The provision of culturally specific care for victims of family violence in Aotearoa/New Zealand

Abstract

In this paper, I examine the diversity of opinions held by front-line family violence workers in Auckland, Aotearoa, on the issue of culturally specific care. Front-line workers are positioned at the interface between the system of services and benefits available from the state and the victims in need. In order to make sense of family violence discourses operating at the national level, I use front-line workers' perspectives to analyse the national frameworks for culturally specific care designed for Asian, Pakeha, Pasifika and Maori victims of violence. This article highlights the distance between policy and quotidian front-line service delivery.

Mobilising culture against domestic violence in migrant and ethnic communities: practitioner perspectives from Aotearoa/New Zealand

“…This paper has explored the perspectives and practices of social service providers and practitioners in Aotearoa/New Zealand who employ culturally grounded strategies in their work with minority ethnic women victims of domestic violence. It builds on and extends the work by scholars such as Haldane (2009) and Adelman et al (2012), who have identified the importance of mobilising culture in addressing issues of violence. In line with international research on domestic violence in ethnic minority communities (e.g.…”

“…Despite a much greater acknowledgement today of Māori and Pacific communities in social work responses to domestic violence (e.g. Haldane ), there is an absence of formal training that recognises other communities and their cultural realities. This paper thus points to the need for a detailed assessment and better codification of the culturally grounded strategies currently being used in an ad hoc manner by front‐line workers, and incorporating them within the training of practitioners who work in these communities.…”

“…This complex reality is in sharp contrast to the standard assumption that domestic violence is perpetrated solely by men seeking to exercise control and dominance over their intimate partners (Domestic Abuse Intervention Programs n.d.). As Haldane's () Asian participants – front‐line workers in family violence – noted, ‘power and control (the standard, international approach to understanding family violence) does not work with the ethnic community’ (p. 484).…”

“…Indeed, multiculturalism in the west, which encourages the recognition of diverse cultural practices, is seen as antithetical to women's rights (Okin 1999), and interventions into domestic violence can be framed around resisting, challenging and changing 'oppressive' cultures. In contrast, there is an emergent scholarship that sees culture not merely as the dominant cause of violence, but rather as an asset in its intervention (Haldane 2009, Adelman et al 2012. The transformatory potential of culture, in this frame, requires redacting its conventional conceptualisation as static and always aligned against the interests of women (Adelman et al 2012).…”

“…Qualitative research (e.g. Robertson et al 2007, Tse 2007, Haldane 2009) points to particular causative features triggering violence within the community that echo international findings around language, immigration conditions, social fragmentation and cultural practices. Ethnic women who marry Pakeha men face particular vulnerabilities as they are often unable to return to their communities.…”