Awareness and detection of the co-occurrence of interparental violence and child abuse: Child welfare worker's perspective

Although studies indicate that domestic violence and child abuse often coexist in the same household, little research has been done on child welfare workers' social representation of the phenomenon. This paper reports the findings of an exploratory study of child welfare workers' awareness of the co-occurrence of interparental violence and child abuse, and how they detect interparental violence in the cases that are brought to their attention. The data generated from qualitative methodological research indicates that, although social workers have a generally good awareness of the problems and their dynamics, and that a little more than half of them say they have performed systematic detection of marital violence in all the cases assigned to them, about half say they have not made such an evaluation in all their cases. According to social workers, the principal obstacles to effective detection are: the parents' denial, insufficient evidence, heavy workloads, the hidden nature of violence in small communities, and lack of cooperation by the source of the complaint, or by other sources. The implications of the findings are discussed.