School of Clinical Medicine, University of Cambridge, Cambridge, UK.
National Children's Bureau, London, UK.
Health Soc Care Community. 2022 Nov;30(6):e3871-e3884. doi: 10.1111/hsc.14086. Epub 2022 Oct 25.
Within the United Kingdom, domestic violence and abuse (DVA) is the most commonly identified factor within child in need assessments, with rates increasing in recent years in addition to 'lockdown'-related spikes. This article examines the representation of DVA in local child safeguarding policies using Bacchi's (2009) 'What is the problem represented to be?' approach. Policies were collected from the websites of all the child safeguarding partnerships of England in July 2021. In total, we identified 59 policies. These policies are designed to guide local responses to DVA across services and thus have potential for substantial impact on practice across health and social care. Our results suggest that local DVA policy in England exists within a conceptual framework which spotlights the individual and lacks attention to their context. We argue that these policies focus on adults, neglecting attention to children within their own safeguarding policies. This is through children being peripheralized within the conceptualisation of 'victim' and the assessed adult risk being used as a proxy measure for the risk to child. Demographic discussions build an image of DVA as an issue that can affect anyone, but with little acknowledgement of the vulnerabilities facing proportions of the population and their complexities - when such vulnerabilities are discussed, they are individualised and viewed in absence of their societal causes, potentially eclipsing critical elements of a child's experience of DVA. The implications of our results are wide-ranging but suggest a need to refocus on children and their context within local DVA policy.
在英国，家庭暴力和虐待（DVA）是儿童需求评估中最常见的因素，近年来，除了与“封锁”相关的激增外，这一比例还在上升。本文采用 Bacchi（2009）的“问题被描述成什么样？”方法，研究了 DVA 在地方儿童保护政策中的代表性。我们于 2021 年 7 月从英格兰所有儿童保护伙伴关系的网站上收集了这些政策。总共有 59 项政策。这些政策旨在指导跨服务部门对 DVA 的地方反应，因此对整个卫生和社会保健领域的实践有很大的影响。我们的研究结果表明，英格兰地方 DVA 政策存在于一个突出个人、缺乏对其背景关注的概念框架内。我们认为，这些政策关注成年人，忽视了对自己保护政策中儿童的关注。这是通过将儿童边缘化到“受害者”的概念化中，以及将评估的成人风险作为儿童风险的代理措施。人口统计讨论构建了一个形象，即 DVA 是一个可能影响任何人的问题，但几乎没有承认人口中一部分人的脆弱性及其复杂性——当讨论这些脆弱性时，它们是个体化的，并且在没有考虑其社会原因的情况下被看待，这可能掩盖了儿童经历 DVA 的关键因素。我们研究结果的影响范围很广，但表明需要重新关注地方 DVA 政策中的儿童及其背景。
