Poverty and Domestic Violence. This assignment will briefly discuss interventions employed to ease poverty in history. Social policy and laws pertaining to domestic violence will be highlighted. Feminism will be used to mention the origins and dynamics

Authors Avatar

                                       


Introduction

The topics chosen from the given scenario are domestic violence, poverty and feminism.  Women’s Aid (2009) defines domestic violence as physical, sexual, psychological, or financial.  This takes place within an intimate or family type relationship.  All forms of domestic violence come from the abuser’s desire for power and control.  The perpetrator is most commonly male but can be female.  For the purpose of the assignment I will use the terminology domestic violence rather than domestic abuse because although the latter is the preferred term a lot of the texts still refer to this as violence.

     One in four women will be a victim of domestic violence in their lifetime; many of these on a number of occasions.  One incident of domestic violence is reported to the police every minute and on average two women are killed by a current or former partner every week (Women’s Aid, 2009).  These statistics speak volumes as to the enormous problem we as social workers face.

This assignment will briefly discuss interventions employed to ease poverty in history.  Social policy and laws pertaining to domestic violence will be highlighted.  Feminism will be used to mention the origins and dynamics of domestic violence.  The Ecological Theory and its relevance to social work practice will be demonstrated.   Personal reflection will be given and finally a conclusion will draw together the aforementioned topics.

History and political development

Domestic abuse can be resultant of social structural factors such as bad housing, unemployment and poverty.  One can not plot the history of domestic abuse because historically it was seen as a private family matter rather than a societal issue but it is possible to look at a potential causal issue: poverty.

An act which was designed to alleviate poverty was the English Poor Laws introduced in 1601 this dictated that the poor and disabled were taken care of by the working able bodied and the local parishes.  The work houses accommodated thousands of poor people who had no choice but to enter these foreboding establishments if they could not find work.  Prior to this the poor were cared for by charity (Marshall, 2002).

         Enlightenment arose in the eighteenth century as a result of the French addressing their problem of poverty, this was more a way of thinking than a movement but this spread across Europe.  This belief was that the government should reward efforts of those working and should not make those poorer when they are willing to work by failing to provide employment. (McStay Adams, 1991).

        Less known for helping the poor is the contribution of religious women, one such example being the Sisters of Mercy who for many years during the 1800’s provided direct aid to the poor.  The Sisters of Mercy helped establish social welfare systems and according to Luquet (2005) contributed to what became social work.

Join now!

        In 1942 the Beveridge Report highlighted what was referred to as the ‘five giants’.  These were idleness, squalor, want, disease and ignorance.  As a result of this a programme of employment was introduced, new houses were built, benefit schemes were initiated, free healthcare was available to everyone and free secondary education was provided by the state (Aslangul et al, 2000).

       Thatcherism is the term referred to during the period between 1979 and 1991 when Margaret Thatcher was Prime Minister.  During her time in office she was concerned with controlling Britain’s money supply, known ...

This is a preview of the whole essay