One stop crisis centres: A policy analysis of the Malaysian response to intimate partner violence

Manuela Colombini,Siti Hawa Ali,Charlotte Watts,Susannah H Mayhew

doi:10.1186/1478-4505-9-25

Abstract

BackgroundThis article aims to investigate the processes, actors and other influencing factors behind the development and the national scale-up of the One Stop Crisis Centre (OSCC) policy and the subsequent health model for violence-response.MethodsMethods used included policy analysis of legal, policy and regulatory framework documents, and in-depth interviews with key informants from governmental and non-governmental organisations in two States of Malaysia.ResultsThe findings show that women's NGOs and health professionals were instrumental in the formulation and scaling-up of the OSCC policy. However, the subsequent breakdown of the NGO-health coalition negatively impacted on the long-term implementation of the policy, which lacked financial resources and clear policy guidance from the Ministry of Health.ConclusionThe findings confirm that a clearly-defined partnership between NGOs and health staff can be very powerful for influencing the legal and policy environment in which health care services for intimate partner violence are developed. It is critical to gain high level support from the Ministry of Health in order to institutionalise the violence-response across the entire health care system. Without clear operational details and resources policy implementation cannot be fully ensured and taken to scale.

Highlights

This article aims to investigate the processes, actors and other influencing factors behind the development and the national scale-up of the One Stop Crisis Centre (OSCC) policy and the subsequent health model for violence-response
The Malaysia One Stop Crisis Centre (OSCC) model is relatively unique in its implementation of a large scale model for violence-response, and other countries in the South East Asian region are replicating this approach [2,3,4]
Malaysia was among the first countries in the region to adopt a law on partner violence: the Domestic Violence (DV) Act of 1994 [5]

Summary

Introduction

This article aims to investigate the processes, actors and other influencing factors behind the development and the national scale-up of the One Stop Crisis Centre (OSCC) policy and the subsequent health model for violence-response. Evidence on interventions seeking to address violence against women (VAW) by integrating specific services at the health sector level remains fairly limited. The Malaysia One Stop Crisis Centre (OSCC) model is relatively unique in its implementation of a large scale model for violence-response, and other countries in the South East Asian region are replicating this approach [2,3,4]. National prevalence data on violence against women (VAW) is still not available today, Recent studies suggest that IPV is quite prevalent in neighbouring countries like Thailand, Philippines and Indonesia [8,9,10]

Objectives

Methods

Results

Discussion

Conclusion