A five year follow-up study of the Bristol pregnancy domestic violence programme to promote routine enquiry.

OBJECTIVE

a follow-up study to evaluate the degree to which practice changes identified in the 2004/2005 evaluation of the Bristol Pregnancy Domestic Violence Programme (BPDVP) for routine enquiry for domestic abuse have been maintained.

METHODS

a multimethod approach was adopted, using a follow-up survey and focus groups.

SETTING

an acute Trust within the South West of England.

PARTICIPANTS

58 midwives completed the survey, 73% (n=36) of whom had taken part in the original study in 2004/2005. Eleven of those surveyed also participated in focus group interviews.

MEASUREMENTS

participating midwives completed a 54-item questionnaire, where possible the questions were the same as those utilised in the original follow-up questionnaire. Similar to the previous study, the questionnaire was divided into a number of sections, including view of professional education, knowledge of domestic violence and abuse, attitudes and efficacy beliefs, barriers and support. The aim of the focus groups discussion was to obtain the overall views of midwives with the regard to the on-going implementation of routine enquiry. Frequency distributions for midwife responses in 2010 were compared with the corresponding frequency distributions in 2004/2005 and a statistical assessment of differences was performed using the χ(2) test of association.

RESULTS

midwives have to feel confident in their abilities to ask about abuse and the findings from this study demonstrate that across the cohort there was a tendency to have an increase in confidence in asking about domestic violence. Midwives have to feel confident in their abilities to ask about abuse. The findings from this study demonstrate that across the cohort there was a statistically significant increase in self-reported confidence in asking women about domestic abuse. In addition, there was a statistically significant increase in the degree of self-reported knowledge of how to deal with a disclosure of domestic violence when comparing the 2010 data with 2005 data.

CONCLUSIONS

results suggest that improvements in antenatal enquiry for domestic violence and abuse developed through the 2004/2005 BPDVP have improved over time, with the support of mandatory training. Nevertheless, barriers continue to exist, which include presence of a male partner and lack of face to face interpreting services, both these obstacles need to be addressed if all women and, in particular those who are most at risk of abuse are to be identified and supported.