Issues Paper 26: Traversing the maze of ‘evidence’ and ‘best practice’ in domestic and family violence Service provision in Australia, a joint publication by the Australian Domestic & Family Violence Clearinghouse and ANROWS was released today. In this paper, authors, Dr Jan Breckenridge and Dr Jen Hamer from UNSW, consider how ‘evidence’ is constructed and translated into ‘best practice’.

The paper contends that the experience and understanding of practitioners within domestic and family violence (DFV) services constitute important contributing knowledge for the evidence-base. However, practice wisdom alone is not sufficient, since other forms of knowledge also play an important role in optimising outcomes.

Ultimately, this paper promotes the engagement of DFV practitioners in formal research and evaluation, not only to substantially inform the evidence but also to critically examine the effects of their interventions against all manner of valid evidence, in a recursive process of knowledge translation. It is suggested that a critical, reflexive engagement with formal evidence is ultimately the defining feature of ‘best practice’ in the continuous drive towards an effective response to violence against women.

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Traversing the Maze of ‘Evidence’ and ‘Best Practice’ in Domestic and Family Violence Service Provision in Australia

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