I recently asked social workers across the whole spectrum of Children's Services to identify the biggest reason for referral to their team; every single one said “Domestic violence”. Allen's book is an invaluable resource to any social worker, counsellor or social care worker, working with women affected by domestic violence to help them to develop strategies to resist, build a stronger sense of self and to recover, whilst keeping in mind their safety. Domestic violence can feel overwhelming for the worker involved and this book provides an accessible model, which can give workers confidence to embark on providing the important help so many women need, on their road to recovery. The book makes an important contribution for workers in this field in both understanding women's responses to intimate partner violence (IPV) and interventions that are likely to facilitate them in their journey to keep themselves and their children safe.
Allen's Informative book draws on a wide range of research to increase the tool kit of those helping women affected by IPV. She challenges our preconceptions about the causes of and women's reactions to the violence, reframing behaviour, which has often been previously categorised as “learned helplessness”, as sophisticated strategies of resistance.
Allen uses a variety of methods to make her material accessible. The stories of women are woven into the text, which increases its accessibility, its warmth and its message of acknowledging the centrality of the women's own experience if one is to be a meaningful aid to the women. She also often sets out information in table form e.g. in the chapter about how the women viewed their identity at different points of their life. This provides a more visual means for the reader to take in the information.
Allen sets the stage for us by defining what might be termed domestic abuse and the descriptive term she settles on; “IPV” pp. 7-15. This is supported by a discussion of the research which indicates the extent of the phenomenon. Allen critiques an international discourse on what we mean by abuse, concurring with a broad definition, which includes emotional as well as physical assault. She reminds us that the problem is indeed vast – between 15 and 70 per cent of women affected by domestic violence and 70 per cent of women murdered are murdered by their adult male partners (World Health Organisation).
Allen makes use of a literature search to contextualise the model she herself proposes, narrative therapy by discussing other models of working with the women. This approach significantly enhances the reader's tool kit of intervention options. Allen draws a coherent path towards narrative therapy as an effective intervention, by exploring and critiquing models which enhance our understanding of the processes women go through, in recovering from and moving away from domestic violence, e.g. Kelly's 1995 work using crisis intervention as a framework for understanding and a tool to support change (p. 18). Prochaska's, et al. (1994) change model (p. 20) is adapted for women in this situation.
Moving away from domestic violence is not linear and this book enhances our understanding of the difficulty and complexity for the women and those helping them. I particularly found the inclusion of Kirkwood's 1993 contribution helpful with its analogy of a web. This helps to underline the trapped nature the women find themselves in and the many external and inner spirals that the women have to overcome to be free. She argues for the importance of using a feminist standpoint and constructivist discourse to understand this phenomenon, which is built from the women's understanding of that experience. Using this lens gives a rationale for using narrative therapy as a technique. The erudite work is made accessible here by giving brief explanations of the theoretical frameworks included in the text.
What is different about this book is how Allen explores the internal worlds of the women experiencing IPV, exploring how identity is constructed and the distress experienced when one's idea of the roles associated with that identity, do not match up to the reality of our lives. This is the case of being a partner where there is domestic violence. Their partner's view of their identity is also explored, as we are asked to consider how identity is constructed and influenced. She uses Stets and Burke's (2000) work to suggest that this causes a crisis for the women, who are forced over time to change their idea of their identity away from the “standard identity”. Allen suggests that it is the often, small changes in this identity, which as they gradually take place, enable the women to leave the domestic violence in the end.
The book provides a coherent framework with which to understand what helps women to leave their violent partner, whilst cautioning us to understand the chaotic and dangerous experience the process of leaving often is. Allen is able to identify turning points in the women's lives that meant that the decision to leave was made and to draw patterns from these triggers that will help others working in this field. She reminds us though, that leaving your partner does not always mean a cessation of the violence. This is an important reminder, as social workers in the child protection field often concentrate on women leaving their abusive partner as the best way to protect children from more violence. The leaving can be the most dangerous time for children.
Allen, whilst always reinforcing the complex, intricate and individual narratives of each woman invites the reader to explore “the intricate interrelationship between self-identity, meaning construction and resistance in the women's lives” and suggests that it is as the women begin to alter their perception of their identity and to seek to reduce the dissonance between their preferred identity and the reality of their abusive life that they are more likely to take resistant strategies to protect themselves. This led the women she interviewed, to end the relationship and provides a record of the types of interventions and help women sought, to help them to leave. This is invaluable advice for workers in this field, to consider their own effectiveness and relevance to decision making in domestic violence.
The last part of the book explores the effectiveness of narrative therapy in helping women to construct meaning by exploring with them their resistant behaviours and the relationship between identity and resistance. “When those resistant behaviours are viewed in the context of women's constant reconstruction of meaning in order to reduce the dissonance between identity and their experiences, these behaviours take on a completely new appearance, they become a journey to coherence of meaning, identity and experience” (p. 95). It this task, that Allen identifies, as central for the helper, in enabling women to recover and to seek an end to the violent relationship. Narrative therapy is explored in detail with sophistication and sensitivity, drawing on the tools used and alternative debates. What is important is putting women at the heart of their own recovery process and the process itself is empowering and therapeutic.
I really enjoyed this book, which would be useful for practitioners from any related field. Allen's model can act as a powerful therapeutic tool. Whilst making links to gender, race and class discourses, it is an empowering one through which women's understanding of their own lives becomes the most crucial lens through which we view their experience.
