with an opportunity to talk about children’s understandings of safety and resilience in the context of domestic violence.

Following a brief historical overview of research with children, the main part of this chapter reveals children’s perspectives according to themes of vulnerability, danger, safety and agency experienced in the context of domestic violence. The lived experiences of four families who participated in the SARAH project are used to highlight facets of each theme and provide the basis for the implications for practice.

Background

Research interest in the plight of children who experience domestic violence gained momentum in the 1990s (Graham-Bermann and Levendosky 1998; Stanley 1997; Jaffe, Wolfe and Wilson 1990) following a time of service expansion for women experiencing domestic violence (Walby 1990). Through this context, it was noted that women who were escaping violent partners brought their children with them to the shelters (Mullender and Morley 1994). As researchers began to understand better the predicament of women experiencing domestic violence, they also sought to know more about the children (Kelly 1994). However, as questions about children’s experience of domestic violence increased, concerns began to be raised about the ethics of researching children’s experiences without consulting them directly (Peled 2001). Principles founded in the United Nations Convention on the Rights of the Child (1989) and supported by an emerging literature on the ‘sociology of childhood’ which understood children as social agents (Qvortrup 2005) provided the foundations for changes in research practice.

The concerns expressed by some of those researching in the domestic violence field included the criticisms that mainly adult perceptions and adult interpretations were sought; that researchers relied on refuge or child protection samples rather than understanding the broader group of children who experience domestic violence; and finally that there was a heavy dependency on quantitative studies (Edleson 1999).

Heeding the call for more qualitative research and broader sampling of children, the SARAH project was designed as a health-based study that reflected the new milieu of domestic violence research with children (Morris, Hegarty and Humphreys 2012). Such studies consider more closely the ethical nature of the research, the safety of participants and researchers, and look for ways to increase children’s participation and collaboration in the research (Eriksson and Näsman 2010; Mudaly and Goddard 2009; Överlien 2012).

The SARAH project

To better understand children’s safety in the context of domestic violence, the study took a child-centred approach (Mudaly and Goddard 2009) informed by a theoretical framework of ethics of care (Groenhout 2004) and dialogical ethics (Koehn 1998). These theories provided an empathic and relational lens through which to consider children’s moral reasoning and decision making.

The study recruited participants from two general practice clinics and from a larger primary care study (WEAVE) of women who had experienced domestic violence (Hegarty et al. 2013). A total of 23 children and 18 mothers participated in semi-structured interviews and focus groups. The children ranged in age from eight years to 24 years old.

Mothers in the SARAH project voluntarily completed an expression-of-interest pamphlet in the waiting room of the clinic or were contacted via a safe phone number following their participation in WEAVE (Hegarty et al. 2013). Mothers consented to their child’s participation, whilst children were able to assent (Alderson and Morrow 2011). This process of consent and assent affirmed the mother’s role in deciding what was safe and appropriate for her child, whilst asserting the child’s right to agree or disagree to participate in the research. All mothers participated in an initial risk-assessment interview so that the researcher could confirm that it was safe for a family to participate.

The researcher developed protocols for distress, disclosure and researcher safety (Morris et al. 2012). Child-friendly methods were employed including: the option to have a support person in the interview; an activity book to record responses to interview questions; and having toys, activities and refreshments available (Mudaly and Goddard 2009).

A hermeneutic phenomenological (Laverty 2003) approach was taken to analyse the data. This is an approach that focuses on the essence and interpretation of participants’ experiences, leading ultimately to practical understanding. Mothers’ perspectives on their children’s experiences provided a family context and gave insight into the mother–child relationship both during the domestic violence and post-separation.

Perspectives on vulnerability and danger

Cruel, evil, disgusting…he’s just not a nice person. (Tahlia, 19, describing her father, Rodney)

This section highlights the experiences of children from two families whose stories of adversity reflect those of the majority of participant families in the SARAH project. Not only did these families experience adversity when living with domestic violence, but significant vulnerability and danger remained present for children and their mothers in the post-separation environment.

I hated seeing Mum getting hurt. I remember one time Mum was in my room, reading a book to me…and Dad came in, he was just spitting on her and Mum just wasn’t paying attention and then Dad went and got a cane stool, and…went to throw it at us, so I like kind of jumped towards Mum to try and stop it hitting her. But he still threw it anyway, didn’t stop him. I think it hit both of us. (Tahlia, 19)

The persistent attempts by Tahlia’s father, Rodney, to intrude on and harm Tahlia and her mother, Opal, were typical of the dangerous events children spoke of during their interviews. Tahlia, her older half-sister and their mother experienced 15 years of severe violence perpetrated by Rodney. They spoke of trying to have a safe and ‘normal’ home life despite many failed attempts by them and the police to keep Rodney from the home. The impact of his violence was far-reaching and included chronic physical and psychological injuries to mother and daughter, disruption of Tahlia’s schooling contributing to Tahlia’s ultimate disengagement from school, an inability to maintain employment and general isolation from family and friends.

Tahlia had witnessed her father injuring and abusing her mother and damaging household goods and furniture. On different occasions, Tahlia and her sister had hidden in a wardrobe and sought refuge with friends and neighbours. Simple life events that other families might take for granted could trigger violence:

One year we put the Christmas tree in a different spot and that was it. Christmas presents were up the backyard and he went nuts. He threw them up the backyard because we put the Christmas tree in a different spot and he didn’t like it. (Tahlia, 19)

Rodney’s violence led to him being removed from the home and child protection services became involved. This too was a distressing experience:

Once we split up and I had [child protection services] coming here randomly making sure that I was doing everything right – and I do. I cooked my meals, the house was clean, the kids were well looked after, because he caused me that trouble but he left for 12 months, [he] didn’t have to answer any questions to [child protection services] or anything but I had to go to court to prove that I could keep my kids safe from him or else they were going to take them off me. (Opal, mother)

At the time of her interview, Opal reported that the court had granted a life-long intervention order. Despite reprieve from the regular intrusion, confrontation and violence, the scars of the violence were not easily erased. Mirroring her parents’ relationship, Tahlia talked about how in early adolescence she had experienced violence in her own intimate relationship that included verbal abuse, physical violence, isolation and sexual infidelity. Her understanding of the violence was intertwined with feelings of love for the perpetrator:

He wasn’t a very nice person, but I still stayed with him because I loved him. And there was one time that he thought I’d lied to him, so he held me down and burnt me with a cigarette lighter. But I loved him so I still stayed with him. There’ll always be that special…part [struggles with this word] in my heart for him, so I guess I can kind of tell how Mum feels except she was with Dad for a lot longer than I was with my ex-boyfriend. (Tahlia, 19)

Tahlia’s narrative conveys her negative opinion of her father and her ex-partner, whilst at the same time she grapples with her feelings of obligation and love (see Chapter 10). Tahlia and her family’s experiences demonstrated how severe violence over many years led to other vulnerabilities which were exacerbated by ineffective formal responses. At the time of their interviews, the danger had ebbed, Tahlia had become a mother and her stepsister was said to be enjoying a professional career and a stable partner. Opal was appreciative of a small job she had started.

These small gains are worthy of celebration, but the vulnerabilities remained as Opal described her own and Tahlia’s ongoing battles with depression. They talked about trying now to build a ‘normal’ family life. However, the overriding theme in their narrative was one of a lack of agency for both mother and child.

Like Tahlia and her family, eight-year-old Linda, her mother Joyce, younger brother Mitchell and older stepsist...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Half Title
• by the same author
• Title Page
• Copyright
• Dedication
• Contents
• List of Tables
• List of Figures
• Introduction: Domestic Violence and Protecting Children: The Changing Landscape
• Part One: Children’s and Young People’s Perspectives
• Part Two: Prevention and Intervention for Children and Young People
• Part Three: Interventions for Mothers and Children
• Part Four: Working with Abusive Fathers
• Part Five: Interagency Work
• Contributor Profiles
• Subject Index
• Author Index
• Also available