A limited qualitative literature explores children's lived experiences of violence; boys’ relationships with perpetrator fathers remain largely unexplored. Drawing on interviews with 31 boys, this paper explores the accounts of their relationships with their perpetrator fathers, focusing particularly on the implications of boys’ understanding of these relationships for their sense of burgeoning masculinity. Three themes are considered: in (a) relational ambiguity; (b) performing masculinities, managing violence; and (c) envisioning alternative futures and re-visioning the past. Our findings highlight the importance of interventions for boys that facilitate the expression of their often complex and ambivalent feelings and fears about their father's violence, and what it means for them and their future.

Although peer review is one of the central pillars of academic publishing, qualitative researchers' experiences of this process have been largely overlooked. Existing research and commentary have focused on peer reviewers' comments on qualitative articles, which are often described as indicative of a quantitative mindset or hostility to nonpositivist qualitative research. We extend this literature by focusing on qualitative researchers' experiences of methodologically incongruent reviewer and editor comments-comments that are incommensurate with the conceptual foundations of the reviewed research. Qualitative researchers (N = 163) from a range of health and social science disciplines, including psychology, responded to a brief qualitative survey. Most contributors reported that peer reviewers and editors universalized the assumptions and expectations of postpositivist research and reporting. Some also reported that peer reviewers and editors universalized the norms and values particular to specific qualitative approaches. Contributors were concerned that peer reviewers often accept review invitations when they lack relevant methodological expertise and editors often select peer reviewers without such expertise. In response to methodologically incongruent comments, many contributors described a process of initially "pushing back" and explaining why these comments were incongruent with their research. When this educative approach was unsuccessful, some knowingly compromised the methodological integrity of their research and acquiesced to reviewer and editor requests. Earlier career researchers especially highlighted the powerlessness they felt in the peer review process in the context of a "publish or perish" academic climate. We end by outlining contributors' recommendations for improving the methodological integrity of the peer review of qualitative research.

Purpose There is a growing acknowledgement that children are direct victims of domestic violence and abuse, and require support and protection in their own right. However, professional interventions designed to protect children may unintentionally further victimise parents, most often mothers. In response, a number of new interagency approaches have been developed. Method Updating a previous review by Macvean et al. ( Australian Social Work, 71 (2), 148–161, 2018), we report the findings of a scoping review of models of interagency working between child protection and either domestic abuse services or family law services, or all three services, to improve understanding of practices that may facilitate collaboration between child protection and other agencies in the context of domestic violence and abuse. We also consider the effectiveness of such approaches in improving the safety of child and adult victims. Results A systematic search of all sources identified 4103 documents that were screened for inclusion. The outcome of this screening was the identification of thirteen papers or reports dated between 2018 and 2022 that comprised an evaluation of six models of interagency interventions. Nine publications originated in Australia, three in the UK and one in the USA. The most referenced model was Safe & Together, primarily due to the number of publications from the same research team in Australia. None of the included studies reported the outcomes or impact for children and families. Conclusions While there are a growing number of promising approaches identified, there is little evidence of effectiveness, or the views of child and adult family members about the acceptability and utility of such approaches.

Purpose Children who experience Domestic Violence and Abuse (DVA) draw on a range of strategies to manage the complex dynamics of family life. This article explored children’s experiences of their relationships with pets and other animals, considering how children understood these relationships. Methods This qualitative study is based on semi-structured interviews and visual methods-based research with 22 children (aged 9–17), drawn from a larger study on how children cope with DVA. The data were analysed using reflexive thematic analysis. Findings Five themes are discussed: Part of the family explores how children positioned animals as relational beings who occupied an important place in their lives; caring for animals considers the reciprocal caring relationship children described; l istening and support details how children interacted with animals to allow themselves to feel more heard and supported; in the theme control and abuse , we consider children’s experiences of perpetrators’ use of companion animals as part of a pattern of abuse and control; and in disruption, uncertainty and loss , we discuss how children feel and relate to their animals when leaving situations of domestic abuse. Conclusions The implications of our analysis are considered in relation to providing support for children impacted by domestic abuse, and the importance of ensuring companion animals are provided for in housing policy and planning for domestic abuse survivors.

The United Nations Convention on the Rights of the Child has catalysed numerous jurisdictions to introduce new legal provisions to support children's participation rights when child contact is contested. Despite this, children's participation is frequently limited in practice, especially in contexts where children are perceived as vulnerable to a parent's manipulation, even if there are allegations of domestic abuse. While "resist and refusal dynamics" have yet to become mainstream terms in Scottish family law, "manipulation" has become a common concern in cases of contested contact. Drawing on a Scottish empirical study on contested child contact in circumstances of domestic abuse, we interrogate the implications that the concept of manipulation has for children's participation rights. The study involved separate in-depth interviews with 18 children and their 16 mothers. Findings point to concerns about upholding children's participation rights, particularly in cases where children were depicted as "influenced" or "manipulated." Through our analysis, we disentangle the problems professionals have when concerns about child manipulation and domestic abuse intersect. We argue that, when combined, allegations of manipulation and domestic abuse present a significant and serious risk to children's participation rights. We find the legal construction of the child's views as separate from the parental dispute to have unintended and serious consequences for children's participation rights. We offer ways in which law and practice may evolve to ensure children's participation rights in these contexts are both implemented and upheld.

Telephone helplines offer a valued service for those in distress. However, little research has explored the experience of helpline volunteers. Through semi-structured interviews, we explore the volunteering experiences of nine long-term UK Samaritan volunteers. Interviews were analysed using Interpretive Interactionism. The analysis highlighted that volunteering impacted participants' experience of their sense of self. The decision to volunteer was framed as part of a search for personal meaning, tied to experiences of loss and reparation. Participants reflected positively on their volunteer identity, but highlighted tensions between a sense of vocation and the experience of care burden. The Samaritan Community also offered a sense of belonging and social support. They experienced involvement as personally meaningful, enabling the construction of a positive self-identity.

Tattooed women's practices of resistance and conformity are constituted within social, cultural, and historical contexts that produce normative values around "good" and "bad" tattoos. Tattoos enable the performance of multiple femininities, constructing the female body in a way that is personal and meaningful to that individual and opening an agentic space in which they can do so. The vast majority of research that is available on tattoos concerns mostly men or, at least, does not fully understand the implications of specific gendered discourses that regulate the (feminine) body. In this paper, we argue that meaning-making for women's tattoos serves to function as legitimating, producing tattooed feminine bodies as more acceptable. We argue for a closer examination of the regulatory discourses that feed into the choices that women make in relation to their tattooed bodies.

Children and young people's ( CYP ) space to play can be constrained in families affected by domestic violence and abuse ( DVA ), potentially impacting their development. Play also has the potential to strengthen CYP 's capacity to resist controlling and abusive dynamics in the family. Interviews were conducted with 107 CYP aged 8–18, and were analysed using interpretive interactionism. Three themes relevant to children's experiences of play were identified: Play and Coercive Control; Play Re‐makes the World and Play and Relationality . This article highlights the potential for play to enable children to retain a sense of relational connectedness and agency, despite violence and control; we argue for more opportunities for children to play away from the gaze of adults and advocate for more dedicated services for families who experience DVA .

The genogram is a visual, symbolic representation of multiple generations of a family, structured in much the same way as a family tree. Genograms emerged within systemic family therapy as an assessment and intervention tool, but in their ability to generate rich data, they are gaining traction as a research method. While the benefits of genograms in therapeutic practice have been well documented, the literature exploring their use in research is limited. This article aims to contribute to this knowledge by considering participants' experiential reflections of constructing their genograms, a process they engaged in as part of a broader study that explored the intergenerational transmission of family violence. We illustrate that while genograms generated powerful qualitative data, they also had unintended therapeutic and transformative effects on participants which transcended the interview room. We consider the ethical complexities of using genograms as a qualitative method and make recommendations for future research.

Dominant discourses of military servicemen position them as more prone to psychological damage than the general population, but as reluctant to seek psychological assistance, because of the military culture of ‘toughness’, a military masculinity, that values stoicism, emotional control and invulnerability and implicitly excludes ‘feminine’ characteristics like emotionality. This is seen as a barrier to military personnel seeking help, by implicitly discouraging emotional disclosure and expression. This article presents an analysis of semi-structured interviews with six male military and ex-military personnel, focused on their experience and understandings of emotion, emotional expression and ‘mental health’ in the military. The dominant construction of military masculinity certainly renders some forms of emotion inexpressible within certain contexts. However, we argue that the construct is more complex than a simple exclusion of the ‘feminine’ and the ‘emotional’. We explore how the highly masculine notions of military solidarity and ‘brotherhood’ create a ‘safe’ masculine space within which men could share their emotional experiences, but also highlight how this space for emotional expression is relatively constrained. We argue that these notions of solidarity and brotherhood open a space for emotional connection and expression that must be respected and worked with creatively, in therapeutic and other interventions.

The MPOWER programme is a resource oriented intervention to support children and young people (CYP) affected by domestic violence and abuse. It draws on principles from feminist informed systemic family practice and creative therapies. The intervention was delivered in 4 European countries (Greece, Italy, Spain and England), reaching 58 CYP. This paper reports on young participants’ wellbeing outcomes and perceptions of the intervention. Participants completed the Children’s Outcome Rating Scale, and the Children’s Group Session Rating Scale (Duncan et al. Journal of Brief Therapy, 3, 3–12, 2003). A descriptive analysis of this data suggests improvement in subjective wellbeing as CYP moved through this programme. Qualitative interviews were also conducted with 21 CYP, exploring their experience of the group intervention and of its impact. These interviews were analysed thematically (Braun and Clark Qualitative Research in Psychology, 3(2), 77–101, 2006). Three themes are discussed: These were “Working Together: Building Trust and Sharing Common Experiences”; “Disclosures, creativity and working with emotions”; and “Roots and Branches: Working with relationships”.

This article describes the development of a group-based therapeutic intervention for young people (YP) who have lived with domestic violence and abuse. The intervention was informed by interviews with 107 YP, focused on their experiences of coping, resilience and agency. The intervention draws on resources from systemic, creative and narrative approaches to group work, and aims to facilitate YP's expression of distress in a way that recognizes that it is embodied, contextual and relational. The intervention also explores YP's existing strategies for coping and maintaining a sense of agency, and works to harness, enhance and further develop those skills. We report on the pilot of this intervention, and its development and application across four European countries (the United Kingdom, Greece, Italy and Spain). We outline the goals, strengths and limitations of this group intervention, as well as the main challenges, hindrances and ethical dilemmas experienced by the research and intervention team. Implications for therapeutic practice and training are addressed.

Children and young people who experience domestic violence are often represented as passive witnesses, too vulnerable to tell the stories of their own lives. This article reports on findings from a 2 year European research project (Understanding Agency and Resistance Strategies, UNARS) with children and young people in Greece, Italy, Spain and the UK, who had experienced domestic violence. It explores children and young people’s understandings of their own capacity to reflect on and disclose their experiences Extracts from individual interviews with 107 children and young people (age 8–18) were analysed. Three themes are presented, that illustrate children and young people’s strategies for managing disclosure: (1) “Being silenced or choosing silence?”, explores children and young people’s practices of self-silencing; (2) “Managing disclosures: Finding ways to tell” outlines how children and young people value self-expression, and the strategies they use to disclose safely; and in (3) “Speaking with many voices” considers how children and young people’s accounts of their experiences are constituted relationally, and are often polyvocal. The article concludes that children and young people can be articulate, strategic and reflexive communicators, and that good support for families struggling with domestic violence must enable space for children and young people’s voice to be heard. This is possible only in an integrated framework able to encompass multiple layers and perspectives, rather than privileging the adult point of view. Practitioners who work with families affected by domestic violence need to recognize that children and young people are able to reflect on and speak about their experiences. This requires that attention is paid to the complexity of children and young people’s communication practices, and the relational context of those communications.

Objective: This article engages critically with the claim, present in most psychological literature, that children who live with domestic violence are likely to be emotionally incompetent and dysregulated. We explore how children who experience domestic violence make sense of and experience their emotions. Method: There were 107 young people aged 8-18 (44 boys, 63 girls) from Greece, Italy, Spain, and the United Kingdom who participated in semistructured and photo elicitation based interviews. These interviews were analyzed using Interpretive Interactionism. Results: We identified 3 common themes relevant to children's experience of emotions. In the theme Constrained Articulation-Expressing Emotions we explore how children use complex and contextually specific verbal and nonverbal ways to express embodied emotionality. The theme Emotion, Embodiment and Relationality considers how children's emotionality is not experienced in social isolation, but in relationship with others. The third theme Catharsis, Comfort and Self-Soothing explores children's strategies for coping with difficult emotions. Conclusions: As reflexive and agentic beings, children experience, manage, and express their emotional lives as relational and contextually located. We challenge dominant explanatory models that conceptualize children who live with domestic violence as emotionally incompetent and dysregulated. We argue that these models underestimate the complexity of children's emotional responses by decon-textualizing and individualizing them as a set of abstract social skills.

In this chapter we explore the complexities of training and teaching students and practitioners about children’s experiences of domestic violence. The research conducted on children’s experiences has tended to focus on negative outcomes, representing these children as damaged and vulnerable (Callaghan and Alexander, 2015; Overlien, 2013). Such research outlines that children have elevated lifelong risk of mental health difficulties (Bogat et al., 2006; Lamers-Winkelman et al., 2012; Stover, 2005); interpersonal difficulties (Baldry, 2003; Holmes, 2013; Renner and Slack, 2006); educational difficulties and educational drop out (Byrne and Taylor, 2007), and physical health problems (Bair-Merritt et al., 2006). Despite this research representation of children as vulnerable and damaged, services for children who experience domestic violence are often underdeveloped and underfunded (Statham, 2004; Willis et al., 2010), typically additional to adult domestic abuse services, for instance as part of the services offered in family shelters. In contrast to the established narrative, which positions children as passive witnesses to domestic violence, and as inevitably pathologised, our research on domestic violence (in common with the work of Katz, 2015; Overlien, 2014; Overlien and Hyden, 2009) has focused on children as agents who experience domestic violence (Callaghan and Alexander, 2015). The “Understanding Agency and Resistance Strategies” project (UNARS) was a two phase research project, funded by the European Commission and developed in four European countries (Italy, Greece, the UK and Spain). The first phase of the project had two aims: to build an understanding of children’s experiences of domestic violence, with a particular focus on exploring their capacity for agency and resistance; and to develop an understanding of the service and policy landscape that provided a social context for young people’s experiences. In this phase, researchers spent time embedded in domestic violence services and related contexts, and conducted interviews with 107 children and young people, focus groups with adult carers and with professionals who worked with children and young people, and a policy analysis, focused at the regional, national, and European level. Based on the material generated in this phase, in the second phase we developed and evaluated two interventions: one to provide a therapeutic programme, rooted in young people’s experiences, focused on building their existing strengths and supporting their understanding of themselves as agentic, meaning making and creative; the second to provide a training intervention for practitioners who worked with families who had experienced domestic violence and abuse. This research explored children’s capacity for agency and their ability to resist the controlling and coercive practices inherent in family life when domestic abuse occurs (Callaghan et al., 2016e). In addition we explored how children who experience domestic violence challenge the normative presumptions of developmental psychology and its applications to practice (Callaghan et al., 2016g). Their capacity to care-take for others (Callaghan et al., 2016f), their ability to manage physical and emotional pain (Callaghan et al., 2016b), their monitoring and management of abusive familial dynamics (Callaghan et al., 2016e), and their complex emotional responses (Callaghan et al., 2016a) exceed our assumptions about ‘normal’ childhood (Burman, 2016) In a two year project, we interviewed 107 children and young people who had experienced domestic abuse, conducted focus group interviews with professionals and carers, and this material formed the basis for the therapeutic and training interventions.

Influenced by Fanon’s idea that the slave needs the master as much as the master needs the slave, this article uses sand play work to explore the unconscious draw for the other in relation to the majority. Offering an important insight into this difficult and contradictory relationship, this research argues that for difference to be fully understood we must make conscious and recognise this relationship for the other in order to free the other from their fear of their potential.

In this chapter we explore the complexities of training and teaching students and practitioners about children’s experiences of domestic violence. The research conducted on children’s experiences has tended to focus on negative outcomes, representing these children as damaged and vulnerable (Callaghan and Alexander, 2015; Overlien, 2013). Such research outlines that children have elevated lifelong risk of mental health difficulties (Bogat et al., 2006; Lamers-Winkelman et al., 2012; Stover, 2005); interpersonal difficulties (Baldry, 2003; Holmes, 2013; Renner and Slack, 2006); educational difficulties and educational drop out (Byrne and Taylor, 2007), and physical health problems (Bair-Merritt et al., 2006). Despite this research representation of children as vulnerable and damaged, services for children who experience domestic violence are often underdeveloped and underfunded (Statham, 2004; Willis et al., 2010), typically additional to adult domestic abuse services, for instance as part of the services offered in family shelters. In contrast to the established narrative, which positions children as passive witnesses to domestic violence, and as inevitably pathologised, our research on domestic violence (in common with the work of Katz, 2015; Overlien, 2014; Overlien and Hyden, 2009) has focused on children as agents who experience domestic violence (Callaghan and Alexander, 2015). The “Understanding Agency and Resistance Strategies” project (UNARS) was a two phase research project, funded by the European Commission and developed in four European countries (Italy, Greece, the UK and Spain). The first phase of the project had two aims: to build an understanding of children’s experiences of domestic violence, with a particular focus on exploring their capacity for agency and resistance; and to develop an understanding of the service and policy landscape that provided a social context for young people’s experiences. In this phase, researchers spent time embedded in domestic violence services and related contexts, and conducted interviews with 107 children and young people, focus groups with adult carers and with professionals who worked with children and young people, and a policy analysis, focused at the regional, national, and European level. Based on the material generated in this phase, in the second phase we developed and evaluated two interventions: one to provide a therapeutic programme, rooted in young people’s experiences, focused on building their existing strengths and supporting their understanding of themselves as agentic, meaning making and creative; the second to provide a training intervention for practitioners who worked with families who had experienced domestic violence and abuse. This research explored children’s capacity for agency and their ability to resist the controlling and coercive practices inherent in family life when domestic abuse occurs (Callaghan et al., 2016e). In addition we explored how children who experience domestic violence challenge the normative presumptions of developmental psychology and its applications to practice (Callaghan et al., 2016g). Their capacity to care-take for others (Callaghan et al., 2016f), their ability to manage physical and emotional pain (Callaghan et al., 2016b), their monitoring and management of abusive familial dynamics (Callaghan et al., 2016e), and their complex emotional responses (Callaghan et al., 2016a) exceed our assumptions about ‘normal’ childhood (Burman, 2016) In a two year project, we interviewed 107 children and young people who had experienced domestic abuse, conducted focus group interviews with professionals and carers, and this material formed the basis for the therapeutic and training interventions.