Safety Planning with Battered Women: Complex Lives/Difficult Choices

Description

Introduction — Understanding battered women’s perspectives — Creating the image of battered women — Batterer-generated risks — Life-generated risks — Battered women’s decision-making and safety plans — Risk analysis — Safety planning with battered women — Toward a woman-defined advocacy environment — Women-defined policy advocacy — Conclusion. This book draws attention to the complexity of helping battered women and their children. The authors introduce a new model of women-defined advocacy that emphasizes several topics, including understanding a battered woman’s perspective. Safety Planning with Battered Women introduces a new model of woman-defined advocacy that is designed to bridge the gap that sometimes occurs between a battered woman s perspective and a victim advocate s perception. Created to improve service delivery to women who are victims of domestic violence, this new model emphasizes placing attention on the victim s assessment of the risk in a violent relationship and in her decision making. Authors Jill Davies, Eleanor Lyon, and Diane Monti-Catania strive to help advocates better understand battered women s decisions, including the decision to remain in an abusive relationship; to improve advocacy for victims with varying cultural backgrounds and experiences; and to provide advocates with assistance in redesigning their services, so they may better meet the needs of battered women. Since there are no quick fixes to the problems encountered in cases of domestic violence, it is vital that victims be provided with a real understanding of their options and the opportunity to implement those safety plans they deem most feasible. Safety Planning with Battered Women helps advocates tailor alternatives that will enhance the safety of battered women based on the individual realities of battered women. This book is both enlightening and highly practical and is a must read for anyone working with domestic violence victi