Melbourne ~ Australia
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The "Surviving Together" Support Group was the second program of its type, the first being "Surviving the Storm", designed specifically for women and children (aged 6 to 12 years) who had experienced, or were still experiencing, domestic abuse and where the mothers felt seriously concerned about the effects which witnessing domestic violence may have had on their children.The project was initiated by the Alamein Community Committee. The first Support Group session began on March 23rd, 1995 and ran for ten weeks until June 1st, 1995. The women's group was facilitated by Margaret Crutch (Family Counsellor) Eileen Wertheimer (Community Worker and Co-ordinator of 'Amaroo' Neighbourhood Centre) and myself; the children's group was facilitated by Louise Clements (Community Development Worker with the "Beyond the Violence" Project, Cranbourne) and Sally Skinner (Social Worker with Cam Care). The overall objectives of the program were:Both groups were conducted concurrently and were of one and half hours duration per week from 4:00pm to 5:30pm each Thursday. The [name and address of location] was used to provide a safe and confidential environment in which to run the program and child care was provided free of charge to parents of children who were too young to participate in the program. The "Surviving Together" Support Group has been evaluated on the basis of Grounded Community Development Research methods."Community development aspires [to] put forward a vision of how fair and just a society could work if certain disempowering events ceased, acknowledges and supports people and their view of their social reality, aims to enable us to hear the respondents' views of their experiences for democratic participation and to directly and indirectly empower those involved..." (Ward, p.8, 1993)Having facilitated Domestic Violence Groups or counselled women in violent situations over a period of several years, it became apparent that the needs of the children of the adult participants were not being met. Deep concern was expressed about the effects on children who witnessed violence between their parents in the home. Many women in previous Support Groups had indicated that their children were, at times, withdrawn, violent, undisciplined and socially isolated. Other problems indicated by parents regarding their children included anger, low self-esteem, anxiety, learning difficulties, bed-wetting and difficult mother-child relationships. The women also found their children's attitudes difficult to understand and, because of this, were reacting badly to them. Children were sometimes experienced as a day-to-day struggle, immediate, stressful, draining and, often when acting up, would elicit feelings of powerlessness in the parent. What these women expressed was that they required support and assistance in parenting their children. A program which catered to the needs of both parent and child was required.All answers are verbatim as they appeared on the completed questionnaire. Some responses to questions have been summarised for clarity and others have been removed of any 'identifiers' to ensure the anonymity and confidentiality of Support Group participants.This questionnaire is to be used for the sole purpose of evaluating the "Surviving Together" Support Group for Women and Children who have experienced violence in the home. All information is strictly confidential in order to ensure anonymity. Interaction is encouraged between mother and child / children when completing this questionnaire so that children can also make a valuable contribution to the evaluation. If there is not enough room for you to complete your answer, feel free to elaborate on additional paper.Seven children participated in the program: a 9 year old boy, a 10 year old boy, an 11 year old boy, a 12 year old girl, a 10 year old girl, a 6 year old girl, and a 7 year old girl.All five (5) women stated that they had experienced Psychological Abuse - emotional and verbal abuse including threats and put-downs, harassment, insults. Four (4) women stated that they had experienced Social Abuse - where the woman was kept in isolation, her movements are controlled. One (1) woman stated that she had experienced Economic Abuse - where the father assumed full control over money. Two (2) women stated that they had experienced Sexual Abuse - which included acts or threats to which the children were witnesses. And four (4) women stated that they had experienced Physical Abuse - which included all forms of assault, such as throwing and smashing objects, damaging property.All the women indicated that their child / children had been directly subjected to emotional and/or physical abuse by their Father or Step-Father. The top five responses to some of the behaviour/s the mothers observed in their children were:Two women indicated that the behavioural problems experienced by their child/children was due entirely to home violence; one indicated that the behavioural problems experienced by her child/children was due almost entirely to home violence; none indicated that the behavioural problems experienced by their child/children was due significantly to home violence; and one indicated that the behavioural problems experienced by her child/children was due partly to home violence. One woman specifically indicated that the behavioural problems experienced by her child / children was due to, "Continuation while on access with father."The facilitators of this Support Group were sensitive to the needs of the participants and employed a combination of feminist and community development principles to assist in helping to empowering victims/survivors to take charge of their own lives. This was done in a number of ways including providing the women with weekly session summary sheets containing photocopies of newspaper articles, references to books for further reading, exerpts from books and photocopied sections of relevant/useful material. These summary sheets allowed the women to read and reflect on the material covered in the sessions - informal feedback indicated that they looked forward to receiving and reading the sheets which were very informative. However, the point of any Support Group of this kind is the fact that, ultimately, the women themselves must make take responsibility for their own decisions."Women and children who have lived with a violent man often maintain old habits of abusive family behaviour, even after they have left him. The longer they have lived with an abusive man, and the older the children are, the more entrenched these patterns can become." (Eastwood, 1992) As with any group of people, the dynamics will change with each Support Group Program and its participants, and what the participants gain is dependant largely upon the stage at which they themselves have come to terms with the violence they have experienced and whether they have a clear idea of what it is they expect to gain from a Support Group Program - facilitators are not clairvoyants and can only cater to the needs which are expressed. Unfortunately, some of the participants in this Program seemed to regard it as a 'quick-fix' solution to the problems they were experiencing with their children and others, who had still not come to terms with certain aspects of their own experiences of violence, were too quick to squash their child's progress by threatening to withdraw from the program."Help and support is needed for women and children to develop new attitudes and ways of relating. It is important that women have the opportunity to regain confidence and self-esteem, while children need the chance to live in an environment that can foster well-being and healthy emotional development." (Eastwood, 1992). While facilitators can only act as a resource and encourage the women to develop healthier and more open communication with their child/children, it is up to the parent to put into practice the information with which they have been provided.The Program could have included some time for interaction between parent and child, especially in creative activities and games etc. Unfortunately, informal feedback suggested that some women would not have attended the Program if there had been interaction time - they seemed to regard the Program as 'time-out' away from their child/children rather than an opportunity to improve communication and develop the relationship with their child/children. If there had been an interaction component between parent and child, the parents would have benefited in several ways:"Surviving Together" could also have integrated regular meetings and de-briefing sessions for all facilitators. This would have been extremely beneficial for all concerned as facilitating a Support Group such as this can sometimes raise serious concerns or issues which need to be discussed. Two facilitator meetings, of approximately forty-five minutes duration, were held and valuable information was exchanged. The meetings and de-briefing sessions would have been useful to develop communication and rapport between facilitators and therefore, have resulted in a significantly unified Program approach.Finally, "Parent support groups offer the opportunity for women to share their experiences with others and learn new strategies for communicating and living in an abuse-free environment. Becoming aware of habits, language, and other patterns of behaviour is an important step in improving communication between children and parents. Individual counselling can help. Joining a parent support group can also be of great benefit to women whose confidence and self-worth have been diminished by the violence in their lives. Parenting is never an easy task, but... once on their own, women are free to make their own mistakes, and patch them up too." (Eastwood, 1992)It is strongly recommended that funding for this Support Group Program for women and children who have experienced, or are still experiencing, domestic violence be continued. Perhaps additional funding could also be allocated to employ full and/or part-time domestic violence workers to assist with research, development, report writing, funding submissions and general resourcing within the area. Domestic violence support groups are a necessary community service which needs to be taken seriously and provided with adequate money in order to assist women and children to cope with the violence.
The recommendation to employ a Domestic Violence Worker was taken up. However, this has resulted in drastic reductions to Program funding. I do not believe that a Domestic Violence worker should be engaged in the role of supervising these programs at the expense of causing funding cuts. In my opinion, this serves no purpose because it is self-defeating. Additional monies should be made available in order to sustain the costs associated with facilitating Domestic Violence Programs as well as employing Domestic Violence Workers to carry out general resourcing duties. I view this action as another form of covert government operations to reduce funding, not only for Domestic Violence Programs but all social and welfare programs across the board. It is simply not enough for government to pay lip service to these vital community services who are often forced to work within a meagre budget. Government needs to put their money where their mouth is and realise that the prevalence of Domestic Violence within our communities are astronomic. How many more women and children will die at the hands of their abusive partners before government understands that we need more money in order to provide better resources?!