Loading ...To support the work of its staff and volunteers, and professionals from other agencies, BSWA needs to keep up-to-date with the latest news, research and legislation around domestic violence, and violence against women in general.
To do this, BSWA has a dedicated Information Worker to:
- Keep and add to information on news, research, legislation and any other information resources
- Keep and add to information on other agencies and the services they provide
- Inform other agencies about our services, events, training and other initiatives
- Assist other professionals and students to identify information sources
- Develop websites, leaflets, newsletters and other publications
- Liaise with the media regarding interviews, quotes and articles
If you have an information enquiry please see the Contact Us page.
If you are a woman, child or young person seeking support for yourself, or you are a professional seeking support for your service user, please contact our Helpline on 0800 0732 606 (minicom 0121 685 8519).
Student Support and Research
We often get requests from students who want to find out more about what we do, to get information on others’ research or to ask our workers or service users to help with their research:
Information
If you want to find out about BSWA, or information on domestic violence or other types of violence against women, you should find all you need on this website. If not, please contact the Information Worker. You may also find the national Women’s Aid site useful; they have lots of information and statistics in the section ‘Domestic Violence A-Z’ – www.womensaid.org.uk
Research with our workers or service users
Sometimes we’re asked if we’re willing to complete questionnaires or undergo interviews for students’ research. We can’t always oblige, for the following reasons:
- If the research questions show a lack of understanding of the basic issues, e.g. they show the student has ‘bought in’ to various myths or stereotypes about domestic violence.
- If the research calls for interviews or questionnaire completion by our service users and the subject of the research has already been sufficiently research (i.e. it is felt that nothing ‘new’ can be learned by taking part).
- If the research would take up a good deal of time for our workers.
Although we wish to support students’ learning, especially with this subject, our first commitment is to our service users: answering other people’s questions can be upsetting or it can feel like an obligation, and our service users should not be expected to put the needs of researchers ahead of their own. Even if they are willing, we need to make sure that we can provide additional support for any service user who is asked to undertake an interview or fill in a questionnaire.
We ask all students – and experienced researcher – to complete our Research form before we can consider their request, which can be downloaded here.