Book contents
- Frontmatter
- Contents
- Acknowledgements
- Dedication
- one Introduction
- two Domestic violence and the medical profession
- Part One Domestic violence patients speak out
- Part Two Clinicians’ knowledge and clinical experience of domestic violence
- Part Three Clinicians’ training and inter-agency collaboration
- fourteen Conclusion
- Bibliography
- Appendix 1 Details of research participants
- Appendix 2 Useful information and contacts
twelve - Wider multi-agency collaborations
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 05 July 2022
- Frontmatter
- Contents
- Acknowledgements
- Dedication
- one Introduction
- two Domestic violence and the medical profession
- Part One Domestic violence patients speak out
- Part Two Clinicians’ knowledge and clinical experience of domestic violence
- Part Three Clinicians’ training and inter-agency collaboration
- fourteen Conclusion
- Bibliography
- Appendix 1 Details of research participants
- Appendix 2 Useful information and contacts
Summary
From the outset this research has contextualised the health interaction between women who experience domestic violence and healthcare professionals within the wider help-seeking activities of the stage one participants. The participating women's experiences of interactions with other statutory and voluntary agencies was discussed in Chapter Five. This chapter will examine how the participating healthcare practitioners considered their interactions with other non-health professionals. In order to contextualise the qualitative extracts which will be examined below, results from the domestic violence and health questionnaire (Abbott and Williamson, 1999) found that only 14% of the respondents had been involved in multi-agency work.
Box 10: Perceptions of other agencies
The questionnaire also addressed multi-agency collaboration in relation to the responsibilities of different agencies and found that: 47.4% of respondents considered social services to have principal responsibility for domestic violence; 1.8% specifically identified health visitors; 7.3% general practitioners; 12.2% the police; 0.3% solicitors; 1.8% women's refuge; 0.5% voluntary agencies; 2.5% counsellors; and 1% mental health teams.
This chapter will begin by examining domestic violence multi-agency collaborations generally, before examining specific interactions which take place between healthcare professionals and a number of the agencies identified above.
Domestic violence multi-agency collaboration
It was identified in Chapter One that healthcare professionals have been poorly represented within domestic violence multi-agency initiatives (Hague et al, 1996). As the statistics above illustrate, only a small percentage of the participating healthcare professionals were engaged in multi-agency domestic violence work. None of the health professionals interviewed for this research were actively engaged in the local domestic violence multi-agency forum. The following extracts examine the healthcare professionals’ responses to the general issue of multi-agency collaboration.
“Obviously through the multi-disciplinary training, realising that there are other people out there too, people who struggle within their own professions with this problem, who have the same difficulties and stresses, but I think if you know faces, even vaguely, you’re much happier to phone them up and say ‘What should I do about, or, this is the situation I’m in where could I direct this lady?’, y’know, you’re much more likely to ask for help and advice if you’ve met somebody.” (Ms Lacey)
- Type
- Chapter
- Information
- Domestic Violence and HealthThe Response of the Medical Profession, pp. 165 - 176Publisher: Bristol University PressPrint publication year: 2000