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How does Social Work respond DVA? What are the key issues? - Coggle Diagram
How does Social Work respond DVA? What are the key issues?
Mother Blaming
Mothers seen as "failing to protect" their children (Singh, 2017)
Ultimatums for women to leave or have children removed (Stewart, 2019)
Women become viewed as "mothers" rather than victims in their own right (Featherstone & Peckover, 2007)
The "reasonable steps" a mother is expected to take are far higher than the "reasonable steps" a father is to take to protect children from harm
A deficit model of mothering (Lapierre, 2008)
The "child's best interests" are at the heart of interventions
The harms done to children by DVA have been increasingly recognised, but has this led to any more accountability on part of the perpetrator?
Increasing criminalisation of DVA in line with harms done to victims/survivors - has this improved anything?
Children's best interests pre-separation = couple must separate
Children's best interests post-separation = child must maintain relationship with father
Best interests focus is on "protection from significant harm", yet separation from mother is almost inevitably going to cause significant emotional harm. Incident led focus in legislation is mirrored in social work interventions despite claims of acknowledgment of CC and patterns of abuse - is it really in the child's best interests to separate them from their mother or is it just a documentable way to "mitigate risk"
The violent male partner may be ignored
Resources are tight, caseloads are high - including men adds to workload
Social work is a female led profession - are these women well equipped and willing to work with violent men?
Perpetrator programmes - demand for these has increased, but do they focus on fathers? The focus is on the man, not his role as a father
Social work views DVA as not discriminating and states in guidance that it occurs across every section of society (BASW England, 2021) this is true, but it is much more common in households living in poverty (Fahmy et al., 2016)
"As social workers we must seek to understand the complexity of children’s and parents’ experiences and identities that can act as barriers in terms of how they access support and how professionals relate to them." (BASW England, 2021: p6)
Is social work confused about its role in tackling DVA?
Not an adults' social work issue unless the victim/survivor is already eligible for support under the Care Act 2014 (Robbins et al., 2016)
Social workers know that encouraging women to leave is not always the best solution, but they do it anyway - how is this in line with promoting empowerment and life chances?
Most people entering the profession are women, they may not have "violent men" in mind when they become social workers and think of who they will work with
Social work has become incredibly risk averse - violent man is seen as a risk, thus the risk needs to be removed, thus the woman must leave. This is a massive over simplification of the situations within many violent relationships