עובדות סוציאליות במקלטים לנשים מוכות: הבחירה בעבודה עם נשים מוכות במקלטים וההשפעה על חייהן של המטפלות בהן

Abstract

This present study describes and analyzes the motives, experiences and meanings that social workers in battered women shelters have, to explore the impact this work has on their professional, personal, interpersonal and familial lives, and the ways that they cope with these effects. Currently, Intimate Partner Violence (IPV) is considered a complex social problem that successfully coping with requires dealing with all of its aspects. Battered women shelters raised the awareness to this problem, and are considered the most important front in the services aimed at the needs that at-risk women have. In addition to a safe haven protecting the women from their violent partners, the shelter provides the women with the opportunity to be part of a supportive therapeutic community that can provide her with coping strategies and tools for the rest of her lives. The role that the social workers in the shelter have is to help the women who are suffering from violence to get stronger and choose a life free of violence. At the same time, the constant exposure to traumatic and dramatic life stories shape the professional relationship between the women and the social workers, and have multiple consequences, both positive and negative, on the practitioners.

The present study adds to the developing body of knowledge in the literature that deals with the consequences that therapy has on therapists and especially IPV therapists. this study focused on other aspects such as the consequences on their personal lives. Exploring the social workers’ motives, consequences and coping strategies, can be helpful in planning and executing professional support and supervision programs aimed at the unique needs and challenges that social workers in battered women shelters have.

This study is qualitative and based on constructivist-hermeneutic paradigmatic principles, and therefore suits the aim of exploring the workers’ experiences and the  meanings they construct to them. In qualitative research the aim is to expose, describe and interpret experiences and meanings that are assigned to a certain phenomenon without attempting to disprove or confirm existing hypotheses.

Twelve in-depth semi-constructed interviews were conducted with social workers that work in the shelters that are scattered throughout the country, who have been working in the shelter for two years or above. The interviews were transcribed and a multi layered analysis was conducted, synthesizing them into five super-themes that comprised the findings’ chapter. The first focused on the main motives that the participants had behind their decision to work in the shelter. The second touched upon their perceptions within their relationships with the battered women and the conceptualizations that they arrived at. The third presents the participants’ professional knowledge and experiences about the shelter, and the unique characteristics and challenges of working in the battered women shelters. The fourth supertheme traces the participants’ conceptualizations of the ideal therapeutic interventions, their goals, and what is considered a therapeutic success or failure. The fifth focuses on the many consequences that working in the shelter had on the participants and the available resources to deal with those effects.

These findings were discussed through two dimensions that constitute the participants’ experience of working in shelters. The first dimension involves processes that the social workers went through that paralleled the processes that their clients go through. The second dimension focuses on the shelters’ ambivalence, and specifically in the dual nature that particular aspects and factors that cause traumatization have, which makes them factors that can be simultaneously leveraged for coping. In spite of the study’s limitations, it ends with some insights that were produced with regard to implications for practice and research in aspects of intervention, supervision, training and policy.