A Cooperative Grounded Inquiry with Abused Women and their Teenage Children in Hong Kong: Theory Generation with Users

This research involves formerly abused women and their teenage children equally in post-separation domestic violence service design and delivery with the practitioner-researcher. It examines how does a co-participative... [ view full abstract ]

This research involves formerly abused women and their teenage children equally in post-separation domestic violence service design and delivery with the practitioner-researcher. It examines how does a co-participative relationship among social work practitioner-researcher, women survivors and their teenage sons/daughters form? And how does a co-participative relationship serve post-separation domestic violence service development, delivery and evaluation? Cooperative Grounded Inquiry (CGI) is invented in this research to offer an alternative methodology to Service User and Carer Participation (SUCP), in addition to the current consumerist and emancipatory models. As a result, a theory is generated to explain the formation and displaying of a ‘family-like community of practice’ among inquiry members; meanwhile, the ‘family-like community of practice’ sets the context for the co-construction of local theories and practices that mitigate women and their teenage children’s post-separation problems and enhance their competence in problem solving. This paper meticulously articulates the experiences of co-constructing local knoweldges with formerly abused women and their teenage children, and to contends that practices for facilitating ‘identity (re)construction’ and ‘partnership making’ are of paramount importance in their post-separation lives.

Findings of this research pose challenges on the conventional crisis-oriented domestic violence services and the Cartesian model of self that underlies the mainstream understanding of post-separation needs and services. Drawing on the relational approach and Schatzki’s theorization of social practices, the paper criticizes individualization of domestic violence (as acts performed by individuals) and the corresponding services. At last, building a community of practice is proposed as a possible conciliation between the women-focused domestic violence services and child protection system.