Social Work - Theses

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    Experiences of anger following the 2009 Black Saturday bushfires: implications for post-disaster service provision
    Kellett, Connie Sandra ( 2018)
    This study investigates the question “What are the experiences of anger post-disaster?” to better understand anger following disaster and establish service provision guidance. Theoretical anger conceptualisations typically engaged in disaster recovery environments are psychological and relate to psychopathology, particularly post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD). This research engaged anger-related theory more broadly including both psychological and sociological theory. This qualitative research was a nested study within the Beyond Bushfires: Community, Resilience, Recovery research study. A total of 38 participants including both community members and service providers were interviewed individually and within focus groups to explore anger experiences. The service provider participants were from a range of roles: direct service providers, managers and senior disaster leaders. The breadth of work forces providing recovery services were also represented: three tiers of government, emergency services, community health, counsellors, case-managers, emergency responders and hub staff. Data were gathered and analysed utilising a discourse-based narrative approach called the ‘social interaction approach’ (SIA). Anger was found to be an active emotion post-disaster: immediate, intense, and frequent, extreme, prolonged, destructive, productive, justified and connected to other emotions. Anger was experienced differently post-disaster, nonetheless, triggers for anger are considered by service providers and community members to be about real events. Traditional gendered identities within regional areas and accompanying expectations of behaviour, seemed to influence experiences and expressions of anger including aggression, violence and family violence. Analysis of community member and service provider data highlighted factors influencing anger including: a sense of community control over recovery; methods of leadership including transparency and honesty and bottom-up processes; equity of provision of financial assistance, which was integral within and between communities; and expectation in terms of whether disaster responders established clarity around services that could be provided for communities. There were limitations with the research: the research was conducted with a culturally homogenous group following one disaster in one region of Australia limiting the scope of the data, and lack of a circular process for participants to review the conclusions drawn resulted in a lost opportunity to confirm conclusions. Numerous potential future research projects are recommended, including research developing an evidence-based framework of service intervention with anger, as well as understandings of anger, gender, violence or family violence and service provision. Ten recommendations for service provision are offered as guidance outlining the approaches that a service provider could take to engage with and respond to anger within a disaster recovery environment.
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    Seen and heard: embedding the voices of children and young people who have experienced family violence in programs for fathers
    Lamb, Katie ( 2017)
    Family violence is a significant issue facing a large number of Australian families. For many children and young people, the impact of family violence on their lives is both serious and enduring. While research is now available to provide insights into children and young people’s experiences of family violence, we know less about their perspectives on their relationship with their fathers. The literature suggests that fatherhood is often used as a motivator to engage fathers in programs to address their violence, yet the content of programs may not always support improved parenting or relationships with children. Further, children and young people are often not told their father is attending a program. When children do know fathers are participating in a program they are seldom involved in any way or given information about what their father is learning at the program. Evaluations of programs for fathers who use violence, rarely consider outcomes for children as a measure of success. In order to address these gaps, the aim of this research was to gain children and young people’s perspectives on fathers in the context of family violence as well as the key messages they have for fathers who attend a program to address his violence. The thesis also trials the use of digital storytelling to embed these key messages in programs and explores what the likely impacts are on programs for fathers who use violence and their participants. A qualitative research method was used and was underpinned by a constructionist epistemology, the new sociology of childhood and a feminist understanding of family violence. The research comprised three stages: interviews and focus groups with children and young people, a digital storytelling workshop and a feasibility workshop with practitioners. The first stage of the research used semi-structured interviews and focus groups with 16 children and young people aged nine to nineteen years who had experienced family violence and were accessed through services they attended for support. The research found that children and young people had strong ideas about what constituted ‘a good father’ and described good communication, meaningful engagement, trustworthiness, protection and good role modelling as important attributes. In contrast, children and young people described their own fathers as disinterested in their lives, emotionally abusive, frightening and controlling. Children and young people also described the impact of their father’s use of coercive control tactics on their everyday lives and the impacts of family violence on their own relationships and plans for the future. Children and young people described reparation and the need for their fathers to ‘make amends’ for their violence as important. The desire for reparation was present for both children and young people who hoped to have a more positive relationship with their father in the future, but also for those who did not wish to have any ongoing contact. Regardless, almost universally children and young people believed that some form of reparation from their father would help them ‘repair’ and allow them to move on with their lives. Young people saw reparation as comprising three key components: addressing the past, commitment to change and rebuilding trust. In the second stage of the research, eight young people attended a digital storytelling workshop where they made three minute digital stories about their key messages for fathers who use violence. Children and young people wrote the script, selected the images and music and recorded the voice-over to accompany the story. The third stage of the research was a workshop run with 21 program facilitators and managers working with men who use violence. Discussion focussed on the possible impacts of introducing the digital stories made by children into men’s programs. The results suggested considerable support for the inclusion of the stories and children’s voices generally in programs for fathers who use violence. The key issues identified for consideration were program planning, the management of emotions and the possible impacts on fathers of watching children and young people’s stories. This research has found that children and young people have much to contribute in the exploration of the relationship between fathers who use violence and their children. Key themes were developed which described both children and young people’s perspectives on good fathers but also their own experiences. In addition, children and young people were particularly interested in the concept of reparation and the need for their father to make amends for his violence and acknowledge the impact that his behaviour has had on their lives. Children and young people supported the idea of their fathers attending a program to address his violence and some expressed an interest in being involved in that process. Like other research with children who have experienced family violence, the results of this study support the need to speak to children and young people about their experiences and the importance of considering their perspectives in the development and programs and policies for fathers who use violence.
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    Safety and resiliency at home: voices of children from a primary care population
    MORRIS, ANITA ( 2015)
    Almost one quarter of Australian children experience family violence perpetrated by their father or step father which has significant health outcomes across the lifespan. However, some children who experience family violence are thought to be resilient. Children lack opportunities to have their voices heard, therefore children’s own understandings of their safety and resilience are often missing. As a site of early intervention, primary care is well placed to respond to these children. The aim of the research was to hear children’s voices about their safety and resilience in the context of family violence, and to determine an appropriate primary care response. Qualitative methodologies underpinned the research which involved semi-structured interviews and focus groups with 23 children and 18 mothers from primary care settings, all of whom had experienced family violence. I developed a child-centred approach utilising ethical and safe methods. A theoretical framework of ethics of care and dialogical ethics informed the research. Hermeneutic phenomenological analysis revealed that children and mothers understood children’s safety in the context of: awareness of family violence; whether the violence was named and by whom; who provided care and protection; and children’s sense of trust in relationships. Resilience was understood differently by children and mothers. Children understood their resilience according to social recognition of their achievements and talents. The children’s meaning was independent of adversity and aligned with the concept of relational self-worth. Mothers however, only understood children’s resilience with reference to the adversity their child had experienced. This was underpinned by the mother’s sense of responsibility for the adversity and the child’s apparent resilience despite this adversity. Understandings of safety and resiliency were further analysed to reveal the key finding that children required agency to negotiate their safety in the context of family violence and post-separation. A ‘model of children’s agency’ was developed to reflect the four factors that facilitated children’s agency: physical and emotional distance from the perpetrator; awareness of disruption or danger in the parental relationship; modelling of safety in relationships by non-violent adults; and the child’s sense of co-constructing family resiliency. To inform an appropriate primary care response, I also sought children’s and mothers’ understandings of primary care. Their insights focused on: questioning the role of primary care to respond to children experiencing family violence; the importance of knowing and modelling within the child-mother-health practitioner relationship; and the expectation that the health practitioner would facilitate communication about family violence. Using these insights, I proposed an approach based on collaboration, relationship and shared language, an ‘informed trialogue’ within the child-mother-health practitioner triad to foster children’s agency in the primary care consultation. The ‘informed trialogue’ guides the health practitioner to encourage and impart the ‘model of children’s agency’ by advocating physical and emotional distance from the perpetrator; building child awareness of family violence; supporting the modelling of safety in trusted relationships and demystifying family resiliency. The ‘model of children’s agency’ and the ‘informed trialogue’ bring children’s voices to the fore to inform primary care and those that work with children experiencing family violence.
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    Crossing boundaries and lesson drawing: a case study of safe accommodation program transfer between Australia and India
    Monani, Devaki Ghansham ( 2008)
    This qualitative study examines the viability of India transferring safe accommodation for women leaving violent relationships from Australia. The objectives of the study are to examine safe accommodation programs for women leaving violent relationships in Australia and India, and identify transferable aspects from Australia to India. The service providers' account of the reality of overcoming challenges posed by cultural values and the knowledge that funding for women’s services is precarious provides the thrust of this work. This thesis argues that developing countries do not benefit from the knowledge exchange that is likely to occur between developed countries. Women's human rights principles and the “program transfer” approach inform this inquiry. A multi-method approach was chosen for developing the country case studies involving a literature review, field visits and semi-structured interviews with 10 service providers of safe accommodation services in Australia and India. Equal numbers of participants were interviewed in both countries. Expert sampling techniques were employed. The major finding of this study identifies that transfer of safe accommodation program for women leaving violent relationships between Australia and India is an aspiration particularly because of the incompatibilities that exist at various levels of service provision between the two countries. Crucially, the incorporation of the women’s human rights principles into the safe accommodation service delivery in both countries remains a challenge, and the analysis confirms that these principles remain largely unimplemented. In contrast to the popular belief that welfare programs in developed countries are consistently better than developing nations, the observations in this thesis identify that challenges remain in both country contexts. The thesis signposts areas of future research by establishing an agenda for ongoing research that is aligned with enhancing safe accommodation service provision in both Australia and India.