Research to policy and practice Women’s specialist domestic and family violence services: Their responses and practices with and for Aboriginal women: Key findings and future directions
Despite the increasingly high profile of domestic and family violence (DFV) in Australian society, surprisingly little is known in the public domain about the ways women’s specialist services provide help to the victims/survivors.
When it comes to Aboriginal women, high rates of violence have been well documented and publicised; however, very little has been documented or analysed in relation to how specialist DFV services work with and for Aboriginal women as clients/survivors, workers, board, and community members.
Women’s specialist domestic and family violence services: Their responses and practices with and for Aboriginal women is a project that concentrated on how workers and services try to listen to Aboriginal women—what they see and hear, what they have learnt, and how they apply this in practice.
Produced by working closely and collaboratively for more than a year with three specialist DFV services — Alice Springs Women’s Shelter, ACT Domestic Violence Crisis Service, and Ngaanyatjarra Pitjantjatjara Yankunytjatjara Women’s Council Domestic and Family Violence Service (NPY Women’s Council) — the research undertaken for this report focused on learning from these services and from the Aboriginal women who have contact with these services, as clients and community members, or who work with or within the services.
The research also focused on finding out from Aboriginal women what they value from crisis contact, and when and how they thought services could ask them their views and experiences. The insights are crucial for women’s specialist services in maintaining open and continual learning from Aboriginal women as clients.
Local Aboriginal women were an integral part of the research project, but the research findings do not represent the views of all Aboriginal women.
Publication details
ANROWS Compass (Research to policy and practice papers) are concise papers that summarise key findings of research on violence against women and their children, including research produced under ANROWS’s research program, and provide advice on the implications for policy and practice.
Authors
DR JUDY PUTT
School of Behavioural, Cognitive and Social Sciences, University of New England
DR ROBYN HOLDER
Griffith Criminology Institute, Griffith University
MS CATH O’LEARY
School of Behavioural, Cognitive and Social Sciences, University of New England
ISSN: 2204-9622 (print) 2204-9630 (online)
8 pp.