A healthy settings framework: an evaluation and comparison of midwives' responses to addressing domestic violence

Objectives: to compare and contrast how midwives working in either hospital- or community-based settings address domestic violence by evaluating their views on: prevalence of domestic violence; their role in addressing domestic violence; the acceptability of routine enquiry; and barriers encountered in asking clients questions about violence and abuse in pregnancy. Design: a postal survey questionnaire. Setting: Northern Ireland. Study population: 983 hospital and community midwives. Findings: overall, 488 midwives returned a completed questionnaire; a 57% response rate. Comparisons were made using descriptive, inferential statistics and cross-tabulation. Although there were significant differences between hospital- and community-based midwives in relation to domestic violence, both groups of midwives tended to underestimate its prevalence. Key conclusions: the findings suggest that midwives per se identify and respond to a fraction of the cases of domestic abuse in pregnancy, due to lack of confidence, education and training. This reinforces the need for both hospital and community midwives to gain further confidence and an understanding of the many psychosocial factors that surround domestic violence. Implications for practice: healthy settings theory can be used effectively to identify good practice with women who experience domestic violence. Effective investment for health care requires the gaps between hospital- and community-based practice to be bridged, and for work to be integrated.

Working with a child Exposed to Community and Domestic violence in Northern Ireland: An Illustrated Case Example.

The focus of this paper is on the author’s multi-modal therapeutic practice with a 7-year-old boy referred to the Family Trauma Centre, following paramilitary assaults on his father. The work also addresses the boy’s experience of domestic violence. The work is contextualised in terms of the ‘Peace Process’ in Northern Ireland, including the establishment of the Family Trauma Centre as a response to the needs of victims of the Troubles. A rationale for working with children using a multi-modal approach is presented.

Collaborative artistic laboratories. Transfrontier spaces of cultural production

The appearance of the open code paradigm and the demands of social movements have permeated the ways in which today’s cultural institutions are organized. This article analyzes the birth of a new critical and cooperative spatiality and how it is transforming current modes of cultural research and production. It centers on the potential for establishing the new means of cooperation that are being tested in what are defined as collaborative artistic laboratories. These are hybrid spaces of research and creation based on networked and cooperative structures producing a new societal-technical body that forces us to reconsider the traditional organic conditions of the productive scenarios of knowledge and artistic practice.