Beliefs of Service Providers about Abused Women and Abusing Men.

Davis, Liane V.

The article discusses a study on the perceptions of social workers on the problems and needs of abused women and abusive men. Much has been written about the multiple service needs of the battered wife. A prevalent belief in the literature is that those who provide the diverse services aggravate rather than ameliorate the problem. The belief that the various helping professions fail to respond adequately to battered women is based largely on anecdotal evidence. There has been a dearth of systematic research about services rendered to large numbers of abused women and provided by substantial numbers of professionals. The available empirical data come primarily from four sources. Studies about the failure of service providers to identify victims of, domestic violence provide the second source of evidence. The most compelling study reported on practices in the field of emergency medicine. The investigators identified 25 percent of the women treated for injuries, in the emergency room of a large city hospital as likely to be victims of wife battering, yet the physicians treating, these women had identified only 2.8 percent of the Injured women as battered wives.

ABUSED women; CRIME victims; ACCIDENTS; WOUNDS & injuries; WIVES; VICTIMS

Social Work, 1984, Vol 29, Issue 3, p243

0037-8046

Academic Journal

10.1093/sw/29.3.243