Typologies of domestic abuse (Ep.21)

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Transcript

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Hi. Look into which device social work practice, poke class. Hey step by wrench. Odd. It was essential worker. His podcast is about practice related issues, self development and transformation. It will give you knowledge, ideas and practical tools for being a fantastic social worker, supporting you of assessment skills. Direct work, dealing with conflict. And importantly, helping you make a positive difference in the lives of children and families. In this episode, I'm going to be talking about. Domestic abuse. My experience of that. And of working with. Families and parents where domestic abuse is an issue. Before I get into that, there's a couple of things I wanted to mention. First is that I missed recording an episode last week. Which. I found really frustrating because it was going to be episode 21. And apparently. Quite a significant proportion of people who set up a podcast, don't get past. Episode 21 or at least that's what I read. Some time ago. So it felt like a bit of a milestone. And yet I was unable to do it. And. That reflects. Where I'm at at the moment where things at home. In my personal life. Taken precedence, nothing. Life in dangerous or scary or frightening. But it's just required me to be at home a lot more. And. It's been an interesting experience in terms of how much of my identity is wrapped around performing at a certain level within work and doing the things that I liked to do. Outside of work and. Even though, I feel like I've come a long way in terms of not attaching my sense of self or my self worth to my. Performance or my output that clearly. It's still an ongoing. Issue. And. In a blog. I wrote a couple of years ago. Aye. Wrote about this book I drew out a few years ago called the seven habits of highly effective people, which. I still think is probably one of the best books I've read in terms of like self development, even though. I'm about to criticize it, but one of the things in that books is that you look at all of the different dimensions in your life. So for example, Your work, your family, your friends, self-development health. Religion. Whatever it might be. And then you analyze what your contribution is within each of those areas of your life. And the argument that's made in that book is if you're hyper focused in one area, it will leave you on balanced and compromise other central regions in your, in your life. So for example, In my twenties, I worked excessively long hours when I was a case old in child protection, social worker. And as a result made quite good progress in that area of my life. However. My fiscal health suffered. I'd rarely got chance to see my friends. And I was often exhausted whenever I did spend time with my family. So what Stephen Covey, the author of seven habits of highly effective people advocate for. Is that you create a balance in the different domains of your life, so you can satisfy each of them. And I was reflecting that in that, in this blog. That I'd wrote that ever since I'd read that I would kind of be aspiring to succeed and every hour of my life simultaneously, like that's the goal. To be. Successful at work, eat healthy. Nutritious home cooked food to exercise regularly to meditate, have brilliant relationships with friends, family, and volunteer in the community. And. Well, that's not like. And I'm an unworthy ambition. I've come to realize. Especially in the last couple of weeks that it's unattainable. And there's another book that I read. More recently, which is called 4,000 weeks by Oliver Berkman. And he points out that successfully focusing on one area will by default require you to make sacrifices in other areas. Now. That doesn't mean that you, we abandoned our attempts to achieve balance. Rather you just accept that specific points in our lives. We assume that we won't function as well as we would like to in other areas, whilst we pursued. Whatever it is that we're passivity. And so I'm sharing this because I'm needing to remind myself at the moment that. I'm having to focus on one area of my life, which is around my family and my commitments at home. And I'm having to sacrifice. It's not even. My ability to do my job, but, but an idea I have of myself in terms of how I show up at work. And that's not necessarily a bad. Thing. In fact, it's probably a very positive thing. But it doesn't need to be accompanied by the kind of mental. Negative self-talk that I've been experiencing with that. Over the last couple of weeks and not. Not producing a blog. A podcast, sorry, is one of the areas that I've been a little bit. Critical of myself for not being able to keep up with. So that's that. The other thing I wanted to mention is the bars where social work child protection masterclass series. Which is beginning. This month at too late. Are we have the first one which is going to be on the 26th of April. And that is going to be looking at why it is hard to talk to children and child protection. Key principles and practical tools to overcome the challenges of working with children and to capture the child's voice. And pleasingly that's buried, nearly sold out. We only have. A few more. Tickets or whatever they're called left for the working with children. And there's a few others that are over half way in terms of being sold out. They are the assessment in child protection sessions. And using attachment theory. And trauma. In child protection. And then there's others around managing conflict in child protection, which is probably the one I'm looking forward to doing the most. That's taking place on the 16th of May. Because it's looking at the communication skills. That will help in terms of dealing with confrontation and resistance and denial. Which are ubiquitous within child protection and which I feel like we have very little. The training and support. With and some of the other. Topics are around. How to survive and thrive, looking at time management and. Principles that allow you to, to be effective in your work. That that came out of my realization that in order for me to be a good social worker, I needed to be more than a good social worker. I had to be able to manage my time effectively. And I was completely terrible at managing my time. And so I ended up reading and doing a lot of research about that, but a lot of it doesn't. A lot of the research on time management isn't particularly useful within a child protection context, because it's quite a specific and unique working context. And so it does require some adaptation of certain ideas. And then there's a couple of others around looking at decision making and working with parents who was suffering with substance misuse. So you can check them out. Barus was website or you can just Google Basware child protection masterclass series. So I'm going to be talking about domestic abuse. Probably. Referring to two books. The first is. Bye. Breach Featherstone and a gut. Kate Morrison, Sue white, called protect in children. Then the second book is. Called a typology of domestic violence. They're the probably two books that are going to guide my thinking. Through this episode. And. One of the. Arguments that Featherstone and her colleagues make in protecting children. Is that. That we need to consider the kind of evolving and change in research around domestic abuse. And in particular, we need to look at how we can make sense of the underlying mechanisms of interpersonal violence behavior. And what they're cautioning against is a simplistic and narrow explanatory framework. Which I think sometimes we're guilty of in child protection or at least I have been in any event. So, for example, they showed some really interesting research. That found that there was a host of evidence showing vulnerability to domestic abuse to be associated with low income. Economic strain and being on benefits. And they argued that the inability of man to fulfill that role as the kind of male breadwinner can contribute to relationship. Difficulties. And I was kind of blown away by that because I'd read quite a lot on domestic abuse over the years and worked in child protection for several years. Where it features. In almost all of the cases you work with. But I hadn't heard of an explanation where. Men's bad, abusive behavior. Could be attribute it to kind of socio economic circumstances within particular communities. And so. What that does is that opens up windows or doors? Two. Different ways in which we can help deal with this problem. So it wouldn't be. Difficult to conceive, for example, that a child protection intervention to address domestic abuse. Could involve helping a man find employment because that would reduce financial strain and provide the man with a sense of purpose and self-esteem et cetera. And one of the arguments they also make in protect and children. Is that the recognition of the harmful effects of domestic abuse on children? Which is actually surprisingly relatively new. And it's probably something that within the social work community, as a whole, which we could be quite proud of in terms of. Highlight in particular harms towards children and domestic abuse. You know, Up until seventies and eighties was pretty normalized. And the impact on children overlooked. But what they identify is that. The harmful effects of domestic abuse on children has led to it being a central focus of our work. And that can sometimes come with problematic consequences. So for example, women, mothers who experienced domestic abuse and remain in such a relationship can be considered as failing to protect by a child protection system. Or they might be expected to separate and sustain separation from an abusive relationship. And the impact of losing a partner. And the demand of caring for the child alone. Who who are probably unsettled by the absence of that ad. It's largely ignored. And that is probably the consequence of like looking at it through a purely risk. Heavy. Framework. So we only see the risks and we don't see what the, what the. Perpetrator of domestic abuse might be offering in the family system. And the response for men doesn't seem particularly more. Favorable or helpful. Because if a man is repeatedly abusive, he then may eventually be criminalized. And coerced into attendant perpetrators program. And Featherstone. And colleagues are quite critical of some of the perpetrator programs. And refer to it. This is in that word. An overly reductive social approach, which treats them as instances of the general where the individual life stories are rendered. Irrelevant. So. I actually did my dissertation when I was at university back in 2010 on domestic abuse. I remember when Let's do it. My dissertation. At university. And I was thinking I really want to do something that is in interesting or groundbreaking. Which seems ridiculous now in hindsight, because I just wouldn't have been able to do that, even if I'd wanted to. But I also wanted to do something that was going to be practically useful in terms of the work that I was going to be doing. Once I qualified and I did my third year placement in a child protection team, long-term child protection team. And came across a lot of domestic abuse. And so I thought it would be. Really useful. Way to spend writing thousands and thousands of words on a. On an area in which I was going to be, having to deal with, you know, quite frequently. And. So I did my dissertation on domestic abuse and the impact of mothering. And I came to understand it primarily is a male perpetrator, female victim construct. And I found out about. The in-situ us pervasive. Devastating effect of man's abusive behavior on a woman's sense of self. And the direct and indirect impact that this can have on children. And. What I found. Really surprising was that the research found that some women would implement strategies. In the context of their abusive relationship that functioned to protect their children. And compensate from the harmful effects of domestic abuse. And this was referred to as adaptive, maternal compensate tree behavior. In other words, there would be things that the mums would do. When they're in a domestically abusive relationship. To shield their children. Or. To compensate. For example, by spending extra time, attention, taking them on. Activities, whatever it might be. And that really highlighted to me. The need to explore with mums. The attempts that they've made to protect themselves and their children. And to recognize protective facts that they've implemented in extremely difficult circumstances. And sometimes they've done it at increased risk to themselves. And that goes back to. The risk of just looking through domestic abuse for a risk lens, we can overlook. The fact that the mum is in a domestically abusive relationship, but actually. We can have conversations with and find out about ways that she sought to protect herself. She sought to protect her child. She sought to compensate for the kind of difficulties that occur in. Home. But fundamentally at this point, domestic abuse. I understood it was male perpetrator. The female was often the victim. But when I became. Social worker and I started to work with families. It soon became apparent that it was a lot more. Complex and multifaceted and nuanced the night initially. Understood. And. There's a couple of things that I realized, firstly. I assume it. Became uncomfortable with how we, as a profession sought to dichotomize men and women into domestically abusive relationships as perpetrators. And victims. So I thought it was important to understand. The underlying causes of presenting behaviors. Rather than just half these two. Distinct ways of framing, what was occurring in a relationship. One where the. Person was a perpetrator. And that was met with punishment. Reprimand. Stigma. Challenge, et cetera. And the other was was a victim where they were met with sympathy and support, et cetera. Not not saying that those things aren't the right responses at certain times, but I suppose I was interested about what was occurring. Underneath the present in behaviors. So, for example, why would a man want to control and abuse someone he supposedly loved? What experiences had he had that taught him that this was how to function within an intimate relationship. Because. The domestically abusive man that I had met had extremely challenging and often abusive upbringings. And there are exceptions to this rule. But for the most part. They had unbelievably difficult, abusive childhoods. And they seem to be drawing on. Pond strategies for managing relationships that they developed in the context. Of their relation or social experiences. In raising parents by Patricia, Kristen. She. Asks the question. And I'll read it out now. On which day does a victim of repeated abuse who should be protected, become transformed into a perpetrator who should be punished. And I began to wonder whether it could be that these men were both victims and perpetrators. And I think sometimes. In child protection and maybe just generally. Maybe it's a human tendency and not something to do with top attaching. Is that we have this tendency to take complex social issues and then turn them into reductionist dichotomies that kind of don't capture. The complexity. And there was something about. The dichotomize station of this complex issue. And the scribe and that mean, and to the individual's behavior, that kind of lacked. An exploration of what was occurring underneath the surface. And then. The second issue that became apparent after I began working in child protection was that there were clearly different forms of domestic abuse. So. I've worked with. Domestic abuse is described in the literature that I'd read at university. This kind of typical male perpetrator, coercive control and violent, and the female victim. Although, given the dominance of this form of domestic abuse in the literature. Surprisingly, not that often. I've mainly worked with men and women who frequently argue. That their verbal dispute manifest into physical dispute with one or the other been injured. I've also worked with partners who are mutually controlled and violent with one another. And I've also worked with females who are controlling, but not violent. To that partner. And it wasn't until I read Michael Johnson's book called typology of domestic abuse. Several years later that I. Found a tax that sought to delineate the different forms of domestic abuse. And it kind of blew my mind a little bit because I must have been. 4 5, 6 years post qualified at this point. And. I'm just going to talk through. The different type of typologies. There's four. Topologies. So the first typology is intimate partner terrorism. Intimate partner terrorism. And this is where the individual is violent and controlling and the partner is not. So the individual is violent and controlling, but the partner is not. And this pattern of domestic abuse can be understood using. The Duluth power and control where whereby the use of economic abuse, male privilege children, emotional abuse. Minimizing denying and blame him intimidation. Coercion and threats is underpinned by. Physical and sexual violence and sometimes the physical or sexual violence. It doesn't even need to occur that regularly. It just needs to be a background. Contingency that gets used. And weaponized to intimidate and create fear. And Thompson's research found that this has predominantly perpetrated by men, against women, although not, not exclusively. So in one study, he found that 90% of intimate partner terrorists were male. In 10% were women. And in attempted to understand the psychological roots of such man, he identified two sub patterns. There were the dependent, intimate terrorists. And the anti-social intimate terrorists. And according to Johnson, and I'm just going to quote him here. Dependent intimate terrorists, rank high on measures of emotional dependency in jealousy. These men are obsessed with their partners, desperate to hold them and therefore jealous and controlling. They are not particularly violent outside the family home. Whereas. Anti-social intimate terrorists. Show quite a different pattern, not being particularly dependent or jealous, but ranking high on antisocial personality measures. And generally violent outside as well as inside the FA the family. These men who control their partners, not because they're emotionally obsessed. But simply because they will have their own way by any means necessary at home. And elsewhere. So. Intimate partner terrorism. Is where the individual is violent in control. And then the partner is not, this is predominantly perpetrated by men, towards the women. Although there are some women. Who. Demonstrate these traits. And there are two types that he identified, which are dependent, intimate terrorists, which are highly insecure, emotionally dependent and fear for law of losing that partner. And so they resort to jealous, controlling. Coercive behavior. And then there's antisocial, intimate terrorists who are not particularly dependent or jealous. But rather resort to. Violence as a way of managing situations or relationships, and that plays itself out with people. Outside of the family, as well as with that partner at home. The second type apology that he identifies is called violent resistance. In this partner, in this pattern, the partner responds violently to controlling and violent. Partner. So you can imagine somebody tolerating. Abusive controlling behavior tolerate, tolerate, tolerate, tolerate, tolerate. Reaches a point of it'd be an unmanageable. And suddenly explodes and retaliates. And according to his research, this was primarily females. Retaliated against man. Although there is some research suggests that men will also retaliate against women. So that's violent resistance where after sustain. Stained period of coercive control and behavior. Of retaliate. occurs of some source. The third type apology. It's called situational couple violence. And this involves one or both individuals be environment, but not control them. So I'm going to quote Johnson here. He writes. The violence has situationally provoked is the tensions or emotions of a particular encounter. Lee to someone to react with violence. The violence may be minor and singular, or it could be a chronic problem. With one or both partners frequently resorting to violence, minor or severe. The causes of situational couple violence, according to Johnson. Ah, Deprivation disagreements on how to manage the children. Alcohol and substance misuse and poor verbal skills. And. Well, it's this form of violence is distributed relatively evenly between the genders. The impact is generally more harmful female partners. This is his words now. They are more likely to be physically injured, to fear for their safety and to experience. Negative psychological consequences of the violence. So. Situational couple violence is bound up in a particular situation. Where there might be disagreements or arguments around money, how to deal with the kids. Alcohol and substance misuse, compromising that function in, or they might have limited skills to deal with conflict. And arguments. Get out of hand and one, or both of the partners become violent with one another. And that this can occur as a one off, or it could occur repeatedly. Now. Important thing to note about that is. That the situational couple violence could be as harmful for the child as intimate partner. Terrorism could be, for example. So it's not necessarily the less harmful form of violence, but it is a different type and it could be less harmful for the children. If, for example, it's relatively infrequent. But it's just noting that these, these different types of islands don't say anything necessarily about what the impact will be on the children. That's part of our role is to recognize that there's different topologies, which will influence. Influence the way that we support the parents, but the actually. We have to look at the impact upon the children. And again, note in that. Even though. Situational couple violence can be distributed between the genders. It tends to be women who are harmed more from this. And then the final pan involves mutual violent control. Which involves both the individual and partner. I engage in environment and controlling behavior. And he states. Johnston rights. With mutual violent control. We have the tree mutuality. Of two people fighting for general control over the relationship. And. I've definitely had cases where mutual violence control. Is what's playing itself out in the relationship. And. Those are the relationships tend to be quite explosive and intense and tend to be brought to the attention of children's social care quite quickly. So. There's four different types. There's intimate partner terrorism, which is domestic abuse as is probably commonly known. Where. The individual, typically the man is coercive and control him. And use his various tactics and strategies in order to exercise this level of control. The second is violent resistance where. The partner responds to a violent and controlling partner after. Weeks or months, sometimes years of experience in abusive behavior. The third type apology. Which is, I think it's very common within children's social care, situational, couple violence. Which might be because the family is struggling over money, struggling to get a job living in poor housing. Have issues around substance misuse, struggled to communicate effectively. And it's where arguments get out of hand. And then the fourth pattern is mutual, violent behavior. Now. I think this is like an unbelievably helpful framework. But it's probably still too categorical. Because within each typology, the violent and or control. And behaviors will exist on a spectrum. But it's still worth. Being aware of these various different typologies? I think. And. What, what I'm surprised by is that the recognition. That topologies of domestic abuse exists have been known for. Like many, many years. This book by Michael Johnson was published. In 2008. So 15 years ago, however, it doesn't seem to be. Widely understood. And in the absence that this understand it and what. I've observed is that the topologies are an acknowledged. And the male perpetrator, female victim. The kind of intimate partner, terrorism explanation. And the accompanying solutions. Applied irrespective of the circumstances. So for example, Even in cases of situational, couple violence or mutual violent control. The mum is asked to attend a course with victims. For example, the freedom program. And the father is often criminalized whilst the issues that caused the conflict. For example, poverty, substance misuse, unresolved childhood trauma. Can remain an unaddressed. And. There's an article by Featherstone and Trinda. And I can't remember the name of it, but it's on domestic abuse. Well worth a read. Basically. I'm going to quote what they say here. Domestic abuse is not a unitary phenomena. With a single explanatory framework and with a single prescription for. Practitioners. And. They basically. Advocate in the, in the social model by Featherstone and her colleagues. That we need to rethink about how we approach domestic abuse. Because. It is a shockingly high. It features in shockingly high numbers within the cases that we work with. Within children's social care. And what that advocated for is that we look beyond this kind of singular. Explanation. All manner up perpetrators. Coercive control. Manifest in the kind of male privilege in ways that are harmful to their partners. And the women are victims that need support. And. Removing from a dangerous relationship. And. Move beyond that whilst recognizing that that is definitely a feature of some relationships and look at other causes or because that will open up doors to different solutions. And so there's ideas around restorative practice, the use of family group. Conferences and strong fathers. But I think first and foremost, you have to begin with an accurate assessment of the problem. Before you think about what the alternatives could be. Now. We have to be very careful. I think. In terms of our judgment when assessing domestic abuse. To be sure that victims are not placed in further risk by our inability to effectively identify the dynamics within the relationship. For example, you could imagine. If there's a male perpetrator, female victim, and we misconstrue that as. Situational couple violence that will also compromise even further the victim in that scenario. And it's probably worth. Leaning more into. Male perpetrator female. The victim. To counteract the risk of not doing that. I would say. And then looking for evidence that might disprove the hypothesis that it's the man, the man that's the perpetrator. But if we fail to address the complexity, it will lead to reductionist explanations and inappropriate interventions and expectations being placed upon families. That doesn't improve their circumstances. And. So we need to look at domestic violence as a complex problem. That requires a kind of multi-dimensional solution. In other words, we need to look at differentiated response dependent on the different types of domestic abuse that may be. Occurring. During within the relationship. And so that's the kind of introduction to. To the work of Michael Johnson and the typologies of domestic abuse. As well of some ideas that being advocated for by Featherstone and. Her colleagues. About identifying different forms of domestic abuse and then adjusting our intervention to be in alignment with the potential underlying causes. Now. I would. And on a kind of note or caution. And that is like domestic abuse is an unbelievably complex subject and is a specialist subject in, in of its own. Right. In some ways that's like it's the most fascinating. And also the most frustrating part being a social worker is that we're expected to know about domestic abuse, about mental health, about substance misuse, about the impact of. Poverty and deprivation on children's outcomes. And yet each of those areas. Massive areas in of their own, right. That people spend their whole. Lifetime research and. And so there's lots of debates in the field, including. The validity of Johnson's topology. And so it was just being mindful that. I've captured some aspect of. Some research on domestic abuse. And. I might try and invite some guests on to. To, to gain different perspectives. So that. We can just think more broadly. Nuanced about the topic. But I wanted to share that the type quality, because it was something that resonated with my own experiences of being a social worker, working with domestic abuse. And, and hopefully it will be quite useful. So that is the end of today's episode. If you have any questions, please don't hesitate to get in touch, or if you're feeling generous and would love to, would like to leave a review. Review. Then by all means, please do it will be very gratefully received. It's mainly cute.