Abstract
Interventions for ending intimate partner violence (IPV) have not usually provided integrated approaches. Legal and social policies have the duty to protect, assist and empower women and to bring offenders to justice. Men have mainly been considered in their role as perpetrators to be subjected to judicial measures, while child witnesses of violence have not been viewed as a direct target for services. Currently, there is a need for an integrated and holistic theoretical and operational model to understand IPV as gender-based violence and to intervene with the goal of ending the fragmentation of existing measures. The EU project ViDaCS—Violent Dads in Child Shoes—which worked towards the deconstruction and reconstruction of violence’s effects on child witnesses, has given us the opportunity to collect the opinions of social workers and child witnesses regarding violence. Therefore, the article describes measures to deal with IPV, proposing functional connections among different services and specific preventative initiatives. Subsequently, this study will examine intimate partner violence and provide special consideration to interventions at the individual, relational, organizational and community levels. The final goal will be to present a short set of guidelines that take into account the four levels considered by operationalizing the aforementioned ecological principles.
Highlights
Domestic violence occurs predominantly between intimate partners, encompassing emotional, psychological, economic, physical and sexual forms of violence, abuse, control, threatening behaviour and coercion [1,2]
In the literature, when violence occurs among a couple in the context of their reciprocal interactions, it is called intimate partner violence (IPV)
Gender violence could be considered as a maladaptation that necessitates coping, adaption and changes in the relational environment, which cause men to become perpetrators of IPV and women to become victims
Summary
Domestic violence occurs predominantly between intimate partners, encompassing emotional, psychological, economic, physical and sexual forms of violence, abuse, control, threatening behaviour and coercion [1,2]. An ecological approach that is able to focus on the individual dimensions of a more general issue of social power is necessary As a result, this integrated and holistic theoretical and operational model for understanding and intervening against IPV will overcome the fragmentation of services directed at IPV due to their different goals. This integrated and holistic theoretical and operational model for understanding and intervening against IPV will overcome the fragmentation of services directed at IPV due to their different goals This ecological approach proposes a perspective that places value on interventions directed at victims, and at perpetrators, in the context of both preventative and therapeutic perspectives. Children who witness violence express behavioural and relational difficulties; they have recently been recognized as a specific target for treatment and preventative interventions
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