Spirit & Solace: Black Churches and Domestic Abuse Final Report

Background: The Spirit and Solace research wanted to find out what it is like for congregants in Black majority churches (BMCs) who report domestic abuse and their experiences of supporting fellow members. Method: A mixed-methods design that included ongoing reflection along with a survey and interviews/focus groups, researcher diaries, conversations, with a steering group who met every three months during the project. Results: 35 people participated in the research: 34 as survey respondents; three in a focus group and six in individual interviews. Six participants were church leaders and 13 (38%) had experienced violence/abuse in the past, most had not sought support for experiences and two participants had abused a partner in the past. Most were female (84%), between the ages of 46-55 years old, and of Caribbean/Black British heritage, and had attended weekly church services between nine and over 40 years. Clergy and churchgoers who participated reported supporting victims/survivors of domestic abuse. Among clergy, two had made referrals to refugees. BMCs are already responding to reports of domestic abuse but with secrecy. Churches are concerned about their branding being tarnished by domestic abuse. This extended to gatekeeping and blocking congregants from participating in the research. Such secrecy about domestic abuse forestalls important conversations for Black women, where congregants also encourage silence as the only route to manage abuse. However, when domestic abuse was addressed in sermons, it encouraged more reports from victims/survivors. Additionally, the safeguarding role is insufficiently implemented within some BMCs. Recommendations and limitations are included

AA Members Understandings of the Higher Power (HP) A Qualitative Study

Thematic analysis (TA) was used to research how AA members understood the Higher Power (HP). The question of its place in recovery from alcoholism was addressed. The analysis of 10 recorded one-hour interviews led to argue that the Higher Power is not only central to sobriety by also to the well-being of AA members whatever their original or current declared spiritual or religious beliefs may be. Their experiential relationship with it gives a new meaning to their life which goes beyond their sense of identity. The centrality of the HP in AA seems to rub off on its members so that by practicing the program they act more and more like believers in their lives. The main understanding of the HP is Love

The Role of the Visual in Narratives of Violence: Co-creating Fissures

When visual approaches are used in the social sciences, the distinction between researcher and researched becomes destabilised, due to a greater transference of autonomy and narrative authority over to the participant who creates, organises and analyses data in partnership with the researcher. ‘Showing a world’ is more agentic, perhaps, than the traditional format of ‘telling a world’, where participants inevitably have to respond to the researcher’s agenda. In this chapter we argue that one of the reasons for the productive ambiguity over authorship and participation within this methodological process is due to the facilitation of affect, embodiment and space within the visual research agenda. We argue here, using examples from an empirical project on black women’s experiences of violence, that visual methods open channels that encourage the surfacing of emotional ruptures in rehearsed biographical narratives (Reavey, 2011a)

Organizing the sensory: ear-work, panauralism and sonic agency on a forensic psychiatric unit

How are relations of care and security between hospital staff and patients organized through sound? This article argues that a shifting distinction between meaningful sound and noise is fundamental to the lived experience of immersion in an organizational acoustic environment. Based around a qualitative study of listening practices and ‘ear work’ at a medium-secure forensic psychiatric hospital, using interview and photo-production methods, the article positions the organizing of the sensory as central to formal organization. Analysis of empirical material demonstrates how the refinement of key listening practices is critical to the ways in which staff and patients orient to the hospital setting. It also details how the design process for the unit has undermined the capacity to manage and control through sound, or ‘panauralism’, rendering it as a reversible and contested struggle to make sense of the acoustic environment, and describes the attempts by patients to create alternative acoustic spaces and exercise ‘sonic agency’. We contend that ‘acoustic organizational research’ offers an experience-near means of mapping organizational space and power relations and invites a renewed questioning of the role of the sensory as form of organizing in itself

Agents and spectres: life-space on a medium secure forensic psychiatric unit

Medium secure forensic psychiatric units are unique environments within the broader ‘post asylum’ landscape of mental health services. Length of stay is much greater, a recovery-focused care system is much more difficult to implement, and there is a paucity of suitable "step-down" services. The aim of this study was to examine how forensic psychiatric environments contribute to the shaping of recovery, by examining key features such as social interactions and agency. Here, we report on the findings from patients participating in a qualitative-visual study. This analysis forms part of larger study on staff and patient experiences of secure hospital space. In this paper, the analytical focus is directed towards two key elements of recovery - agency and relationality, using the concept of ‘topology’ and ‘life-space’, developed by the social psychologist Kurt Lewin. First, we explore how patients have relative freedom to move within institutional spaces, yet lack relational space. Secondly, we explore how life-space is expanded or compressed by the manner in which the patient's present life in hospital is connected or disconnected from their past or pending future. Finally, we discuss the implications of these findings for a recovery model within secure forensic settings, focused on personalisation and expanded life-space

From ‘no means no’ to ‘an enthusiastic yes’: Changing the Discourse on Sexual Consent Through Sex and Relationships Education

How sexual consent should be discussed with young people is the subject of current policy debates and contestations in the UK. While the current Westminster government violence against women and girls (VAWG) strategy (Home Office, 2011) and subsequent action plans recognise the importance of addressing consent, with no statutory relationships and sex education there are few contexts in which these conversations with young people routinely take place. Organisations that work with young people as victims/survivors of violence and through school-based primary prevention programmes have long identified sexual consent as an issue which requires specialist attention and intervention (see e.g. Coy et al., 2010; EVAW, 2011)

Feeling ‘like a minority…a pathology’: interpreting race from research with African and Caribbean women on violence and abuse

Qualitative researchers are often advised to use their emotional responses to data, and participants’ experiences are understood through those of researchers’, how this process unfolds is less clear. This paper is about role of feelings for the qualitative researcher at different stages of the process and offers strategies for working through, ‘using’ and ‘feeling together with’ participants, reflections on lived experiences. I interviewed nine African and Caribbean heritage British women about their experiences of violence and abuse where one described feeling ‘like a minority…a pathology’. This paper describes my responses to experiences of racialised and gendered intrusion in interviews, later reflection and analytic work. The paper brings recognition to a stigmatised and hidden process within qualitative interviews and data interpretation. This serves to amplify the impact of injustice and adverse experiences for participants, and researchers, and to a wider audience, and to validate its existence and emotional burden as a legitimate and crucial stage of qualitative data analysis

Living ‘in between’ outside and inside: The forensic psychiatric unit as an impermanent assemblage

This paper presents analysis from ‘a study of staff and patient experiences of the restrictive environments of a forensic psychiatric unit. The paper conceptualises the forensic unit as an impermanent assemblage, enacted in and through practices that hold a future life outside the unit simultaneously near, yet far. We show how the near-far relations between life inside and outside the unit operate in three ways; 1) in relation to the ‘care pathway’, 2) practices of dwelling, and 3) creating and maintaining connections to life ‘beyond’ the unit. The paper concludes with a discussion about possible ways to overcome the limitations to recovery that can arise through practices of impermanence