Hi everybody,
My name is Stacey and I am trained as a social worker - I've worked in both Child Protection and Children In Care social work before returning to Nottingham Trent University to undertake a PhD that looks at mothers experiences of domestic abuse and social work.
I am looking for participants, both social workers and mothers.
The criteria for mothers; anyone who has been, or is in, an abusive relationship AND who has had, or who has, involvement with children's services.
The criteria for social workers; anyone who has worked in Child Protection.
I’d like participants to be involved in different parts of the research, so you have a choice of how you can be involved. My approach seeks to ensure that participant’s stories are told accurately, from their point of view. You are not expected to take part in all of the roles, so if this sounds interesting to you we can discuss it and find what suits you best.
I have chosen this method because I want to understand if current approaches to mothers within child protection social work revictimise women with violent partners. This interests me because during my time in social work I was made very uncomfortable by the way social workers work with women who had experienced domestic abuse. Social workers have to decide whether domestic abuse is having a damaging impact on the child and if there is, how to manage the risk and make sure the child is protected. In this situation, they often focus their attention on the main caregiver who is often the mum. This can lead to decisions being made by a social worker which takes away the mothers ability to make decisions, and often leaves her feeling powerless. These decisions may assume that the mum has enough support and money to leave the relationship safely, that the mum hasn’t been protective of her children and it does not place responsibility for the abusive behaviour on the right person. It can also ignore the statistics about the risks to mothers leaving abusive relationships.
I know this chain of events can happen, and I want to investigate it with mothers and social workers. I want to hear if you have experienced or behaved like this. I want to hear about experiences that were positive and very different from this. Most of all, I want to hear from you about what you experienced in this situation. If you're interested in my project, want to have a chat, make a comment, or even become involved, please don't hesitate to text, call or email me – 07565472560, [email protected].
With very best wishes
Stacey
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Mums experiences of social work after domestic incident
20 replies
Shstewart · 02/11/2017 19:25
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