Within the scope of the project IntersectVAW&DV. Exploring Intersectionality of Violence Against Women and Domestic Violence: Needs, Impact and Services Effectiveness, funded by the Social Observatory of “La Caixa” Foundation, researcher Mariana Gonçalves led a study on the challenges, competences and quality of life of the professionals who provide support to victims of violence and trauma in Portugal.
715 persons with victimization history were interviewed and a study on the professionals who provide support to victims of domestic violence and trauma was carried out. All the institutions from the national network under the Commission for Citizenship and Gender Equality (CIG) received an online questionnaire and the team obtained by that means a large sample of 503 professionals.
91% of the people that provide support to victims of domestic violence and trauma are women, work in different areas (psychosocial, health, justice) and mainly assist victims of domestic violence (76%) and sexual abuse (38%), but also sexual harassment, workplace harassment, female genital mutilation and human trafficking.
Many of those professionals report greater difficulty in working with victims from cultural minorities, especially migrants (52%) and Roma people (49%). A substantial part recognizes that it is difficult to work with older (53%), disadvantaged (35%), transgender (30%), male (26%), non-binary (23%) and homosexual (20%) people.
The respondents mention two types of obstacles: institutional and cultural. In the first case, they refer to the difficulty of accessing translation services (44%), the lack of supervision (39%), the shortage of financial resources (31%), the lack of up-to-date training (23%) and insufficient coordination (21%). In the second, they mention language barriers (67%), the unpredictability of situations (49%), the difficulty of establishing relationships of trust (45%) and understanding different cultural contexts (42%).
The results highlight the difficulties that professionals face in the field and the importance of having specialized training for professionals on how to deal with people exposed to trauma, which would improve the quality of assistance and support responses and reduce revictimization in the system. Mariana Gonçalves states that institutions are unable to meet all the training needs of the professionals and that the existing training is of a one-off nature and often depends on the proactivity of the professionals.
CIPsi’s researcher points out that this is a demanding professional area, with a high level of precariousness, low pay and little prospect of career progression. And that these people deal with a lack of resources and complex cases, which often require emotional involvement, often to the detriment of their personal lives.
Read the full story here: