Making Their Stories Matter: A Community-Engaged Research Evaluation of Service User and Service Provider Experiences of a Coordinated Response to Violence against Women and Children
Year: 2016
Type: dissertation
Abstract: Coordinated community responses (CCR) to violence against women have experienced many successes in bringing together service providers from different sectors under the shared goal of providing collaborative services to abused women and their children. This research contributes to CCR literature by assessing what service providers and service users in a small Ontario community identify as the functions of effective responses to abused women and children. Guided by feminist theory, this study prioritizes the importance of women’s voices in the research and the results are grounded in an appreciation for their lived experiences. The use of social psychological and educational leadership theories, including Relational Coordination Theory and the Social Change Model also explore the importance of relationships among service providers and service users under a CCR model. This study features face-to-face qualitative interviews with forty-one participants, including seven violence-specific/direct service providers, ten broader service providers and twenty-four women who have experienced abuse and accessed services within the last three years. This research adds to a gap in the literature that suggests while members of DVCCs are conscious of their conduct with abused women, this does not always transfer to other service providers within their sectors, and therefore ongoing knowledge transfers can widen the net of service providers that learn about CCR values and protocols. The overall findings reinforce previous findings that commitments to CCR models are not static, and service providers should make a conscious effort to revisit the goals of their protocols; manage differences of opinion/conflicts; recognize and address one’s inherent biases; and understand the complexities of violence against women including system and structural barriers.
Author: Carolynn Mazzei
Language: English
Subfield: Health
Field: Social Sciences
Domain: Social Sciences
Open Access status: green
OpenAlex ID: W2583419827