COVID-19 lockdowns, intimate partner violence and coercive control.

2020 was a year like no other, with the COVID-19 virus upending life as we know it. When governments around the world imposed lockdown measures to curb the spread of COVID-19, advocates in the domestic and family violence (DFV) sector recognised that these measures were likely to result in increases in violence against women, particularly intimate partner violence (IPV). IPV can take many forms, including physical, emotional, psychological, financial, coercive controlling behaviours, surveillance and isolation tactics. Lockdown conditions provide fertile ground for the exercise of coercive control by encouraging people to stay at home, limiting social interactions to household members, reducing mobility and enabling perpetrators to closely monitor their partner's movements. However, media reports and awareness of IPV are generally dominated by a focus on physical violence and lethality, which are easily defined and measured. By contrast, coercive control as a concept is difficult to operationalise, measure and action in law, policy and frontline interventions. This paper discusses the challenges inherent in measuring coercive control and engages with current debates around the criminalisation of coercive control in NSW. Such reflection is timely as the conditions of COVID-19 lockdowns are likely to lead to an increase in coercive controlling behaviours.

Towards intensive parenting? Changes in the composition and determinants of mothers' and fathers' time with children 1992-2006.

Contemporary expectations of good parenting hold that focused, intensive parental attention is essential to children's development. Parental input is viewed as a key determinant in children's social, psychological and educational outcomes, with the early years particularly crucial. However, increased rates of maternal employment mean that more parents are juggling work and family commitments and have less non-work time available to devote to children. Yet studies find that parental childcare time has increased over recent decades. In this paper, we explore the detail of this trend using data from the Australian Bureau of Statistics (ABS) Time Use Survey (TUS), 1992 and 2006. To investigate whether discourses on intensive parenting are reflected in behaviour, we examine a greater range of parent-child activities than has been undertaken to date, looking at trends in active childcare time (disaggregated into talk-based, physical and accompanying care activities); time in childcare as a secondary activity; time spent in the company of children in leisure activities; and time spent in the company of children in total. We also investigate whether the influence of factors known to predict parental time with children (gender, education, employment status and the age of children) have changed over time. We contextualize our analyses within social and economic trends in Australia and find a compositional change in parental time, with more active childcare occurring within less overall time, which suggests more intensive, child-centred parenting. Fathers' parent-child time, particularly in physical care, increased more than mothers' (from a much lower base), and tertiary education no longer predicts significantly higher childcare time.

Specialist Financial Counseling for Women Affected by Domestic and Family Violence: Staff and Client Perspectives on an Australian Initiative.

This article examines staff and client perspectives on an initiative providing co-located specialist Domestic and Family Violence (DFV) financial counseling in women's legal services. An exploratory mixed-method study in five service locations captured perspectives via a client survey (n = 42), online interviews with staff (n = 15), and a review of services' progress reports. For staff and clients, integrating financial counseling into women's legal services contributed to a more comprehensive model of support which helped address the economic harms associated with violence. Findings highlight the benefits of service integration and co-location, which enabled staff to share knowledge and build capacity, and helped improve outcomes for women following violence.

Adapting Service Delivery during COVID-19: Experiences of Domestic Violence Practitioners.

COVID-19 rapidly altered patterns of domestic and family violence, increasing the complexity of women's needs, and presenting new barriers to service use. This article examines service responses in Australia, exploring practitioners' accounts of adapting service delivery models in the early months of the pandemic. Data from a qualitatively enriched online survey of practitioners (n = 100) show the ways services rapidly shifted to engage with clients via remote, technology-mediated modes, as physical distancing requirements triggered rapid expansion in the use of phone, email, video calls and messaging, and many face-to-face interventions temporarily ceased. Many practitioners and service managers found that remote service delivery improved accessibility and efficiency. Others expressed concerns about their capacity to assess risk without face-to-face contact, and were unsure whether new service modalities would meet the needs of all client groups and reflect best practice. Findings attest to practitioners' mixed experiences during this period of rapid service innovation and change, and underline the importance of monitoring emerging approaches to establish which service adaptations are effective for different groups of people, and to determine good practice for combining remote and face-to-face service options in the longer term.

'Good enough' parenting: Negotiating standards and stigma.

BACKGROUND: Policy concern with families has led to the framing of 'good parenting' as a skill set that parents must acquire while 'poor parenting' is linked to a raft of social problems, including child maltreatment. A range of professionals are responsible for monitoring parents for evidence of 'poor parenting', and for reporting those parents to statutory child protection authorities. Little is known about how parents in vulnerable circumstances negotiate these dual pressures of 'good parenting' and surveillance. METHODS: Eight parents who use drugs were interviewed about raising children well. The data is drawn from a project that used a positive deviance approach to understand the practices and norms that contribute to positive child outcomes in communities where positive outcomes are unexpected or statistically anomalous. RESULTS: Parents use a range of strategies to minimise risk of harm from drug use. Participants resist negative stereotypes that portray their parenting primarily in terms of risk; and in contrast to previous research, describe feelings of guilt but not shame. Systemic barriers to safe environments include the nature of illicit drug markets and the surveillance and policing responsibilities of service agencies. CONCLUSION: The findings contribute to an understanding of safe and competent parenting by parents who use drugs and highlight how drug laws and fear of intervention can work against the creation of safe family environments.