The Ontario Rural Woman Abuse Study (ORWAS), final report
APPENDIX A
RESEARCH THEMES
Themes overlap
Process of finding safety by women survivors of domestic violence:
- Naming and recognising abuse.
- Coping strategies.
- Defining safety.
- Safe ways and places for women living with violence to talk about what is happening to them.
- Factors influencing women in their decisions to stay or leave an abusive spouse (stigma, financial, fear, extended family, religious beliefs, etc.).
- Supports and interventions (formal and informal) that enabled women to find safety.
- Convenient locations for accessing public information.
- Recommendations to women in similar situations.
Children:
- Effects on children who witness domestic violence.
- Children who are victims of domestic violence.
- Services and supports required for children.
- Supports required for women with children.
Criminal justice system:
- Experience with and confidence in the police.
- Experience with and confidence in the court system.
- Contact with the police and the criminal justice system.
- Access to legal services by victims of domestic violence.
- Access to legal information.
- Adequacy of police responses to domestic violence.
- Ability to serve women of different cultural backgrounds.
- Ability of the criminal justice system to help keep women safe.
Social services:
- Accessibility.
- Confidence in social services.
- Types of services and interventions identified as most helpful.
- Types of services and interventions identified as not helpful.
- Ongoing resources or supports required for women who have left an abusive relationship.
- Ability to serve women of different cultural backgrounds.
- Adequacy of social services responses.
Community responses:
- Reactions of community leaders to subtle or overt disclosure by a woman living with violence.
- Examples of community leadership resulting in action against domestic violence.
- Involving men in anti-violence work.
- Community awareness of domestic violence issues.
- Community recognition that domestic violence occurs in families within that community.
- Communities of minority populations.
Rurality:
- Perceptions of rural/urban differences.
- Rural identity.
- Factors specific to a rural setting that (a) place women living with violence at further risk, and (b) can help women living with violence find safety.
Financial and economic issues:
- Financial factors affecting women’s processes of finding safety.
- Financial factors specifically affecting farm women.
- Need for access to information.
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