Community and Safety

Abstract

In the last chapter we saw that women disclose domestic violence to family and friends before turning elsewhere for support. Most family and friends gave support of some kind but this was inconsistent in its helpfulness. In this chapter I broaden my lens, taking an overview of the wider community in which women lived their lives looking at the nature of support in the wider community, from neighbours and social agencies. Research and practice over the past decade demonstrates improving responses to domestic violence in social agencies (although still more needs to be done) but we have much less knowledge about responses amongst the community-at-large. Indeed, whilst there has been a resurgence of interest in community in many fields this has been singularly missing in relation to domestic violence in the UK (Walklate, 2002). Furthermore, I argue that the dichotomisation of formal from informal support has hidden the ways in which they intersect. The aims of this chapter are, therefore, threefold: to look at responses in women’s neighbourhoods, to assess agency responses towards women participants and to explore the intersection of informal support with formal support.