Background to the Research

• The Barnardo's Northern Ireland DVOS has developed a range of services to meet women's and children's needs. This scheme provides safety counselling and planning services to abused women and their children.
  

Research Approach

• The paper is a review of existing research to highlight some issues and interventions that will be of assistance to others who would like to develop their own policies and services in this field. It is targeted towards policy makers, service providers and practitioners. In addition, a small number of qualitative interviews were carried out to obtain perceptions of the service provided.
  

Main Findings

Children and domestic violence

• Domestic violence is an abusive context for children and they may experience emotional or psychological damage and suffer physical harm as a result. Children may feel deep hurt and confusion over the violence. They may also feel that they are to blame for what is happening. Young children may show signs of distress through bedwetting or disturbed sleep while older children can develop behavioral problems or become withdrawn.
• The research findings reviewed indicated that:
  
  • The perpetrator of domestic violence may also be directly abusing the child;
  • Being exposed to domestic violence often has a detrimental effect and may have an abusive impact on a child;
  • The perpetrator may abuse the child as part of their violence against the woman;
  • The perpetrator can continue to emotionally and physically abuse the child during contact visits;
  • If the woman experiences post-separation violence, the perpetrator may continue to emotionally and/or physically abuse the child.

Impact of domestic violence on relationships

• Domestic violence distorts family relationships between mother and child, and also between father and child. Conflicting loyalties within families can also cause divisions between siblings and among extended family members, and children may often feel torn between their parents.
• The mother in a family suffering domestic violence is often emotionally distanced from her children as she attempts to both deal with the abuse and keep it hidden from the child. The mother's parenting ability and emotional availability are affected by the physical and emotional abuse while communication is strained as family members try to 'hold' the family secret.
• Children often have mixed feelings about their father (or abusing man) and identify two sides to him: a caring/nice side and a hurting/violent side. The children have to work out how to respond to their father's moods and behaviour. They may use avoidance behaviour to limit the time spent with him or engage in pleasing behaviour in an attempt to keep him in a good mood.

Child protection and safety counselling - 'Supporting the safety of non-abusing mothers is a positive response to child protection and domestic violence.' Department of Health (1999)

• DVOS aims to support the non-abusing mother by providing safety counseling as a response to child protection.
  • 'The safety counseling service was very good. I was given information on the police, Women's Aid and who to ring in an emergency. It made me aware of the need to be ready at an early stage, to have a bag packed, a spare key cut, and have a safe place to go if I needed it. I now have a plan to get my children and myself to a place of safety until I have time to get my protection orders. It is scary but it is reality for me.' - Abused woman with two children under three years.
• DVOS also provides a children's safety counselling service aimed at children aged 6 to 12 years. The number and duration of sessions held depend on the child's age and all take place jointly with the child's mother. This work primarily takes place either at the point of crisis or after the alleged perpetrator has left the family home.
  • 'It is safer for me to try and get help for mum than to try and stop dad because he is a lot bigger and stronger than me and I could get hurt. I can go outside and get help from the neighbours. My sisters know to stay in their bedroom.' - Daughter (12) of abused woman.

Safety Planning

• Safety planning with children and young people has several purposes:
  • To enable children to keep safe when violence is happening at home by providing them with a simple, concrete plan to get to safety;
  • To educate them about domestic violence and show that it is their father (or whoever is the abuser) and not them who is responsible for the violence and abuse in the home;
  • To stress the importance of keeping out of mother and father's fights, especially when father is being violent towards mother;
  • To establish boundaries and help them understand that their father needn't be told about their safety;
  • To plan if he should return to the family home.
  • 'My children and myself have done a course of safety planning.This was done with me first, then the children with a worker and me. It was very helpful, although the children did find it hard to talk about their father's violence. Using the plan of the house and talking to the children about the best room for them to go to be safe was a good way of getting the safety plan across to them.' - Abused woman with three children aged 13, 12 and 9 me.

Obstacles to effective intervention

• Some of the obstacles to providing effective intervention which were reported by the authors included:
  • Lack of an agreed definition of domestic violence among health professionals and childcare organisations.
  • A need for a greater awareness of the implications for child safety within domestic violence situations.
  • A lack of an agreed approach/procedure for staff dealing with children within domestic violence situations.
  • A need for consistent recording and monitoring of data on domestic violence to ensure children is protected from further harm.

Recommendations

• Children's needs must be put first when dealing with every domestic violence situation. The authors recommend a new duty be imposed on health and social services trusts to ensure that where young children (under 12 years) regularly witness domestic violence social workers must make an initial assessment to determine whether the child is in need of protection.
• In addition, this assessment can consider family needs for family support services.
• Professionals need to develop a more consistent approach to working together when dealing with child safety in domestic violence cases.
• Better monitoring procedures need to be developed to record details of instances of domestic violence.