Prevention of Domestic Violence against Women - Assignment Example

Running head: PREVENTION OF DOMESTIC VIOLENCE AGAINST WOMEN Prevention of domestic violence against women Name Institution Date Table of Contents Prevention of domestic violence against women 1 Running head: PREVENTION OF DOMESTIC VIOLENCE AGAINST WOMEN 2 Prevention of domestic violence against women 2 Institution 2 Date 2 Table of Contents 3 Title 4 Abstract 4 Introduction 5 Literature Review 6 Research question(s) 10 Research question: 10 Hypothesis: 10 Evaluation site and/or the subjects of the study 10 Evaluation design 11 Population and sample 12 Variables and Data Collection methods 12 Interviews: 13 Questionnaires: 13 Data analysis 14 Project organisation, management, schedule and budget 14 Conclusion 15 References 16 Title Prevention of domestic violence against women in Australia Abstract Domestic violence that targets the women is increasing on daily basis and is now considered a major problem through out the world. This problem can only be eradicated throughout the world by taking implementing measures to provide security and enhances the lives of the women in the world. The objective of this research is to develop services and initiatives that will provide safe homes for the women in Australia. The research question is: How do women exposed to domestic violence can be assisted in improving their lives to create safe homes to Australian women? The method to be used in the research will involve questionnaires and interviews as methods of collecting data. Introduction There are many problems faced by people in Australia. The most severe among these are the problems faced by women. Their situation gets worse by day due to household as well as external pressure and violence. “It is very difficult to measure the true extent of violence against women as most incidences of domestic violence and sexual assault go unreported” (Phillips, 2008, p.1). The problems faced by women comprise both domestic violence as well as sexual assault. “Domestic violence can occur in many forms and can affect people of any age”. The report throws light on the condition of women in Australia, and the important moves by the government and other private organizations for the welfare of women in Australia. Some of them are: Safe Homes - jointly started by the National Foundation for Australian Women (NFAW) and by the University of Melbourne in the year 1973, and The Salvation Army, which is for the establishment of good future for the women in rest of their lives. This can serve any “woman who is experiencing domestic violence, homelessness or some other personal crisis” (Women’s refuges, 2010, p.1). They not only serve them food and shelter but also give them peace of mind and body by giving counselling and health practices like Yoga. These organizations are on their way of providing money by means of outdoor jobs that include services for the country. These organizations are actually non-profit organizations aiming only at the welfare of women in the country. There are different aspects of these organizations: To lessen the hostility on women and children. To develop women’s economic freedom. To improve equality and leadership skills among women. Most of the women tend to go behind the scenes after such problems. The main aim of these organizations is to bring them into work. These are mandatory in today’s society as not all people are generous or courageous enough to back up their skills. These organizations also look forward to the legislature for making laws for improving the condition of women in public. Literature Review Intervention programs are arranged including emergency hide outs, women assistance after police intervention, special victims services linked to diverse languages etc. When looking into the problems of women facing domestic violence is regarding their living place. Safety becomes a major concern and hence many organizations; both governmental and non profit units have come up with provisions and services for this matter. BBC News, Sydney reported in February 2, 2009 that “the first refuge for domestic violence victims has opened in Australia's Northern Territory, and is designed to help vulnerable Aboriginal women.” (Mercer, 2009). Safe Homes are shelters for women who can never hope for a secure help from any others. The victims undergoing legal formalities are more prone to insecure situations. “The safe house aims to be a circuit-breaker to give sanctuary to vulnerable women in small communities where they have few places to seek help” (Mercer, 2009). Cathy Huddleston says that this turned out to be a relief for battered women to live in safety with no fear of violence. There have been many admissions to this refuge owing to domestic violence in the aboriginal areas of Australia. Joblessness, economic deficiencies and addictions and at times abnormalities lead to domestic violence. It is a fact that a victim of such tortures and brutalities will obviously have physical, emotional and psychological disturbances. An outlying anxiety of further abuse will be present in the victims that can lead to bigger complications in the future. The prerequisite to get out of the traumatic situations is a safe and peaceful existence for the victims. The Australian refuge centres ensure that all the inhabitants are safe and comfortable. A lofty interest about this matter in the national level gave way to the establishment of Safe Homes across the country. The National Foundation for Australian Women (NFAW) and University of Melbourne together has launched an organization that provides help and shade for women in need. The year 1973 came up with the start of revolution in this field. “Elsie Women's Refuge was the first refuge set up in Australia for women and children escaping a violent home who had nowhere to sleep. The refuge offered advice and assistance in relation to the legal, welfare and health systems.” (Elsie women’s refuge (1973- ), 2010). The concept of Safe Homes gave a vague estimate on the large groups of battered women who are in need of protection. This was followed by the opening of about 300 such homes by the year of 1999. The increased number of launches of refuges for battered women can be evident from the words of Jenny Craig who stated in a book named “The Jenny Craig story: how one woman changes millions of lives” by marking the year as 1985. She spoke about the people in Australia and the societal experiences. “We opened five safe houses across the country for battered women and children” she claimed. (Craig, 2004). This shows up a fact linked to refuges in Australia that national interest for those is very high owing to the security they offer to the weaker sections of the society. Another well-known refuge in proving secure hideouts for exalted women and children in Australia is the Refuge House. Families come to the Refuge House when they have no other safe housing option. The specialities of their emergency shelters include the provisions for counselling, caring and administration. The main area can accommodate 50 women and children which they give for a period of 45 days. A separate supportive section is there with a capacity to allocate space for 20 women and children. Their provisions does not limit on just facilitating a place to sleep and eat securely. They are given assistance in achieving strength of mind to traverse from what has happened and get into productive and successful living. Unique strategies are provided for the children of such women to recover from fear and ambiguity. The provisions of food, clothing, sheets and medicines are given for the inhabitants. Exactly this is a non profit organization and so activities they perform is all based on humanity and betterment of society perspectives. For the wellbeing and protection of the people at Refuge House, an exact site and setting is kept not to be disclosed. The support from the law and order wing makes every activity in a safe and comfortable manner. Salvation Army, as name indicates, brings about salvation to the harmed minds of battered women and their children. The organization discovers contentment in finding the revival and renovations in such women and their offspring. “If you are a woman who is experiencing domestic violence, homelessness or some other personal crisis, The Salvation Army may be able to assist you.” (Women’s refugees, 2010). Similar to Refuge House people, the Salvation Army finds their strategies concentrated on the overall expansion of peace and security at the intellectual level itself. Proper counselling and other activities to enhance the state of mind for making them capable to remove all pains of suffering from their minds and get involved in life to achieve new domains of development and expansion. A place to new dreams is their objective to make the refugees at their homes. Army is accommodating battered women in various places throughout Australia about which all information and kept off the record. Each entry will get a Personal Case Manager who will assist in every necessity with respect to any personal aspects including emotional, intellectual, physical, economic etc. Food and other immediate provisions are made available along with a training that includes counselling and enlightenment to procure autonomous existence in future. Children belong to battered women are supplied with extreme care and help to remove all hurt and pain from their intellects. Special needs are met in ultimate urgency and concern. Research question(s) Research question: Domestic violence targeted against women is increasing day by day and it has been considered a major problem across the world. To eradicate this problem from the society, we need to ask what are the different steps and services one needs to implement in order to provide and enhance the lives and create safe homes for the women in Australia. The research question is: How do women exposed to domestic violence can be assisted in improving their lives to create safe homes to Australian women? Hypothesis: With implementation of steps and services against domestic violence, better lives and safe homes will be provided to Australian women. Evaluation site and/or the subjects of the study The subjects taken for analysis in this study are from women’s community group in Australia and possess a broad range of factors that make them likely targets for violence including those living in poverty (Johnson, 2006). The aim of choosing this subject for evaluation is that it has got a wide range of scenarios to explore for enhancing or facilitating the lives of women in Australia. The chosen evaluation site is a women’s community group in Australia. After analyzing their experiences on specific set of factors, the main recommendations will be based on elements such as political, cultural and economical. First, it is prerequisite to analyze these different factors and once it is over it is necessary to analyze implemented programs to see whether the implemented programs are effective and whether it can facilitate or enhance the lives of women. Evaluation design This research has been carried out in two ways. One is through primary data analysis and another is through secondary data analysis. Primary data analysis mainly includes conducting questionnaires and interviews with the population sample. Secondary data analysis includes analyzing data from the various journals, books, research papers etc. in form of a literature review. The women will be interviewed directly so that they can provide information about the domestic violence taking place in Australian. Questionarres will be distributed in selected sample groups by the research assistant. In primary analysis, data will be collected from the sample population groups that are women who are part of the Australian Community group. These groups are termed as experimental group. All sorts of interviews and questionnaires are conducted with these people. Both the questionnaires and interviews will be used for collection of data. They are selected by sampling technique. The outcome of pre and post intervention is analyzed after conducting the interviews and questionnaires. However, conducting all these in a good manner is always a nightmare. “But where there’s a strong will, there’s always a way” (Craig, 2004, p.126). Population and sample A random sample of women will be collected from the women community centre database that will be indicative of any domestic problem to the women. Population sample for the research will be Australian women from the women community group of Australia and those who have been the victims of violent activities and have reported to the support centre. The sample will also include abused women who attend community services/safe houses. A sample can be a small set of people and a survey is distributed among them. Response received from the survey can be called response rate (Vitanza, 1995). Variables and Data Collection methods Data analysis helps to keep track of all the questions and the information collection tool that are used to obtain the relevant data that is needed for the research. Data collection and analyzing is one of the enduring tasks of the research. It always helps to understand about the lives of women in Australia, whether they are getting all sorts of good services or are again being exposed to violence activities. Data and variables obtained from the study can be mathematical and quantitative in nature. If the analysis is in the quantitative form then they are to be analyzed using statistical tools. Various other employed measures are qualitative, quantitative and content analysis. The data will be collected in form of interviews and questionnaires while literature review will also be conducted to check the authorial command on the relative subject. Interviews: It is one of the most common methods to analyze the opinion regarding violence against women in Australia. Interviews are conducted with selected groups of people. Main focus will stress on whether women are getting good services and safe homes in order to stay away from violence. In addition, this includes enquiring whether “program is available to provide support services for clients throughout the injunction process”. (Vitanza, 1995). Women visiting the women support centres and form a part of women community group of Australia will be interviewed. Not only will the interviews be assembled in written form but also in recorded form. Individual interviews will be taken from the sample population. Privacy will be ensured to the sample population as it is the responsibility of the researcher to keep the personal information of the sample population to him/her. Questionnaires: This is another method used to collect the information from the targeted people. It must always be easily understandable and also it must be well structured. This is considered to be one of the strongest research tools and it contains a set of questions which may be of type closed ended which can be answered by yes or no. This design is considered to be appropriate, as by conducting the interviews and questionnaires in the best manner it will always help to pursue in-depth knowledge regarding the persisting problem. The questionnaires will be provided to the women who are part of the community group and who visit women support centre, which is again a service provided by the women community group. Questionnaires will be handed in to the women. Data analysis The collected data will be analysed using statistical data analysis tools. These tools include mean, median, mode, standard deviation and range. Some of the tools that will be very useful are the numerical frequencies and percentages. The frequencies will be the easiest statistic to use and compute. A frequency is the number of appearances of a single variable. The information from frequency computation can be used as a foundation for other calculations. Percentages are also computed from frequency. Percentages are very useful in the explanation of information as a proportion of the whole. Measures of variability give a summary of how the data is spread out. The computations provide more details about the distribution of variables than the measures of central tendency. The data will be organized by means of statistical data reporting tools such as histograms parallel box plots, and scatter plots. The data will be analysed in form of variability of sample statistics from a known population and construction of sample distribution (Thompson & Gardener, 1998). Project organisation, management, schedule and budget In the collection of data, multiple researchers will be involved in the collection of primary data from books, journals and research papers. Assistant researchers will be involved in the distribution of questionnaires and in the conduction of interviews. The assistant researchers will take questionnaires to the sample Australian women groups. The assistant researchers will be trained on the methods of distributing the data and the manner in which the interviews will be conducted in order to get the expected results. Timeline/ schedule and Budget Activity Timeline Budget Estimate Collection of primary data 15 days £20m Collection of secondary data 10 days £20m Data analysis 10 days £5m Report of the findings 1 day No costs Conclusion This research was necessitated by the need to prevent the violence against women. Various researches have shown that serious cases of violence men are generally responsible. Women are much more likely to be killed by a close partner, in spite of of who started the fight. Among the persons murdered by a close partner, about three quarters are female while the rest are men. The paper has overviewed various provisions for providing safe homes and services for the women in Australia. The main intention of these is to help women and to give them guarantee that they never need to face such difficulties in future. The main objectives of these safe homes and services are to provide care, sympathy and friendliness to the battered women. Current scenario suggests that these are a prerequisite in the contemporary society. There is no doubt that the impact made by such programs and services are huge. References Craig, J. 2004. The Jenny Craig story: How one woman changes millions of lives. John Wiley and Sons, p.116. Retrieved March 21, 2010, from Elsie women’s refuge (1973-). 2010. The Australian Women’s Register. Retrieved March 21, 2010, from Emergency shelter. (n.d.). Refuge House. Retrieved March 21, 2010, from Johnson, MP, 2006. "Conflict and control: gender symmetry and asymmetry in domestic violence.". Violence against women 12 (11): 1003–18. Mercer, P., 2009. Safe house for abused aborigines. BBC News. Retrieved March 21, 2010, from Thompson, S. & Gardner, M; Calculus Made Easy. 1998. Page 10-11. What is domestic violence? (n.d.) Reachout.com. Retrieved March 21, 2010, from Women’s refugees. (2010). The Salvation Army. Retrieved March 21, 2010, from Vitanza, S., 1995. 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