Problematising Effectiveness: The Inclusion of Victim Advocacy Services in Living Without Violence Programme Provision and Evaluation

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Date
2012
DOI
Open Access Location
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Publisher
School of Psychology, Massey University
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Abstract
Advocacy services in collaboration with living without violence programmes have the potential to increase experiences of safety and well-being for the victims of domestic violence. However, advocacy services are not always offered within programmes and the influence of advocacy is often over-looked when evaluating the ‘effectiveness’ of programme provision. An Interpretative Phenomenological Analysis of semi-structured interviews with five (ex) partners of men who had completed a living without violence programme found that advocacy services meaningfully increased victims’ feelings of safety and well-being independent from changes, or lack of change, in the men’s violent behaviour. Therefore, victim advocacy may be a valuable addition to living without violence programmes and can potentially offer a broader, multidimensional understanding of ‘effectiveness’ in evaluations of programme success.
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This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivs 3.0 Unported License
Keywords
Evaluation research, Victim advocacy, Living without violence programmes, Domestic violence
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