The risk for abuse that women with disabilities face, the direct and indirect effects of abuse on their health, and their barriers to seeking help remain largely undocumented. In addition, information about the experiences of abuse that women with disabilities face across cultures, disability types, and locales is extremely limited. This lack of information is problematic because existing knowledge indicates that women with disabilities experience violence and abuse at similar or higher rates than non-disabled women (Nosek, Howland & Hughes, 2001). Furthermore, the absence of attention to this issue from both disability and domestic violence researchers, has contributed to the "invisibility" of the victimisation of women with disabilities.
Like women, men with disabilities also experience violence and abuse. However, it is important to attend to the significance of both gender and disability status when examining this critical issue. Meanings associated with gender roles such as wife and mother and the well-documented effects of gender discrimination in society significantly influence the abuse experienced by women with disabilities. Being a woman with a disability has been described variously as a "double jeopardy" (Hutchinson, Beechley, Foester & Fowke, 192), as "two strikes" (Hanna & Rogtovsky, 1991) and as having an "added layer of oppression" (Boyle, Rioux, Ticoll & WightFelske, 1998). These metaphors speak powerfully of the experiences of simultaneous discrimination through both having a disability and being women, and they convey to some degree the discrimination that such women experience.
Although the abuse experienced by women with disabilities is often identical to the abuse experienced by non-disabled women, there are forms of abuse that are unique to women with disabilities that may place them at additional risk. Because some women with disabilities depend on others to meet basic health or social needs, actions that may not be considered abuse for non-disabled women may be extremely harmful for women with disabilities.
The gravity of this problem requires that scholars, policy makers and service providers learn about its complex nature. Providing quality care to abused women with disabilities depends on this.
Since the mid 1990s a number of initiatives on family and domestic violence have occurred at State and Commonwealth levels in Australia. For example, in 1996 the Domestic Violence Prevention Unit located in the Women's Policy Office, developed an Integrated Resource Plan for Domestic Violence Services. The Domestic Violence Prevention Unit undertook a report outlining the outcomes of the 1995 Action Plan and further Action Plans on Family and Domestic Violence and an Aboriginal Family Violence Strategy. To date no research work has been undertaken specifically on domestic violence against women with disabilities.
In 1997, Women with Disabilities Australia secured funding from the Commonwealth Office of the Status of Women to undertake projects in the area of improving access to women's refuges and violence services for women with disabilities. These projects have been detailed in two Women with Disabilities Australia reports entitled More than Just a Ramp - a Guide for Women's Refuges to Develop Disability Discrimination Act Action Plans; and Woorarra Women's Refuge Action Plan. However, at the time of writing it appears that the Action Plan still has not been implemented due to lack of government funding. Again in 1997, Women with Disabilities Australia successfully applied to the Commonwealth Office of the Status of Women for funding to run a National Women with Disabilities and Violence Workshop. This workshop had come about in response to the expressed needs of women with disabilities in Australia, as well as the apparent lack of research and other work in Australia on the issue of violence against women with disabilities. The workshop was the first of its kind in this country and was unique in that it was planned, organised, attended and run by, women with disabilities. Obtaining data on the prevalence of violence against women with disabilities was identified as the primary knowledge gap.
In 1998 Women with Disabilities Australia responded to the Consultations on the National Initiatives of the Partnerships Against Domestic Violence Strategy, strongly recommending that women with disabilities be included as a separate target group in the Community Education/Awareness Strategy research. To date the only outcome has been a suite of products developed and used in a community awareness campaign and in the same year, the Department of Families, Youth and Community Care in Queensland commissioned a project to research and design information resources and strategies for women with disability about domestic violence (Mims & Associates, 1998).
In 1999, the Office of the Status of Women held national consultations on domestic violence issues for women with disabilities. As it was identified that there was a significant gap in knowledge, a Working Party of relevant disability and domestic violence groups in Western Australia was formed. The aims of this Working Party were to initiate inter-agency discussion, raise community awareness and advocate for improved accessibility to services for women with disability who experienced domestic violence. The Working Party included representatives from People with Disabilities (WA), the Ethnic Disability Advocacy Centre, Domestic Violence Resource Centre, Transcultural Psychiatry Unit of Royal Perth Hospital, Women with Disabilities Western Australia, and Women's Health Care House.
The Western Australian Working Party convened a forum in May 2000 where fifty community organisation representatives and consumers were in attendance. The overarching objective "was to establish, from a broad perspective, a greater understanding of the relevant issues concerning domestic violence and disability, identify needs and explore realistic recommendations for viable future action" (Domestic Violence & Disability Working Party (WA), 2000, p. 1). In highlighting the gaps in knowledge about the plight of women with a disability who are in a domestic violence situation, the forum recommended that research be undertaken.
Accordingly, this project was developed in response to the many calls for research into these issues. The objectives for the research were to:
The second agency, The Ethnic Disability Advocacy Centre Inc. (EDAC), was established in 1995 with joint funding from the Department of Family and Community Services and the State Disability Services Commission. It is the only community based advocacy agency in Western Australia for people with disabilities and their families/carers, from culturally and linguistically diverse backgrounds. The main objective of EDAC is to protect their rights of access to appropriate community services through individual and systemic advocacy activities.
The Edith Cowan University Centre for Social Research primarily provided this collaboration with research leadership. The Centre and University have an established record of engagement with the community. The University is a major provider of human service professional education and training as well as being a provider of rigorous, applied research into social issues. Dr. Judith Cockram was the principal researcher on the project.
Two other agencies were involved with representatives offering on-going advice to the research project through the Project Reference Committee.
The People 1st Programme (PIP) is affiliated with the Family Planning Association in Western Australia. It was developed in 1994 as a unique programme offering a range of services intended to be dynamically responsive to the requests and needs of people with a learning/developmental or intellectual disability. It offers metropolitan, rural and regional services. In 1999 the quality of these services and activities was acknowledged, when PIP was named the Western Australian and a National Winner of the Australian Violence Prevention Awards.
Women's Health Care Association is the auspicing body of Women's Health Care House and Perth Women's Centre, with funding accountability to the Health Department of WA, the Commonwealth Government, and the WA Drug Abuse Strategy Office. Women's Health Care House was established in 1979 to provide a generalist women's health service to women, including clinical, domestic violence, education, counselling, information, culturally and linguistically diverse support services, and advocacy programmes.
Representatives of these groups made up the Project Reference Committee, which also comprised representatives from the Disability Services Commission and Communicare as well as two independent community representatives.
Disability The definition adopted by The United Nations Declaration on the Rights of Disabled Persons, is used here. "....the term 'disabled person' means any person unable to ensure by himself or herself, wholly or partly, the necessities of a normal individual and/or social life, as a result of deficiency, either congenital or not, in his or her physical or mental capabilities."
For the purposes of this research, the term disability will encompass physical, sensory or mental impairments, or a combination of impairments. These are defined as follows:
Physical disability resulting from injury (eg. spinal cord injury, amputation); chronic disease (eg. multiple sclerosis, rheumatoid arthritis), or congenital conditions (eg. cerebral palsy, muscular dystrophy); sensory impairments consisting of hearing or visual impairments; and mental impairments comprising developmental conditions (eg. intellectual disability), cognitive impairment (eg. traumatic brain injury), or psychiatric disability.
....an abuse of power perpetrated mainly (but not only) by men against women both in a relationship or after separation. It occurs when one partner attempts physically or psychologically to dominate and control the other.
Recent definitions have attempted to extend this definition beyond 'couples' to provide a more inclusive description of domestic violence. This expanded definition includes violence which occurs in same sex and transgender relationships, sibling violence, child abuse as well as abuse of parents by adolescents or adult children, abuse of older family members by non partner family members and abuse within kinship relationships.
The Australian Public Health Association employs a comprehensive definition of domestic violence, outlining examples of abusive behaviour: (Australian Public Health Association, 1990).
Physical abuse, causing pain and injury; denial of sleep, warmth or nutrition; denial of needed medical care; sexual assault; violence to property or animals; disablement; and murder:
Verbal abuse, in private or in public, designed to humiliate, degrade, demean, intimidate, subjugate, including the threat of physical violence:
Economic abuse, including deprivation of basic necessities, seizure of income or assets, unreasonable denial of the means necessary for participation in social life; and
Social abuse, through isolation, control of all social activity, deprivation of liberty, or the deliberate creation of unreasonable dependence.
However, other forms of abuse that are equally important and often affect women with disabilities include: emotional and psychological abuse, threats against third parties (such as children) or threats to withdraw services of care.
It should also be recognised that 'domestic' situations for many women with disabilities are broader than the traditional understandings of what constitutes 'domestic'. There are many domestic situations in which women with disabilities live, such as community based group homes, residential institutions, boarding houses, transition houses. For example, a woman living in a group home or residential facility can experience domestic violence from other residents, carers and/or service providers. It is important that provision be made to cater for women with disabilities in all their various domestic situations.
We will never really know how much domestic violence exists in the community. This is because social sanctions prevent open discussion of the issue, and because the problem shows itself in various ways.
An estimate of the magnitude of the problem can be obtained from public records (police reports, hospital records, applications for protection orders, lists of refuge positions, and spousal homicides), clinical samples and community surveys. Although public records have inherent bias in their non-random selection and under-reporting of samples, they do show that women are the main victims of domestic violence:
As a large number of cases remain under-reported, and as definitions of domestic violence are changed to become more inclusive and reflect the varied nature of intimate relationships, it is expected that the incidence of domestic violence and relevant reporting rates will be significantly higher than those cited above.
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