Spotlight on economic abuse - Good Shepherd Youth & Family ...

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Compared with 1995, people were more likely to understand that domestic violence can take a variety of forms, including physical and sexual assault, threats of harm to family members, and psychological, verbal and economic abuse. Twenty-five per cent of survey respondents did not believe that “controlling a partner by denying them money” was a form of domestic violence (compared with 33 per cent in 1995). Non-physical forms of violence tended to be seen as less serious with, for example, one in five respondents categorising “yelling abuse at a partner” and “controlling a partner by denying them money” as either “not that serious” or “not serious at all” (VicHealth 2010, McGregor 2009). Analyses of responses to the survey identified that a person’s strong support for gender equity as a strong predictor for believing non-physical behaviours are always domestic violence. Conversely, the strongest predictors for a person holding violence-supportive attitudes were being male and having low levels of support for gender equity or equality. These findings held when other demographic factors were statistically controlled (McGregor 2009, pp. 35-36). The survey report’s authors point out that the consequences of nonrecognition in the community of economic, emotional and psychological abuse as forms of domestic violence and lack of acknowledgement of their seriousness have implications for “how readily women and others affected by non-physical forms of domestic violence will seek help and access specialised systems of support” and for “how accurately we can measure the prevalence of violence against women across the spectrum of unlawful behaviours and across the diversity of women’s experiences” (VicHealth 2010, p 23). Clearly another consequence relates to the capacity of the community to prevent women being subjected to domestic violence when significant proportions of the population do not consider the violence to be a problem. Women who experience economic abuse may also be unaware that this is domestic violence. Braaf and Barrett Meyering (2011, p. 115) report that “numerous” women in their recent qualitative study reported that they had not realised they were experiencing domestic violence until they left the relationship and that these women were mostly those who had experienced non-physical forms of domestic violence “such as economic or emotional abuse”. A key issue for consideration of the sectors and issues for women experiencing economic abuse and the public policies, legal frameworks and community services which relate to these is the question of where women go to seek assistance for violence and abuse, including for assistance with financial matters. It is known that many incidents of domestic violence go unreported and that most women do not seek assistance from specialist domestic and family violence services or other agencies (Mouzos & Makkai 2004) but less is known about the services and assistance women do go to. A recent study by Bagshaw and Brown (2010) which surveyed women with children found that, on leaving an abusive relationship, women initially went to friends and family and to general practitioners; through these people they accessed counselling and other support services and these were mostly generalist services rather than domestic and family violence services. For financial assistance women went to Centrelink and most went to private legal practitioners for family court matters, although the number who did so declined after 2006 with the introduction of the network of Family Relationship Centres, which provide an alternative to courts for dealing with family law matters. 22
The connections between policies, frameworks and practices and economic abuse The remaining sections of this paper are concerned with identifying the key public policies, legal and regulatory frameworks, employment policies and practices and community services policies and practices which relate to or impact on economic abuse. The purpose of this is to identify what areas of policy and practice are crucial sites for targeting interventions to address abuse. In the context of identifying key sectors and issues it is helpful to categorise the policies, practices and frameworks that have some impact on economic abuse. The approach adopted here is based on one which is commonly used to categorise interventions to address violence as primary, secondary or tertiary interventions. 4 While the common categorisation is of positive interventions designed to tackle violence, the three categories can be used to classify a wide range of policies, practices and frameworks that influence economic abuse whether this is a positive influence that diminishes abuse or mitigates its impacts or a negative influence that facilitates or perpetuate abuse or worsens rather than reduces its impacts. Thus, the three categories include: Primary factors: positive preventative measures that reduce the likelihood of abuse occurring, and negative factors that increase the likelihood of abuse occurring. Secondary factors: positive protective measures that respond to incidents of abuse, including early interventions and negative factors that lead to ineffective protections or that facilitate abuse. Tertiary factors: positive measures that follow up to mitigate impacts or make perpetrators accountable and negative factors that extend or worsen the abuse. In reality these categories overlap and particular policies, frameworks and practices may have elements of each category. In addition, policies, practices and regulations can be classified according to the spheres of influence identified earlier in the ecological model. These are the spheres of society, community and relationship/individual. The final three sections of this paper identify key policies, frameworks and practices that influence economic abuse as primary, secondary or tertiary influences in one or more of the spheres of society, community and relationship/individual. 4 This categorisation draws on Chappell and Di Martino’s (2000) categorisation of approaches to workplace violence. 23
Page 2 and 3: Spotlight on Econo
Page 4 and 5: Contents List of Abbreviations ....
Page 6 and 7: Executive Summary This literature r
Page 8 and 9: legal matters migration matters hea
Page 10 and 11: There is a need for greater support
Page 12 and 13: Overview This paper is organised as
Page 14 and 15: The DV Vic definition informs the u
Page 16 and 17: Case Study: Maria Maria’s husband
Page 18 and 19: Some ‘typical scenarios’ of eco
Page 20 and 21: As part of repeated or ongoing cont
Page 22 and 23: also outside the scope of this pape
Page 24 and 25: Influences, Impacts and Points of I
Page 26 and 27: Particular vulnerabilities to econo
Page 28 and 29: Exploring the impacts of economic a
Page 30 and 31: Impacts relating to child support.
Page 34 and 35: Public Policies and Practices There
Page 36 and 37: the legal frameworks affecting dome
Page 38 and 39: In addition to family violence poli
Page 40 and 41: Centrelink may seek to recover paym
Page 42 and 43: Services staff providing customer s
Page 44 and 45: perpetrators to be excluded from th
Page 46 and 47: purpose is to “build the capacity
Page 48 and 49: financial literacy strategy. Howeve
Page 50 and 51: or in any other way controls or dom
Page 52 and 53: In its recent review the ALRC ident
Page 54 and 55: and for the creation of a new tempo
Page 56 and 57: equiring assistance or consideratio
Page 58 and 59: establish if there is a need for re
Page 60 and 61: considered by community sector grou
Page 62 and 63: Community Services Policies and Pra
Page 64 and 65: Financial counselling services are
Page 66 and 67: Conclusion: Community services resp
Page 68 and 69: —— 2011, Forms of employment, A
Page 70 and 71: Chappell, D & Di Martino, V 2000, V
Page 72 and 73: se.unsw.edu.au/Conference%20papers/
Page 74 and 75: Northern Territory Government 2008,
Page 76 and 77: VicHealth—see Victorian Health Pr
Page 78 and 79: ALRC (2011c) recommendations for ch
Page 80: GoodShepherd_Cover_print.indd 2 1/1

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