CEINAV on ISPCAN Conference in Bucharest

The CEINAV findings from the child physical abuse and neglect stream found broad interest on the European Regional Conference of the International Society for the Prevention of Child Abuse and Neglect (ISPCAN) in Bucharest on September 26th to 30th, 2015. Janna Beckmann from the DIJuF-Team presented “ethical issues and dilemmas in German child protection interventions”. Concentrating on the high value of relationships of trust in the German system she showed the tensions professionals in the expert workshops sensed when acting without consent, for example to share information or to intervene. From the interviews with young persons she could show the importance of confidentiality and trustful relationships in their perception. Thomas Meysen talked about the international comparison between the four countries: “paternalism and ethical sensitivity in diverse approaches to child protection interventions”. Different systems face similar problems and find diverse solutions, e.g. on the approach towards multidisciplinarity, information sharing, weighing between interests or delegating professional decision to rules and detailed criteria. – The responses indicate that ethics in child protection interventions is deemed as highly relevant and discussions wait to be deepened.

Thomas Meysen

CEINAV symposium at the European Conference on Domestic Violence in Belfast (6-9 September 2015)

On September 8th 2015, representatives of the four CEINAV teams presented a symposium at the European Conference on Domestic Violence, held at Queen’s University Belfast, Northern Ireland from 6-9th September 2015. A symposium was prepared by Vlasta Jalušič and colleagues from all research teams with the title Cultural patterns in interventions against violence. The symposium took place on the third day of the conference with almost full conference room of participants. Liz Kelly gave the introdution to the CEINAV framework and methods.

The aim of the symposium  was to address the cultural patterns in interventions against domestic violence. It  focused particularly on  professional's intervention strategies against  violence directed towards women and children. On the basis of empirical data, collected in the  project until now, the papers explored the cultural premises (similarities and differences) on which intervention patterns in four   countries (Germany, Portugal, Slovenia and the UK) are built on domestic violence and child abuse and how these intersect. We explored questions such as for example: How is violence understood? Is there a cultural framing of it? What is the threshold for intervention, when is it acceptable to act without the consent of the woman/parents?  How is culture understood? Which are the cultural minorities that need or are given a special attention and why? Is intervention framed differently for women and children who are positioned as cultural/ethnic minorities?

Prof. Liz Kelly opened the symposium with an overview of the entire CEINAV project, including its goals and methodology. She then presented the professionals’ discourses in the UK: “From private to public, need to risk, women to children: the changing professional discourse on domestic violence in the UK.” Prof. Rita Lopez then gave a presentation on the analysis conducted in Portugal entitled: “Cultural barriers to the protection of women and children against domestic violence: professionals’ discourses in Portugal.” Following, Bianca Grafe presented the German team’s data: “Framing intervention and handling difficult decisions in professional responses to domestic violence in Germany.” Finally, Prof. Vlasta Jalusic gave an account of the Slovenian Professionals’ discourses and closed with a few conclusions that emerged from the cross-country analysis of the professionals’ discourses.

Vlasta Jalušič & Rita Lopez

 

From left to right: Prof. Liz Kelly (PI - UK), Prof. Vlasta Jalusic (PI - Slovenia), Prof. Maria José Magalhães (PI - Portugal), Raquel Felgueiras (artist-researcher - Portugal), Rita Lopez (researcher – Portugal) and Bianca Grafe (researcher – Germany).

Juggling tasks: Interviews, Analysis and Participatory Art

A couple of weeks have passed again, but the more busy we get, the less time we find for writing and keeping you up to date.

Let me just update you with our work schedule.

All the interviews are done

Although in some of the countries it was very hard  to get all the interviewpartners we aimed for, and sometimes we did not succeed, we did what we could. But I am happy to announce, that on the other hand we have more interviews than anticipated in all fields of violence in the German team and in the field of domestiv violence and child abuse in the Portuguese team.

Analysis is on the way

The researchers have extracted stories out of the interviews which very briefly tell a story. In order to keep them anonymous, we split up some interviews in several stories, so the unique combination would not give away who told it. As always, this overlaps with analyzing the interviews. Meanwhile...

the artists are preparing and conducting their workshops

The first art workshop with interviewees already took place in Slovenia and produced some interesting pieces which are not ready for public presentation at this time.  We will however discuss them in four creative dialoge meetings with practitioners and associate partners in each of the four countries in September.

Also the artists have gotten their own little discussion space which is also (due to safety reasons) closed off from the public. There they can discuss their ideas and inspirations as well as very practical questions. We will invite one of the artists to write something here later.

Working paper on relevant ethical theories and challenges online

Intervention against violence is increasingly recognized as a responsibility of society, its laws and institutions, but when is intervention just and effective, given the diversity of today’s societies? 

When is it respectful and responsive to the needs and life projects of those involved? 

How can intervention expand the space for agency and self-determination of those who have been or still are exposed to violence?

A main goal of CEINAV is to identify key ethical concerns and moral dilemmas that arise in practice and to develop guidance for intervention strategies responding to the diverse voices of those seeking protection, support or help. Workshops with professionals and interviews with women and young people who have experienced intervention have provided many insights into some of these issues.

As a foundation for systematic analysis, a working paper on “Salient ethical issues for intervention against violence” is now available online right --> here <--

Networking on trafficking for sexual exploitation

Trafficking of human beings is a difficult field of intervention and very recent in Portugal (RCM nº 81/2007), where most of the known victims are for labour exploitation, therefore research struggles with many obstacles. In order to develop the CEINAV work the Portuguese team has a new associate partner: APF (Portuguese Family Planning Association - http://www.apf.pt/apf.php?lg=pt ; http://www.apf.pt/apf.php?lg=uk ). This NGO is specialized in intervention in the field of trafficking of human beings and runs a shelter for women victims. Besides this NGO, CEINAV also keeps networking with CIG (Portuguese Commission For Citizenship and Gender Equality) where Manuel Albano acts as the National Rapporteur for trafficking.    

To deepen some issues around trafficking for sexual exploitation, CEINAV met in Porto with CIG and APF, in the 8th of April, and discussed the following topics: assisted return, difficulties in the assignment of the victim status, access to health care by illegal immigrants and the difficulties in finding volunteers to be interviewed by the CEINAV project.     

This meeting is part of a networking process which is highly relevant to an epistemological position linking research and practice in the field of human trafficking for sexual exploitation.

Fire up creativity - Artist meeting in London

On 30th and 31th March 2015 CEINAV brought together all their 4 artist researchers in London Metropolitan University: Iona Roisin from the UK team, Lana Zdravković from the Slovenian team, Ninette Rothmüller from the German team and Raquel Felgueiras from the Portuguese team. We exchanged our experiences and views about working with marginalized, deprived and discriminated people in the context of violence as well as debated about methodology we will use on the art workshops with the survivors of violence. In each country we will moderate the creative process which will be based on the stories created out of the interviews with the survivors but those will just inform the artists; the art workshops will not be built around the stories as some kind of script.

In each country one or two art workshops will be implemented for all three forms of violence. Whilst there has to be a set of basic parameters for the workshops some of the more specific questions cannot be the same across the four country contexts, as they are dependent on the particulars of who and how many agree to take part in the workshops, where they are located geographically and how each artist develops the workshop concept.  There are, therefore, layers of flexibility and variability in the creative process which we should consider an asset, part of what the project is in fact about – the processes and creative outcomes will not be the same, they are cultural encounters!

The process needs to produce something – a creative outcome – from what participants want to communicate about intervention that will be accessible to various audiences. 

All artists will work within their fields of experience having in mind that including creative art in the research project is a certain experiment, both for artists and researchers. But since we have high ethical standards and respect the decisions and wishes of the people we will work with we hope it will be fruitful for all of us. 

Lana Zdravkovic

Research cooperation and synergy

At an advisory board meeting of the project “Disclosure and prevention of sexual violence against male children and youth (AuP)”, Carol Hagemann-White & Barbara Kavemann discussed interviewing intervention professionals and victims of violence in a full-day meeting in Berlin on February 27, 2015; three other projects also participated. Finding interview partners emerged as a challenging, but above all time-consuming process, and it is particularly difficult to reach young  persons (under 30) to describe their experiences of intervention.