Advocacy Strategy: Anti-Violence Work Anti-Violence Work Is Term Paper

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Advocacy Strategy: Anti-Violence Work

Anti-violence work is really about helping a lot of women discover their strong areas and their they consider the truth for their lives. Most women contemplate should they stay, should they go or even if they need to go, whatever it maybe the movement is to make sure that women are safe. The author makes the point that it is so much easier doing the work over the years because it has given her the confidence needed with the gained experience. This essay discusses the issue of how the anti-violence work needs some support and help in aiding violence against women. Also finding solutions to violence and abuse on a level that is broader and societal.

Critique of an Advocacy Strategy

Introduction

Domestic Violence denotes to the use of emotional or physical force or danger of physical force, which does comprise of sexual violence in close adult associations'. This also incorporates violence that is perpetrated by a partner, spouse, son or daughter or any other family member that has a blood connection with the victim. The term 'domestic violence' has gone beyond actual physical violence in some instances (Martin S., 2006). It can also include emotional abuse; the annihilation of property; separation from friends, family and other possible roots of sustenance; intimidations to others which also includes children; stalking; and power over admission to money, personal matters, food, telephone and transportation. With that said, women that work for the frontline anti-violence responders that are employed in the area of woman abuse may be chiefly susceptible to the interpersonal and personal negative results of anti-violence work (Arvay, 2001). Habitual contact to severe occurrences of woman abuse and its overwhelming consequences and the extraordinary perseverance of woman abuse in Canadian society (Martin, 2006) can really destructively influence frontline anti-violence responders whose determinations in the direction of change can, from time to time, seem to no avail. In truth, Jan Richardson contends that the collective efforts of anti-violence responders are not always identified and recompensed by society, and that a wide-ranging understanding of the significance of anti-violence work, as well as the hard environment that is within which this work most frequently takes place, needs additional growth. With that said, with low pay and a very stressful job, anti-violence responders are encountering extreme issues that are causing them to feel weariness and pessimistic concerning their future in this work.

Identification of The problem

In Canada the frontline anti-violence responders have been factually bearing witness, which goes on during a daily basis to the suffering and pain that is being experienced by a lot of the victims which are women that are being abused (Brzozowski, 2004). These responders usually represent an important resource reserve in their group efforts towards removing woman abuse and sermonizing the far grasping personal and interpersonal results of this universal, social problem. Why is this problem? Because despite the importance of frontline responders to the anti-violence reason, their specific experiences appear to have garnered comparatively little notice in the national research and programming literature. Even though those that are working on the frontlines in the anti-violence field have often appreciated the negative and positive influence that this work can have on responders, concepts such as vicarious trauma, secondary traumatic stress, and compassion fatigue have only newly been conceptualized for research and intervention purposes. (Martin, 2006).

Research makes the suggestion that while many frontline anti-violence responders have discovered satisfaction in aiding people to overcome their involvements of extremely demanding events such as abuse and violence in the background of close associations, secondary exposure to the traumatic stress involvements of others can have a negative influence on responders (Martin, 2006). In actual fact, bearing witness to the stories of other peoples pain and suffering that is resulting from the trauma of woman that are being abused can really become extremely liberalizing for thoughtful anti-violence responders (Richardson; Stamm). At worst, typical warning signs of responder stress are corresponding with those of Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder (American Psychological Association) and can involve: emotional numbing, dissociative experiences, nightmares, acute intrusive images, and an exaggerated startle response.

It appears that many that work as responders have reported some kinds of experience with indicators that are consistent with secondary traumatic stress, predominantly a distorted concerns and worldview that is about the overall happiness of self and coworkers. For instance, some of the described symptoms comprised: mental and physical exhaustion, decreased excellence of sleeping or eating, briefness of breath, irritation, bad temper, and judgmental and/or "black-and-white" thinking.

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In addition, when feeling loaded by the stresses of their frontline anti-violence roles, contributors stated not wanting to go to work, not wanting to see specific clients, self-doubt regarding knowledge base and skill level, damaged judgment at home and at work, and doubts about therapeutic impact and effectiveness (Figley, 2002). A lot of responders themselves are starting to observe a direct relationship between the nature of frontline anti-violence work, their personal coping repertoire, and a diversity of symptoms that are reliable with secondary traumatic stress:

Causes and Results of the Problem

A lot of people that are anti-violence responders have acknowledged that their labor with victims of woman abuse poses distinctive personal, financial, and challenges that are social. Assuming the systemic difficulty and the many social barriers that a lot of women face in their exertions to exceed their abusive circumstances, it is not surprising that anti-violence responders may have found that their work has often yielded to the minimal palpable consequences of Impact and progress. Crisis-oriented, temporary residential settings may be mostly problematic for frontline anti-violence responders. These environments do however encourage a high amount of watchfulness concerning personal and client safety and habitually need around 24-hour per day staffing, which can pose particular challenges to responders' well-being and personal health. Since responder-client relationships that are within the shelter environments are usually of a temporary, crisis-oriented type, responders are frequently left to wonder on the outcome and impact of their work in the deficiency of follow-up contact that is usually with individual clients.

Other causes and results in the Anti-violence work environments are frequently exist with minimum human and financial resources (Figley, 2002). National and provincial and backing structures, and the obvious lack of emphasis on the significance of anti-violence work, exemplify a meaningful stressor for anti-violence responders. As one woman has mentioned in the past: Funding is not exactly that reliable; it is yearly. This is torture to me! For an organization to fully operate, I really believe the anti-violence movement, the domestic abuse movement, needs to obviously get a little more authentic! I really do not believe that we should have to be cutting dollars; I think that it makes a whole lot more sense to be putting more dollars into the cause! (Martin, 2006)

Try problems become because of funding problems, many anti-violence responders are really struggling with a significant amount of employment insecurity, lack of appropriate remuneration relative to the demands of their work, overly demanding, crisis-oriented caseloads, and inadequate staffing (O'Connor, 2001). In fact, although anti-violence responders often note that they tend to be more economically advantaged relative to their clients, they often identify with their clients' experiences of poverty and social marginalization. For instance, one frontline anti-violence responder makes the following comment:

"It is sad that a lot of women are really kept poor and hooked on -their choices are extremely restricted. In a strange way it is really easy to relate to these women. I mean, I'm much better off than a lot of them, granted, but it is still that structure of destitution. No, I may not have the real fancy house. I do not even have some grand kind of car. I don't think... perhaps when my kids are way older ... But I really do not think that I could do this work full-time because of the way that it affects me and because of how hard the wok really is. That is a choice that I felt that I needed to make that is really based on my own experience. I forecast some of the larger challenges and complications. I know anti-violence workers that are in their late 50s who are quite poor women, and not to mention, with challenges with their health, with no retirement funds.

A lot of responders also have expanded on emotional and behavioral propensities that are steady with what some experts have referred to as the suppressing reply in counseling or therapeutic settings, in which the responder redirects, minimizes, shuts down, or abandons the traumatic material that is accessible by the victim of woman abuse (Martin, 2006). Finally, a lot of those that are responders reported concern for the happiness of their coworkers, and directly questioned the ability of owning a sense of personal comfort while enduring their work as frontline anti-violence responders.

Furthermore, the negative penalties of frontline anti-violence work may be increasing and enduring, and impact the professional and personal lives of anti-violence responders.....

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