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NSW health policy and family violence
Susan Evans
Wentworth Area Health Service
Contact Email: EvansS
wahs.nsw.gov.au
This paper will explore the discursive assumptions informing the NSW Health 2002 Domestic Violence Policy, including the routine screening for domestic violence initiative. Using the findings from a study involving a series of focus groups held in late 2002 in Wentworth Area Health Service, it will be argued that the routine screening initiative functions to reproduce a certain conceptualisation of violence in the home – where women are always victims and men are always perpetrators - and render invisible the complexity of family violence. This complexity was exposed in the study during conversations with health workers. These workers told stories involving male and female clients being both perpetrators and victims of intimate violence, and other stories about the interlocking dynamics of family violence, mental illness, drug & alcohol misuse and poverty. Attention will be brought to the invisibility of some of these dynamics in the 2002 NSW Health Domestic Violence policy, particularly with regard to those marginalised due to poverty / poor levels of education not named in the policy to be among those ‘vulnerable’ to domestic violence . Suggestions will be given as to why these exclusions in the Domestic Violence Policy exist and it will be recommended that Health initiatives in the area of family violence reflect other Public Health initiatives that place emphasis on a broad range of social disadvantage determining peoples’ health.
Paper
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Paper36.pdf
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Copyright © 2003 Social Policy Research Centre.
