Archives

Young People and Intimate Partner Violence: Experiences of Support and Services in England

Although estimating the prevalence of victimisation among young people is challenging, previous research indicates that around a fifth of young people have experienced physical violence from an intimate partner, half experienced emotional victimisation, and a quarter report some type of unwanted sexual contact. National UK crime surveys consistently find young women to be at greater risk of victimisation than those over 25, and intimate partner violence and abuse (IPVA) is one of the leading risks of death globally for younger women (aged 20–24).

In this paper, VISION Director Professor Gene Feder and colleagues from the University of Bristol and University of Central Lancashire, explored young people’s experiences of seeking or receiving institutional help and support in relation to IPVA.

Semi-structured interviews were carried with 18 young people aged 18 to 25, using Life History Calendars. Experiences of range of types of services in relation to intimate partner violence were explored, including support from education; primary and maternity services; third sector organisations; and counselling and support workers.

Participants said that they wanted clearer information to be provided in schools on identifying abuse from a younger age and better signposting and access to specialist services. They described how they benefited from equal power dynamics in relationships with professionals where they were supported to make their own decisions.

The authors found that young people often view adult support services as not for them and more needs to be done to understand effective responses to IPVA among different groups. Professionals in all sectors (including schools) need IPVA trauma-informed training that encourages equal power dynamics, with a clear understanding of and access to referral pathways, to be able to respond better to the specific needs of young people experiencing IPVA.

For further information please see: Young People and Intimate Partner Violence: Experiences of Institutional Support and Services in England | SpringerLink

Or contact Dr Maria Barnes at maria.barnes@bristol.ac.uk

Photo on Photostockeditor

Webinar: Police body-worn cameras & domestic violence responses

Dr Mary Iliadis, Deakin University

This event is in the past.

Wednesday, 9 August, 10:30 am – Noon, in-person and online

The VISION Consortium and the Violence and Society Centre at City, University of London, welcome Dr Mary Iliadis, Senior Lecturer in Criminology at Deakin University in Australia. She will present ‘The merits and risks of police body-worn cameras in domestic and family violence responses’ based on her recent publication in Policing and Society: An International Journal of Research and Policy.

Dr Iliadis will discuss the significant investment by Australian police agencies in the use of body-worn cameras (BWCs). Preliminary evidence suggests that when used in the context of domestic and family violence, BWC footage may strengthen evidential cases and prosecutions. There is, however, a paucity of research examining the merits of, and risks posed by the use of BWC footage in domestic and family violence incidents and legal proceedings.

Notably absent in much of the literature are the views and experiences of police officers who, as initial owners of BWC footage, are likely to affect how it is produced and interpreted.

Her work is the first Australian study to examine how police officers, as users and operators of BWC technology, perceive the use of BWC footage in DFV-related civil and criminal legal proceedings in two Australian state jurisdictions: Western Australia and Queensland. The findings highlight the importance of exercising domain-specific, rather than a ‘one size fits all’ approach when it comes to understanding the benefits and limitations of BWC technology.

Join us in person at the Violence & Society Centre in the Rhind building on City campus from 10:30 am – noon or online. If in person, please note this seminar was originally in A01 College Building but is now in the Violence and Society Centre, 1st floor, Rhind Building.

Booking is required. Please email VISION_Management_Team@city.ac.uk and state whether you will be in person or online. A link will be emailed on the day to those attending online. Light refreshments will be served afterwards for those in person.

Webinar: Hate crime and human rights – Taiwan, UK and global perspectives

This event is in the past.

28 June 2023, 12:30 – 13:40 BST, online

The Violence & Society Centre at City and the UKPRP VISION Consortium are pleased to invite you to Hate Crimes and Human Rights: Taiwan, UK and Global Perspectives.

Po-Han Lee and Wen Liu are members of TUSHRN, an ESRC funded network of sex, gender and sexuality health (SGS) researchers in Taiwan and the UK, which includes City, LSHTM, and Lancaster. They will be visiting the Centre on 28 June to present their research:

Queer Politics in South/East Asia: State-Sponsored Hate and Political Cultural Relativism (by Po-Han Lee)
Anti-Asian Violence Amidst US-China Geopolitical Conflicts: The Limits of “Hate” Discourses and Cross-Racial and Cross-National Solidarity (by Wen Liu)

Please register by emailing your interest to VISION_Management_Team@city.ac.uk. An invitation with the Teams link will be emailed to you 28 June.

Please see below for the programme and the presenters’ biographies.

Programme

12:30-12:35 Introductions

12:35-1:00 Queer Politics in South/East Asia: State-Sponsored Hate and Political Cultural Relativism (by Po-Han Lee)

1:00-1:25 Anti-Asian Violence Amidst US-China Geopolitical Conflicts: The Limits of “Hate” Discourses and Cross-Racial and Cross-National Solidarity (by Wen Liu)

1:25-1:40 Overall Q&A and reflections

Biographies

Po-Han (Peter) Lee:

Po-Han Lee is an Assistant Professor at the Global Health Program and the Institute of Health Policy and Management at National Taiwan University. Previously trained in International Law and Political Sociology, he has been studying the construction, circulation and consumption of the right to health discourse in global health policymaking. Po-Han has been a member of the Feminist Review Collective (UK) and a senior editor for Plain Law Movement, the first multimedia platform for legal and human rights education in Taiwan. He recently published the book, Towards Gender Equality in Law (2020), which he co-edited with Gizem Guney and David Davies, and his new book, Plural Feminisms: Navigating Resistance as Everyday Praxis, coedited with Sohini Chatterjee, is being published later in 2023.

Wen Liu:

Wen Liu is an Assistant Research Professor at the Institute of Ethnology, Academia Sinica, Taiwan. Trained as a critical social psychologist and informed by queer and critical race theory, her book project (forthcoming from the University of Illinois Press) investigates diasporic Asian American subjectivities and their geopolitical alignments in times of US-China interimperial rivalry.

Photo by Markus Spiske on Unsplash

Varying definitions and measurements of violence limit reduction strategies

Violence reduction is a United Nations (UN) sustainable development goal (SDG) and is important to both the public health and criminology fields. The collaboration between the two has the potential to create and improve prevention strategies but has been hampered by the usage of different definitions and measurements.

In this paper, VISION researchers Dr Niels Blom, Dr Anastasia Fadeeva and Dr Estela Capelas Barbosa explore the definitions and measurements of violence by the World Health Organization, UN, and Council of Europe to arrive at a harmonized framework aligned with the SDGs.

Violence and abuse are defined by these organizations as intentional actions that (are likely to) lead to harm, irrespective of physicality or legality. When recording violence and abuse, health- and justice-based administrative systems use different codes which cannot directly be translated without resorting to broad overarching categories.

The researchers propose a framework to record violence that includes individual and event identifiers, forms of violence and abuse (including physical, sexual, and psychological), harm, and individual and event characteristics.

For further information please see: Social Sciences | Free Full-Text | The Concept and Measurement of Violence and Abuse in Health and Justice Fields: Toward a Framework Aligned with the UN Sustainable Development Goals (mdpi.com)

Or contact Niels at Niels.Blom@city.ac.uk

Photo by Parsa on Unsplash

Webinar: Parental and child mental health and intimate partner violence

This webinar is in the past.

27 June 2023, 17:00 – 18:30 BST, Zoom

VISION director, Professor Gene Feder, led the webinar, Interrelationships between parental mental health, intimate partner violence and child mental health – implications for practice, with Dr Shabeer Syed and Dr Claire Powell on behalf of the NIHR Children and Families Policy Research Unit.

They presented findings from a mixed methods study that seeks to improve responses to families affected by intimate partner violence (IPV) and parents and children’s mental health problems.

Then, they presented preliminary findings on the relationship between parental IPV and a range of clinically relevant adversity and mental health-related indicators (www.acesinehrs.com) in anonymised health records from parents and children presenting to GPs, A&E and hospital admissions between one year before and five years after birth.

Their research shows that 1 in 5 (20%) families experienced IPV, although only 1 in 50 (2%) had IPV recorded in the GP record. Recording of other adverse childhood experiences (ACEs) was better, with 1 in 2 (53.4%) families having at least one recorded in the early life course. Compared to families without ACEs, families with ACEs had a higher risk of parental IPV, especially when at least one parent and child had recorded a mental health problem. Gene will discuss the implications of these findings for national guidance on supporting families experiencing IPV and mental health problems, articulating how data already within medical records can help identify those families.

For further information please see: Interrelationships between parental mental health, intimate partner violence and child mental health – implications for practice – ACAMH

Photo by Sebastián León Prado on Unsplash

Different childhood adversities lead to different health inequalities

Even experiencing just one type of adverse childhood experience (ACE) increases the risks of poor health outcomes in adulthood, including health-harming behaviours, poor sexual and mental health, and crime and violence.

Among people experiencing one type of ACE, this study examined which ACEs were most strongly related to each type of health harms, using a combined study sample of 20,556 18–69 years living in England and Wales. The research team, including VISION researcher Mark Bellis, found that sexual abuse in childhood strongly predicted subsequent obesity. Sexual abuse also showed the biggest increase in later cannabis use. Household alcohol problems in childhood was the ACE most strongly associated with violence and incarceration in adulthood.

Toxic stress can arise from ACEs such as physical and sexual abuse, but other more prevalent ACEs, for example verbal abuse and parental separation, may also contribute substantively to poorer life course health.

For further information, please see: Comparing relationships between single types of adverse childhood experiences and health-related outcomes: a combined primary data study of eight cross-sectional surveys in England and Wales | BMJ Open

Or contact Mark Bellis at M.A.Bellis@ljmu.ac.uk

Photo by Adam McCoid on Unsplash

Training GPs remotely during COVID-19: Lessons learned

There may have been a rise in domestic abuse during the COVID-19 pandemic. At the same time general practice adopted remote working, which extended to training and education being delivered online.

IRIS (Identification and Referral to Improve Safety) is an example of an evidence-based UK healthcare training support and referral programme, focusing on DVA, which transitioned to remote delivery during the pandemic.

To understand the adaptations and impact of remote DVA training in IRIS-trained general practices a group of researchers – including VISION members Estela Barbosa and Gene Feder – explored the perspectives of those delivering and receiving training.

It was found that remote DVA training in UK general practice widened access to learners. However, it may have reduced learner engagement compared with face-to-face training. DVA training is integral to the partnership between general practice and specialist DVA services, and reduced engagement risks weakening this partnership.

The researchers recommend a hybrid DVA training model for general practice, including remote information delivery alongside a structured face-to-face element. This has broader relevance for other specialist services providing training and education in primary care.

For further information please see: Adapting domestic abuse training to remote delivery during the COVID-19 pandemic: perspectives from general practice and support services | British Journal of General Practice (bjgp.org)

Or contact Estela Barbosa Capelas at estela.barbosa@city.ac.uk

Unlocking violence information from clinical text

Blog by Dr Lifang Li, Research Associate with UKPRP VISION, Kings College London

Clinical Record Interactive Search (CRIS)

In 2008, the Clinical Record Interactive Search (CRIS) system was launched. CRIS removes personal identifiers from the health records of the South London and Maudsley NHS Trust, making them available for use in mental health research. The platform operates under a governance framework that prioritises patient anonymity and places patients at the centre of its operations. The use of exceptionally large volumes of records with unprecedented levels of detail has the potential to revolutionise mental health research.

The CRIS Violence application

The CRIS violence application is computer software that finds clinical text that refers to interpersonal violence, including the presence of violence, patient status (i.e. as perpetrator, witness or victim of violence) and violence type (domestic, physical and/or sexual) using Natural Language Processing (NLP). NLP uses pattern matching and statistical techniques to automatically process natural human language. It was developed by Riley Botelle, Professor Robert Stewart and their colleagues to the identification and classification of experiences of violence in narrative records, described in their 2022 paper “Can natural language processing models extract and classify instances of interpersonal violence in mental healthcare electronic records: an applied evaluative study”. Recently, after a thorough validation process, the CRIS team has started to run the violence application routinely, alongside many other NLP applications (e.g., to find suicidality, agitation, medications, anxiety) that are available for CRIS. Structured output from these, now including various violence-related variables, is saved back into the CRIS database, from where authorised health researchers can access it.

How does it serve the researchers and clinicians?

By accurately identifying the presence of violence, different types of violence, and patient status, the application is enabling researchers to examine how experiences of violence are correlated with various mental health problems, outcomes and treatment trajectories, and how these relate to patients’ characteristics (such and age, gender, and ethnic group), and account for health inequalities.

Future work

Given the possibility that psychological abuse and economic abuse may also occur in patients and are recorded in the health record by clinicians, our work as part of the VISION consortium involves updating the current violence application to identify mentions of these, allowing us to extend the violence research possible using CRIS.

Illustration: Nina Rys / Shutterstock.com