Ethical dilemmas of a clinician/researcher interviewing women who have grown up in a family where there was domestic violence

This article attempts to illuminate some of the ethical dilemmas of a clinician/researcher interviewing women about a sensitive topic- their experience of having witnessed domestic violence in the family they grew up in, as part of a grounded theory study. Vignettes are presented to illustrate the self-reflexive process of the researcher and how she understood the effects of the interview process on her and the participants. The authors argue that doing in-depth qualitative research interviewing is an intervention in the life of the participants, especially, but not only, when the researchers are clinically-trained. However, this clinical training may also be an important resource from which to draw from, to act ethically and understand some of the complexity of the interaction between researcher and participants.peer-reviewe

'You just deal with it. You have to when you’ve got a child’: A narrative analysis of mothers’ accounts of how they coped, both during an abusive relationship and after leaving

A narrative analysis explored the accounts of eight mothers, each of whom had left an abusive relationship at least 12months previously. Existing research investigating the strategies used by women to cope with domestic violence rarely considers women in their capacity as mothers. Furthermore, women’s lives after leaving an abusive relationship have received limited research attention. Thus, this study aimed to understand how women described coping with domestic violence and mothering their children, both during an abusive relationship and after leaving. The analysis focused on how the eight participants described their experiences (narrative form) as well as what they talked about (narrative content). Three types of narrative form were identified: (1) ‘The story told to help others’, (2) ‘The story too difficult to tell’ and (3) ‘Where’s my story going?’ Each woman spoke about the contextual factors that influenced whether she coped with domestic violence by seeking support from others, changing her thinking or changing her behaviour. Caring for their children was a major source of support for all the women both during their relationship and after leaving. The findings indicate that mothers who have been abused by their intimate partner may come into contact with a wide range of social and emergency support services. Implications for clinical practice, service delivery and service development relate to the different ways of supporting women in talking about abuse and also the need to recognise trauma in parents

Spirituality – a forgotten dimension? Developing spiritual literacy in family therapy practice

Spirituality is hard to approach and define in family therapy practice, both as a concept and as a process. Spiritual perspectives are seen as important in an ecological understanding of family life, yet there is a research gap in the field of family therapy. The research reported here set out to explore the experience of spirituality from the perspective of family members and family therapists in therapeutic practice in Norway. Using a grounded theory methodology, we developed a middle range theory of spiritual literacy for family therapy practice. Although we offer no solutions to the dilemmas and hesitations experienced around the possible silencing of spiritual matters in family therapy, we make some recommendations for training and supervision practices.publishedVersio

Handling “Hot Potatoes”: ethical, legal, safeguarding, and political quandaries of researching drug-using offenders

Conducting qualitative field research involving drug users within a politicized criminal justice setting presents a unique set of ethical, legal, and safeguarding concerns and quandaries for researchers. There is a paucity of qualitative research with community-based drug-using offenders who form part of the UK Government (England and Wales) criminal justice strategies (Senker and Green; Hucklesby and Wincup). Hodgson, Parker, and Seddon highlighted this group as an emerging study population. This article aims to provide a more recent contribution covering the difficulties of accessing and researching with a hard to reach and politicized criminal justice drug-using population, such as risks of re-traumatization, risk assessment, safeguarding, criminal disclosure, and personal safety. The first author reflects on her research from her own unique political position as a policy advisor to the UK Government on criminal justice drug policy, with a view to providing recommendations for research with a hard to reach and hidden population who represent a marginalized group. The combination of reflexivity in research and the use of Interpretative Phenomenological Analysis as a research methodology proved helpful in addressing and overcoming some of these ethical, political, and other quandaries.publishedVersio

‘Treating this place like home’: An exploration of the notions of home within an adolescent inpatient unit with subsequent implications for staff training

This is an open access article under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License, which permits use, distribution and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is properly cited.Notions of home are deeply rooted in how we under stand our interrelational selves and where we fit in to the world around us. This qualitative research explored how young people, their families and staff on a United Kingdom (UK) psychiatric adolescent inpatient unit constructed meaning around the notion of home within the unit. Admissions on such units can range from a few days to many months, and understanding what young people, families and staff consider the unit to be – home, hospital, or something else – has significant clinical implications for both treatment and recovery. Eleven focus groups with staff, young people and families on a general adolescent inpatient unit were conducted and the data scrutinised using a discourse analysis. This re search suggests that discourses around role confusion, safety and the embodiment of home, attachment rela tionships and the contradictory positions of home or hospital were evident for all participants. Theories such as the reciprocal nature of attachment relationships be tween staff and young people, iatrogenic injury and at tachment ruptures between young people and parents all have a profound impact on an inpatient admissioand are often unspoken and under-operationalised. Clinical recommendations are made about the need for a paradigm shift in how admissions are understood for young people, how to manage the dilemmas associated with the unit becoming a home and what the subse quent training needs of inpatient staff are.publishedVersio

Participant observation in families with school-refusing children

Four families were observed using the technique of participant observation. The research aimed to develop systematic and reliable methods to describe family structure and interaction. The observer lived-in the family home for week long periods as a 'fully' participating member. The recorded observations were transcribed at the end of each visit and analysed at three levels; i) the family behaviour was described and interpreted within Minuchin's (1974) Structural Family Theory to reveal functional relationships and invariant interpersonal dynamics, ii) the transcripts were analysed for repeated sequences of behaviour, decomposed by acts and classified using the Borgatta (1962) category system. A computer package summarised the data producing behavioural profiles and the search for pattern was accomplished using lag sequential analysis. The sequences are used to illustrate the roles adopted by family members and to characterise the relationships between them, and iii) a meta-analysis of the methodological problems, such as bias, reactivity, reliability and validity. Within and between observer reliability studies are carried out. Such observation involves the researcher directly and intimately with the group under study, raising important ethical issues, which it is argued are not unique to participant observation. This research has provided the opportunity to become sensitive to and seek solutions for these methodological problems and to describe family behaviour within an ecologically valid context.</p

Troska o siebie i innych. Superwizja prowadzona w oparciu o narrację przywiązania

publishedVersio

Perheväkivalta ja systeeminen pariterapia videovälitteisesti – mitä tulee huomioida turvallisuuden suhteen

Koronavirustilanne maailmalla ja Suomessa on pakottanut psykoterapiatkin etäyhteyksiin. Väkivaltatyötä on pidetty liian riskialttiina etätyöhön sen turvallisuudelle tuomien riskien takia. Olemme olleet kuitenkin pakotettuja tekemään väkivaltatyötä etätyönä. Arlene Veteren ja Jan Cooperin kehittämä tapa työskennellä parien kanssa silloin, kun suhteessa on ollut väkivaltaa, ottaa turvallisuuden keskiöön ja rakentuu sen varaan. Etäyhteyksin tapahtuva pariskuntien kanssa tehtävä väkivaltatyö on haastanut meidät miettimään, mitä tässä mallissa pitää ottaa huomioon turvallisuuden kannalta verrattuna kasvokkain tapaamiseen. Terapiassa pyritään luomaan turvallinen ilmapiiri, missä pariskunta voi opetella tunteiden hallintaa tilanteessa, jossa heidän vuorovaikutuksensa voi olla täynnä piilossa olevia syyllisyyden, häpeän, pettymyksen ja pelon tunteita sekä traumakokemuksiin liittyviä muistoja. Turvallisuus voi luoda uusia tapoja kuulla ja tulla kuulluksi sekä ymmärtää puolisoa. Näin on mahdollista, että syntyy uudenlaisia tapoja ilmaista tunteita turvallisesti ilman väkivalta