Suchergebnisse

This article explores selected feminist insights and the practice method of consciousness transformation in mainstream education for social work research. It suggests that if social workers are to move from ideologically unchallenged research to ideologically explicit research, courses on social work research education must incorporate feminist theory, methods, and content.

This paper presents a broad overview of the cross-cultural lit erature on the abuse of women by husbands or partners with emphasis on cross-cultural patterns and variations in the extent of violence against women in intimate relations, the effects of such violence, factors that place women at risk for abuse and the routes available to women to address such abuse. Implications for clinical and social responses to violence against women in intimate relations are discussed.

Abstract
Purpose
Much attention has been devoted to the ways in which women have made sense of, worked through, coped with, and recovered from Intimate Partner Violence (IPV), but the insights of survivors affiliated with religious minorities are scarce. The purpose of this study is to advance understandings and practices concerning the coping experiences of Ultraorthodox women (UJW) survivors of IPV. Using descriptive phenomenological methodology, in-depth semi-structured face-to-face interviews were conducted with 15 Ultraorthodox Israeli women who identified themselves as survivors of IPV.

Methods
The research design and data analysis were inspired by a phenomenological approach to document, analyze, and understand these women's subjective experiences on this heretofore under-studied topic. Shenton's four criteria were assessed to promote the current study's rigor and trustworthiness.

Results
Thematic analysis revealed three core themes and seven related sub-themes: (1) Devoting time to spiritual activities (sub-themes: daily prayers and attending Jewish classes); (2) Finding inspiration in a role model (sub-themes: a woman who survived IPV, a well-appreciated rabbi); and, (3) Planning the future (sub-themes: commitment to a new project, helping other women to cope with IPV, and commitment to the future and well-being of their children).

Conclusions
An integrative synthesis of the findings reveals two distinctive forms of coping: spiritual-based and practical-based coping strategies, that demonstrate the survivors' multifaceted perceptions and coping narrative with IPV. The strengths and limitations of this study are addressed along with implications for practice and theory.

This article explores challenges to understanding mothering under difficult and unusual circumstances—that is, in the context of a shelter for battered women and their children. Drawing on participant observation and interviews with staff at a local battered woman's shelter, the authors suggest that mothering is largely invisible and subject to idealized constructions. When mothers are rendered visible in the shelter, they are observed through a lens of heightened sensitivity to abusive relations that are marked by unacceptable use of power and control. This lens is distorted in relation to mothering, and an understanding of the emotional complexities and challenges of everyday mothering is a prerequisite for practice with women with children. The article concludes with a discussion of implications for theory and practice that center on the concepts of power and maternal subjectivity in relation to battered women as mothers in shelters.

Recent recognition of the effects of domestic violence on children has given rise to calls for collaborative interventions between the arenas of child protection and domestic violence. Amidst this flurry of activity, little serious consideration has been given to the subjectivity of mothers who are simultaneously involved with child protection agencies and battered women's shelters. Without explicit engagement of mothers as subjects in their own right, collaboration has the potential to exacerbate their already trying circumstances. Our paper reviews the child protection context in which women as mothers are simultaneously relegated to the periphery of concern and called upon to act as 'mother protectors' in response to children at risk. We then explore mothering in the context of domestic violence and their relative invisibility in shelter settings. We conclude with a call to render women's experiences of domestic violence and mothering both visible and supported in these collaborative efforts.

This article critically analyzes feminist practice in shelters for battered women, with particular attention to the extent to which, and how, issues of motheringar e addressed. Drawingon participant observations and interviews with staff and residents at a local shelter in Canada, it appears that practice in this arena remains immune to feminist analyses of mothering. An articulation of some of the consequences of the invisibility of women as mothers in shelter settings and suggested implications for shelter practice are presented.

Abstract
How is the helping relationship between social workers and their clients mediated by institutional practices and forms? This article explores the roles that institutional practices and documents play at the very inception of the helping relationship between social workers and voluntary clients who are mothers. Based on an institutional ethnography in a social services department in Israel, we make visible the ways in which taken-for-granted institutional practices and forms—from the outset—can inhibit the helping relationship between social workers and clients. The insights of fourteen social workers, twenty mother-clients and textual analysis of institutional forms that frame the beginning of the helping relationship are utilised as a starting point from which to explicate how institutional practices and forms shape and govern the helping relationship in social work. We conclude with a call for a more transparent and creative approach to first encounters such that institutional practices and forms are reconsidered as gateways to supportive helping relationships.

Summary One major effect of the demise of the welfare state on public social services is increased heavy workload which leads to stress, burnout, and compromised well-being among social workers. Less explored are the ways in which heavy workload shapes the helping relationship between social workers and clients. Extrapolating from the narratives of 14 Israeli social workers who participated in an institutional ethnographic study, this paper offers a nuanced understanding of the toll that heavy workload takes on the helping relationship. Findings Results showcase heavy workload as a ruling relation, an organizational reality outside the control of social workers and clients. The damaging effects of heavy workload on the helping relationship as well as on the social workers were apparent: social workers expected to slice themselves thin and deal with frustration and guilt in the face of an organizational reality that deters them from investing in their clients the time and energy required to cultivate helping relationships. Application The helping relationship has been paramount to social work throughout the history of the profession. This research contributes to this longstanding focus with a renewed understanding of the helping relationship in public social services as a political and public encounter between social workers and clients, one that is governed by extra-local relations of ruling. Heavy workload is one such ruling relation that organizes the helping relationship. As such, this organizational reality can be reorganized to eliminate, or at least reduce, the toll that heavy workload takes on the helping relationship.