Family Violence Policy and Practice: Disabled Women in NSW

This essay critically examines domestic violence policy and practice, particularly concerning disabled women in NSW. It highlights the disproportionate impact of domestic violence on disabled women, including economic, social, and health consequences. The essay offers recommendations for improving the NSW Government's response, such as enhancing financial independence for disabled women, reforming family court processes, and implementing effective prevention programs. It emphasizes the need for safe and secure housing and explores examples of good practices by organizations addressing violence against women. The essay concludes by advocating for comprehensive support systems to empower disabled women and enable them to live independently and without fear. Desklib offers similar essays and resources for students.

Running head: FAMILY VIOLENCE POLICY AND PRACTICE 0
FAMILY VIoLeNCE POLICY and practice
Domestic Violence with Disabled Women
JUNE 1, 2018
STUDENT DETAILS:

FAMILY VIOLENCE POLICY AND PRATICE 1
Executive summary-
The domestic violence arises when the partner, ex-partner or the members of family tries to
mentally and the physically dominate others. The domestic violence takes place in the races,
beliefs, sexes and the religions. It is committed by the men as well as women. The domestic
violence may occur in the same sex or the opposite sex. The domestic violence against the
disabled women has a major impact on the economic status, social status and the health. The
important changes have been made to improve the health, economic and the financial status.
In this report, the domestic violence with disabled women and recommendations in this
regard has been explained in the detail.

FAMILY VIOLENCE POLICY AND PRATICE 2
Contents
Executive summary-...................................................................................................................1
Recommendations -....................................................................................................................3
Introduction-...............................................................................................................................3
Recommendation 1:...................................................................................................................4
Make the women independent economically-........................................................................4
Recommendation 2:...................................................................................................................4
Changes in the way of family court-......................................................................................4
Recommendation 3:...................................................................................................................5
Organise prevention programmes and study them-...............................................................5
Other examples of the good practices-.......................................................................................6
Conclusion-................................................................................................................................7
Reference....................................................................................................................................9

FAMILY VIOLENCE POLICY AND PRATICE 3
Recommendations -
Some recommendations are suggested to improve NSW Government’s response to the
domestic violence issue-
1. Help the disabled women financially so that they can be independent economically.
2. To make the changes in the way of handling the domestic violence by the family
courts.
3. Organising the preventions programmes, scale up them and keep study how well these
programmes and policies work (McPhedran, Gover and Mazerolle, 2017).
4. Maintaining the safe and secure housing for the disabled women.
Introduction-
The domestic violence is the violence or abuse by the one person against the other person. It
refers to the family violence, intimidating behaviour in a relationship. The domestic violence
involves the social violence, physical violence, sexual and the mental violence. It is not
because of drugs, alcohol, anger and psychological problem. Generally, it occurs when the
some known person has the powers and the control over the other person. The women with
disabilities and sexual assault are more to experience the domestic violence in comparison of
the women without disabilities and sexual assault. The women are mostly abused by their
known such as members of the family, partners and the ex-partners. The women with
disabilities are not able to report abuse and about the sexual assault. The disabled women
depend upon the abuser for the care (Kaur and Atkin, 2018).
There are some recommendations for the changes in the domestic violence with disabled
women such as domestic violence improve the assistance for the disable women with concern
about the family violence, Training to all disable women to use domestic violence risk

FAMILY VIOLENCE POLICY AND PRATICE 4
assessment, appoint the advocates for develop protocol to give instruction about the disability
and the domestic violence, promote the awareness among the disabled women, to ensure
intensive case management for the disabled women, outreach programmes for the disabled
women, give the employment to the disabled or deaf staffs, to provide education to the
disabled women, impose the penalties for the family violence consistent and firm, increase
funding to support service, give the face to face updates and the details on the internet and
face to face meeting with disabled women. The NSW commission has made
recommendations in relation to preventing and addressing family violence with disabled
women. In the following parts, the service responses made by NSW government to address
the domestic and family violence with disabled women are discussed and critically examined.
Recommendation 1:
Make the women independent economically-
There are so many women who live in the critical relationship. If the women cannot support
themselves and their children then they may be homeless. At the time of the divorce, the
financial distribution should be done by taking the kids and the financial condition of the
women in the consideration (Boyle, 2017). The financial distribution is required to be fair. In
the cases of the divorce, when a father wins the joint custody of the kid, women never take
alimony. So to support the child, the policy is required to help the women financially. It can
make big difference (Brown and Kerrie, 2014).
Recommendation 2:
Changes in the way of family court-
Generally, the divorces are made because of the domestic violence. This issue is handled
separately by the judicial system. The one magistrate presides over the matter of the divorce

FAMILY VIOLENCE POLICY AND PRATICE 5
and other judge hears the case of the domestic violence. The magistrates of the family court
who deal with divorce case do not have full detail, information and knowledge about the
domestic violence allegations (Howe and Hargrave, 2014).
In present one family one judge approach consolidates the case hearing into the one place.
But the family courts always cannot handle the family violence well. The excellent parents
always want their kids to have secure and close relationship with the others parents. So the
family courts reward the compromises and the settlements. The main issue is that parents do
not want to agree to make settlement at middle because they want to secure their children
from the abuse.
Not only the magistrates decide the facts of the issue of abuse but mental health professionals
and custody evaluators also decide the facts of issue. The custody evaluators and the mental
health professionals have knowledge and the experience to handle the cases of the family
violence or domestic violence. The mental health professionals and the custody evaluators do
not have the magic ability to decide the violence. They have no tests to decide that the abuser
is lying. They are experienced and trained to see problem in relationships as mutual. It is
required to give more special training to the family judges to handle the cases of the domestic
violence (Eastel, Young and Carline, 2018).
Recommendation 3:
Organise prevention programmes and study them-
The researchers think that the best possible way to stop the abuse is to stop the people
become abuser in the first place. There are many approaches which show promises. The
youngsters and the children see and hear from their parents, their neighbours and their family
members but they also get affected by their role models on the televisions. The researchers

FAMILY VIOLENCE POLICY AND PRATICE 6
believe that it is possible to reach the children through their parents and the schools or the
institutes (Tutty, Radtake and Ateah, 2017).
According to the Nancy Lemon, the lecturer at the University of the California Berkeley Law
School and author a book on the domestic violence law, the theme of programmes and the
policies should be the way of the treatment by men towards the women and the way to raise
the men and boy to cry, feel the fear, show the fear and express their on weakness (Anderson
and Patrick, 2017). The anger is not only the enough emotion for the boys and the males. This
is the bad impact on the kids when they see crime and victims in home or nearby them. There
is the risk for the children to become abuser in the future. There are some kinds of abuse
specific to being the disabled person. They involve the factors which increase the powers of
the perpetrators and powers of the disabled women. For example, improper or misuse of the
medications, remove the battery of the wheelchair of the disabled women.
These policies and the programmes have positive results on the small scale. The best example
is the boys who participated in the programme ‘Coaching Boys into Men’. They were no or
less engage in the behaviour like the abusers. They also stopped their friends to become the
abusers. The long term research needs the more fund for scaling up the policies and the
programmes, intensives. One should not wait for the perfect research because it needs long
term research. There are many policies and the programmes for the children and youngsters
but don’t have details and enough data. So it needs more research (Nelson, 2018).
Recommendation 4:
Maintaining the safe and secure housing-
The disabled women who have experienced family violence should provide safe and the
secure housing. They cannot afford housing in the metropolitan areas and their children
cannot be stored until they have housing which they cannot afford. A number of different

FAMILY VIOLENCE POLICY AND PRATICE 7
types of affordable safe and secure housing have been developed for the disabled women for
the better standard of living. The safe and secure housing helps the disabled women to live
independently (Robert, Chamberlain and Delfabbro, 2015).
Other examples of the good practices-
There are many scope of improvement for better solution of domestic violence with the
disabled women by an organisation (Bowen and Charlotte, 2017). Some important practices
includes-
1. Violence against women service (VAW) had taken the actions for the improvement
with the organisation of the disabled people to develop the more effective research.
2. Violence against women service made the collaboration with the organisations of the
disabled women to develop the easy and simple understanding reading materials and
describe the usefulness of these reading materials in the solution of the domestic
violence.
3. There are many agencies which make support to the disabled women so that they can
understand the experience the abuse and can be able to use this violence against
women services.
4. The specialist services for the disabled women mainly at the risk of the
marginalisation help to deaf and the older women.
5. Some services are proactive in assisting the disabled women and the older women
with troubles and the learning problems who were at the repeat risk by the
perpetrators.
Conclusion-
As per the above analysis it is cleared that the domestic violence including rape, sexual
harassment and forced marriage happens to the disabled women throughout the entire life.

FAMILY VIOLENCE POLICY AND PRATICE 8
There is no place where no family violence. It is more with the disabled women. The men use
controls and threats over the women. The domestic violence affects the different women with
different social status, different religion, income, financial status, disability and the sexual
identification. The disabled women want support for the independent living and the
empowerment. The support practitioners are required to assess the situations and provide the
best solutions to allow the disabled women to live fearless and independently.

FAMILY VIOLENCE POLICY AND PRATICE 9
Reference
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disabilities in human service profession. Rehabilitation professional, 25(1), pp. 146-155.
Bowen, E., and Charlotte, S. (2017) the prevalence and correlates of partner violence used
and experienced by adults with intellectual disabilities: a systematic review and call to action.
Trauma, violence and abuse, 34(4), 521-555.
Boyle, P. (2017) Unionists rally against domestic violence. Green left weekly, 11(56), pp 4-6.
Brown, J., and Kerrie, J. (2014) Therapeutic responses to domestic violence in Australia: A
history of controversies. Australian and New Zealand journal of family therapy, 35(2), pp.
169-184.
Eastel, P., Young, L., and Carline, A. (2018) Domestic violence, property and family law in
Australia. International journal of law, policy and family, 85(5), pp. 411-426.
Howe, K., and Hargrave, J. (2014). Inquiry into domestic violence in Australia. Australia:
The Australia University press.
Kaur, J., and Atkin, N. (2018) Nexus between domestic violence and child protection:
Multidimensional forms of the oppression impacting on the migrant and refugee women in
Australia. Australian social work, 71(2), pp. 238-248.
McPhedran, S., Gover, A. R., and Mazerolle, P. (2017) A cross national comparison of police
attitudes about domestic violence: A focus on gender. Policing: An international journal of
police strategies and management, 40(2), pp. 214-227.
Nelson, J. R. (2018). The family violence with disabled women. Cambridge: Cambridge
university press.
Robert, D., Chamberlain, P., and Delfabbro, P. (2015) women’s experiences of processes
associated with family court of Australia in the context of domestic violence: A thematic
analysis. Psychiatry, psychology and law, 22 (4), pp. 599-615.
Tutty, L. M., Radtake, H., and Ateah, C. A. (2017) the complexities of intimate partner
violence, mental health and child abuse history for white, indigenous and visible minor
candidates. Journal of interpersonal violence. 88(5), pp. 17-26.
Woodlock, D. (2017) the abuse of technology in domestic violence and Stalking. Violence
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