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    Intimate partner violence : advocates expertise on the complexity of maternal protection : a thesis presented in partial fulfilment of the requirements for the degree of Master of Arts in Psychology at Massey University, Manawatū, New Zealand
    (Massey University, 2018) Loft, Melanie L.
    Intimate Partner Violence is a pervasive and insidious epidemic within Aōtearoa New Zealand with one in three women experiencing psychological or physical abuse by their partners in a lifetime. The National Collective of Independent Women’s Refuges (NCIWR) seeks to prevent and eliminate violence and in doing so liberate women abused by their partners. This research is a contribution to the gap in psychological research which calls upon the expertise of refuge advocates from a feminist standpoint and additionally adds to valuable production of knowledge from a New Zealand context. The aim was to explore how advocates perceive and understand mothering and maternal protection in the context of intimate partner violence and moreover how advocates’ understandings impact their experience of client protection. A qualitative, thematic approach opened a space for advocates to voice their experiences and importantly challenge the socio-political landscape which maintains a focus on women’s responsibility as protectors, opposed to perpetrator accountability. Societal expectation of mothering does not take into account the context of intimate partner violence and as mothers fail to meet expectations, notions of mother-blame are ascertained. The analysis identified three major themes: The first theme concerns the severity of perpetrator harm and the direct interruption intimate partner violence has on mothering; shaping and complicating mothering. The second theme identifies a multitude of factors mothers juggle to protect their children within the context of intimate partner violence. The final theme involves understanding the mode of survival in which women come to live, how women navigate fundamental support systems, and finally how the role of the advocate is pivotal for the safety of women and children. Overall, findings showed an alignment between the expertise of advocates and existing international research.
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    Women's Refuge clients' experiences of social responses to domestic violence including interventions informed by response-based practice : a thesis presented in partial fulfillment of the requirements for the degree of Doctor of Clinical Psychology at Massey University, Wellington, New Zealand
    (Massey University, 2018) Reedy, Jessica Juliet
    In Aotearoa New Zealand, transformation in thinking about and acting to prevent domestic violence is exigent. Response-Based Practice (RBP) provides a transformational framework for ethical social responses for families experiencing violence. RBP attends to ways discursive practices undermine or support victim safety and dignity. The current research involved developing, delivering, and evaluating a RBP group intervention at Women's Refuge. Evaluation privileged women's accounts of the intervention and entailed comparing discourses clients utilised to inform their understandings of violence and position themselves before and after Group participation. Implications of clients' positioning for enabling or constraining their safety and dignity are also considered. The project's design used feminist collaborative action research principles, and thematic analysis in the first study to develop the intervention. Five advocates were engaged in meetings, semi-structured interviews, document reviews, and focus groups. The second study used discourse analysis of women's pre- and post- intervention accounts of their domestic violence experiences and social responses to them. Four clients engaged in semi-structured interviews. Before Group participation, discourses that minimised and mutualised violence predominated, positioning victims as instrumental in provoking and preventing violence, and victims and perpetrators as pathological. Languaging often represented perpetrators' violence as accidental/uncontrollable and concealed victim resistance. Narratives engaged traditional gender discourses of men's dominance, encompassing coercive control and violence, and women's submission and self-sacrifice, as normative. Women's entrapment by victim-blaming discourses alongside threats of poverty and condemnation from perpetrators, families, church and social agencies was evident. Following Group participation, resistance discourses prevailed. Clients challenged their positioning as pathological or blameworthy and re-positioned themselves as sensible, competent women. Group content and processes were constituted as privileging and legitimating women's unarticulated knowledge of how concealing violence, perpetrator responsibility and gendered social power relations diminish victims' safety. Narratives of domestic violence evinced increased recognition of patterns of coercive control, entrapment and other non-assaultive violence intersecting with harmful social responses and structural violence. Thus, the Group provided a safe and dignifying social and physical space for clients to collectively reconsider their responses to violence; and discover, discuss, and critique discursive practices that reveal violence, perpetrator responsibility, and victim resistances.
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    Struggling with systems : refuge workers accounts of domestic violence service provision : a thesis presented in partial fulfillment of the requirements for the degree of Master of Arts in Psychology at Massey University
    (Massey University, 2005) Hindle, Shelly
    Domestic violence is thought to be at epidemic levels in New Zealand and is considered a priority in the health care sector. This research explored the topic of domestic violence service provision from the perspectives of nine Women's Refuge advocates. The participants views and opinions, and my interpretations of the participants stories, do not necessarily represent the views and opinions of the National Collective of Independent Women's Refuges. The data, in the form of interview transcripts, was analysed from a feminist standpoint and Sarbin's conceptualisation of narrative analysis was utilised. Findings from the analysis suggest that there are still many barriers to both providing and accessing service provision for D.V. related issues. The Refuge advocates expressed concerns about other organisations/agencies apparent lack of education/training in D.V., different views of D.V., and negative views of Refuge. They commented on the lack of links between organisations/agencies, the problematic systems of other service providers and the resulting propensity to subject women to structural violence. These outcomes have also been found in other literature, suggesting that despite implementation of various government initiatives, there still appear to be problems within this field of service provision. The advocates also discussed the difficulties they experience within their own jobs and further research is suggested to address this issue.