Children Witnessing Domestic Violence in the Voice of Health and Social Professionals Dealing with Contrasting Gender Violence

Abstract

Witnessing domestic violence (WDV) is recognized by the Istanbul Convention as psychological abuse that has dramatic consequences on the psychophysical health of children. Therefore, professionals who form the support network for WDV victims play a very fundamental role. In order to draw up useful guidelines for services dealing with WDV, and to give children more awareness of supportive settings, this study analyzes WDV in the perception of health and welfare professionals to enhance their skills and strategies for contrasting gender violence. Sixteen Neapolitan specialists dealing with WDV children were interviewed. A theoretical intentional sampling was used. Narrative focused interviews were carried out, transcribed verbatim and analyzed through the grounded theory methodology, using the ATLAS.ti 8 software (Scientific Software Development GmbH, Berlin, Germany). We assigned 319 codes and grouped these into 10 categories and 4 macro-categories. The analysis of the texts led to the definition of the core category as “The Crystal Fortress”. It summarizes the image of the WDV children as described by the professionals working in contrasting domestic violence. In this structure the parental roles of protection and care (fortress) are suspended and everything is extremely rigid, fragile and always at risk of a catastrophe. It also symbolizes the difficult role of health professionals in dealing with such children and their families. For WDV children, protective factors guarantee solid development and supportive settings help them to learn proper emotional responsiveness and expressiveness and to develop their skills in talking with adults while avoiding negative consequences.

“Kept in Check”: Representations and Feelings of Social and Health Professionals Facing Intimate Partner Violence (IPV)

“…This research does deal with some features of IPV, but its main goal is to describe the professionals' point of view in dealing with such a topic: their potential resources and their "dark side", namely, the results highlighted the decision-making and the circumstances of the professionals' actions. The descriptions of the effects of IPV on the woman range, in the words of the interviewees, from symptoms comparable to those of post-traumatic stress disorder, to the effects of a sense of guilt, shame, and terror, as is also highlighted in several studies [79,80], all the way to difficulties in parenting roles [38].…”

“…IPV can occur in different forms: physical, sexual, psychological/emotional, and economical violence [2] and it is part of that "possible violence" that can take place within the home, involving not only the couples, but also the members of the family at large and the children in their role of witnesses to violence [37,38].…”

“…Therefore, we set up an ambitious project to extend knowledge about the professionals and services dealing with IPV. In a first paper we analyzed professionals' representations of children witnessing violence in the family [38], then we did a thematic analysis of professionals' views of needs and resources of the different social and health services aimed at fighting IPV [65]. Lastly, in a companion article we presented the representations of professionals concerning perpetrators and intervention strategies to deal with this phenomenon [66].…”

Downside: The Perpetrator of Violence in the Representations of Social and Health Professionals

“…Therefore, a debate about the needs of gender-based violence helplines to have supervision and support and specific training has been opened and studies exploring the perspective of staff working for helplines, including managers and policy makers, are increasing [ 10 , 19 , 20 , 43 , 55 , 56 ].…”

“…The research is situated in South Italy, a context where a patriarchal culture is still very deeply rooted in the whole men–women relationship [ 45 ]. In three companion papers, we, respectively, analyzed the professional view of women–men interaction in intimate partner violence [ 23 ], of the child witnessing violence [ 56 ] and their different viewpoints in women’s health shelters and in services geared to perpetrators of violence [ 43 ]. In these articles, we highlighted the presence of different points of view and representation among them and their difficulty in dealing with perpetrators of violence.…”