This presentation critiques current trauma-informed practice in the D & FV field, arguing that without a critical intersectional feminist lens to practice, it remains positioned within a medical model framework. This framework is gendered and works to label women’s emotional distress related to D & FV, as a mental illness which has devastating consequences for women victim/survivors.

Key Learnings:

1. What contributes to gender-blind trauma-informed practice: The presentation will take participants through a brief exploration of the origins of trauma informed practice and how this sits within a medical model. The presentation will then examine how this continues to facilitate the agenda of patriarchy, before inviting participants to understand the importance of working through a lens of intersectional feminist theory in their trauma-informed practice with victim/survivors of D & FV practice. Participants will understand that without this lens, their practice will remain gender-blind and become pathologizing and labelling, reduced to treating the symptoms of trauma bereft of critical analysis as to the consequences.

2. The consequences of this for workers and victim/survivors: The presentation will explore with participants what happens for victim//survivors when patriarchal narratives around mental illness and associated understandings of gendered abuse are adopted without challenge. These consequences are derived from research with women victim/survivors of D & FV and demonstrate how this lack of understanding can lead to a negative social response, a strengthening of the perpetrators narrative and an increase in risk for women and their children.

3. The way: This presentation will explore the way forward for practitioners, including: a clear understanding of the many presentations of gender-based trauma; recognising perpetrator tactics that rely on medical model understandings of women’s emotional distress; centralising the experiences of gendered oppression and inequality and highlighting gender as a pivotal concept in trauma informed work.

This presentation critiques current trauma-informed practice in the D & FV field, arguing that without a critical intersectional feminist lens to practice, it remains positioned within a medical model framework. This framework is gendered and works to label women’s emotional distress related to D & FV, as a mental illness which has devastating consequences for women victim/survivors.

Key Learnings:

1. What contributes to gender-blind trauma-informed practice: The presentation will take participants through a brief exploration of the origins of trauma informed practice and how this sits within a medical model. The presentation will then examine how this continues to facilitate the agenda of patriarchy, before inviting participants to understand the importance of working through a lens of intersectional feminist theory in their trauma-informed practice with victim/survivors of D & FV practice. Participants will understand that without this lens, their practice will remain gender-blind and become pathologizing and labelling, reduced to treating the symptoms of trauma bereft of critical analysis as to the consequences.

2. The consequences of this for workers and victim/survivors: The presentation will explore with participants what happens for victim//survivors when patriarchal narratives around mental illness and associated understandings of gendered abuse are adopted without challenge. These consequences are derived from research with women victim/survivors of D & FV and demonstrate how this lack of understanding can lead to a negative social response, a strengthening of the perpetrators narrative and an increase in risk for women and their children.

3. The way: This presentation will explore the way forward for practitioners, including: a clear understanding of the many presentations of gender-based trauma; recognising perpetrator tactics that rely on medical model understandings of women’s emotional distress; centralising the experiences of gendered oppression and inequality and highlighting gender as a pivotal concept in trauma informed work.