Most cases of domestic violence, be it physical or psychological, are due to the perpetrator being confronted with violence since childhood, implicitly learning that violence is the way to deal with conflict. Contextual factors such as anger, stress and excessive alcohol consumption also facilitate violent behavior.
It is important to note that emotional (psychological) abuse is just as harmful as physical abuse. It often goes unnoticed, or in many cases is not treated as seriously as forms of physical or sexual violence, because it doesn’t leave visible signs to the naked eye.
According to an analysis conducted by INSP in 2015, victims of domestic violence are prone to a number of transient or permanent disorders; for example: depression, anxiety, various phobias, panic attacks, post-traumatic stress disorder. If affected people are exposed to long-term abusive and stressful situations, they may be vulnerable to personality disorders. The behaviors and coping mechanisms they resort to, largely due to lack of support, often involve the use of alcohol or other substances.
Therefore, preventing cases of domestic violence and supporting survivors, especially during social isolation, means preventing an increase in associated mental health disorders.
I wondered how an association that works in the social system to protect abused women works. In Brasov, abused mothers or young women from foster care centers who come out of a system that deprived them of the things that most of us take for granted, can receive guidance from an association that works on all levels of development to reintegrate them socio-professionally. I spoke to Mariana Busuioc (head of services at SCUT), who told me how her team deals with these cases.
“Our association has two components: the day care center for adults with chronic mental health problems (they come here for 2-3 hours for socialization, recreation, group therapy) and the youth and vulnerable families component. Young women or men who come out of foster care centers come to us and ask for our support because they don’t have a home, they don’t have a job. We work for 2-3 years with a young person until they manage to stabilize emotionally and integrate socio-professionally. Mothers at social risk are, in fact, young women in placement centres who have become single in the meantime because they have gone through the trauma of abandonment and their partners have either left them or are in prison and found themselves alone with one, two, three or four children. There are a lot of prejudices: ”Why should I help her?”, ”Who made her have so many children?”, ”Why should I help, did I make the child sick?” or other similar lines. Personally, it really affected me. You never know how life is going to hit you, you can have mental or emotional problems, or a disability, or have a sick child… When you have support, you can get through your problems more easily. In the end I think that’s what we’re all about. If you allow yourself, empathy can be learned.
The women we work with have not been prepared for motherhood. They barely know how to take care of themselves in their daily lives, but then take care of two or three children on top. We are trying to support them to resist, to survive, to get out of the crisis situation and move forward.
In general, people who come out of foster care are not to blame for their parents’ abandonment and all kinds of traumas they went through during their childhood and adolescence. They didn’t have parental role models, they didn’t have the affection they needed (at least in the first five years of life when the most important developments are made). And then you can’t say about a young man or a young woman, “he has two hands, two legs, why doesn’t he go to work”. There are many issues that prevent them from doing this. They are moved to 4-5 centers until they leave the system. They have been dealing with instability all their lives and then it’s normal for them to think, “I’m not going to go to a job and stay 2-3 months and then leave”, “I don’t start friendships because they break and it hurts”.
How do these people find you?
“Most of the time they come because someone told them that we provide services, they are brought by another beneficiary or they are sent by the Child Protection Department or the Social Assistance Department. With the latter, mothers cannot receive concrete services for independent living skills or counseling, they can receive either the guaranteed minimum income allowance or the single-parent allowance.”
How does a first case assessment session work?
“The beneficiary comes with her children or alone, and we do an initial assessment to see if she fits into our social programs. If she is not eligible, we redirect her to other services in the community. We offer 1-2 counseling sessions so that they can reach out to other services – such as the Joy of Giving Canteen (for those who have nothing to eat) or the Association “Here for You”. If they fit in our programs, we start a more detailed evaluation: we make a file, social services contract and everything related to the legislative part and quality standards on social services. Then we start to work, set up meetings, and take it step by step.
First of all, we establish a therapeutic relationship of trust with the social worker, so that they can say as much as possible about the needs they have, the problems they face. Then we work on the social side: we mediate with different institutions in order to obtain social rights or access to education. There were mothers, for example, who we helped to access a place in kindergarten or school. It’s very hard, especially if all the time when you go to register your child you are told there are no more places. Then we have to provide everything from basic needs (those necessary for daycare: diapers, wipes, changes, shoes, transportation, food, clothing and sanitary items) to counseling and group therapy, socialization projects, recreation, education.”
What is the final goal after these three years of work?
“The aim is that the beneficiaries no longer depend on us or other social services. For the most part, we are succeeding in this timeframe (although there are people who, no matter how hard we work with them, don’t want to change the situation they are in)”.
In their vision, the aim is to avoid repeating their own life story for their children – to be abandoned and go through what they went through. And then, they pull with their teeth to continue in the initial situation, which often doesn’t work out for them, because they can’t cope, for lack of skills and resources. Then they say to themselves, “Rather than having the child struggle with me, I’d rather put him in foster care because there he has a home, a meal, everything he needs… At least until I get back on my feet”. But this “getting back on your feet” takes longer than expected, or never materializes, and the child remains in state care. What we’re trying to do with these programs is to prevent abandonment.”
How do you empower a young girl who comes out of a system where she doesn’t learn some basic life skills and how does she become an autonomous adult?
“Through a rather complex program, in my opinion, because we work on all levels: emotional, psychological, abandonment trauma, social, professional, educational, independent living skills. There are projects to strengthen our relationship with them because they become more trusting in us social workers and this accelerates positive outcomes. In this way, they realize that life can be beautiful and normal, and they gain confidence that it can be done.
Specifically, we offer group and individual counseling and social work counseling. This year we have a project written especially for mothers, which provides access to education (mothers will attend training and parenting courses), we pay for the children’s kindergarten and daycare, we provide medical services (gynecology, dentistry), we have a personal development group, socialization and recreation group for the beneficiaries (we take the children to a playground and we go out for tea with the mothers). In this way, a bond is created between the social worker and the beneficiary, and they learn in a different (more relaxed and unforced) context.
We also work on pregnancy prevention with young women from foster care centers – we collaborate with the Agapedia Association, which has a family planning center and provides counseling and gynecological consultations. Communication between institutions is very important, because this is the best use of resources.
Last year we organized a trip to Moeciu de Sus where the mothers went to Bran Castle (while the volunteers took care of the children), took them to manicure, hairdresser and massage. We did things for them to make them feel complete because they’re not just mothers, they’re also women. They tend to neglect themselves, so it’s important to teach them self-respect and build up their self-esteem – in order to care for their children, they need to look after themselves first.”
Can you give me an example of a case close to your heart in which the beneficiary has been completely reintegrated into society and work?
“A case very dear to my heart is that of a young woman who came to us very shy, when her baby was a month old. She had left the protection system when she was eighteen, had a relationship, got pregnant, and they lived with her partner’s mother in a small room. There was always fighting and she left him. We worked on the relationship side because she was going to work, he wasn’t, we even had to call the police at one point because he was waiting for her at the gate… I worked with her for about three years and now she is at home, she is employed, she has a stable partner she wants to marry this year, the child is in kindergarten, she is pregnant again, but this time she is in a stable, supportive, non-violent relationship.”
As a social worker, what is it like to work with such an emotional workload every day?
“Not only as a social worker, but also as a psychologist, it’s quite overwhelming, because it’s not just one or two cases, it’s many, with a lot of needs and a lot of traumas and problems. We have interventions between us, nurses and social workers, we find solutions together and we “ventilate” what is going on. It is also noticeable that there are not very many people in the system (there is even a crisis on the labor market from this point of view).”.
In relation to the way of working in social work, what is the ratio between working on the bureaucratic side and working in the field?
“Before the legislation changed, it was ok. The documentation were as much as it needed to be – in the sense that you made a social inquiry, you made an assessment, a profile of the beneficiary, an intervention plan was made and a monitoring was done. But now it’s becoming more and more demanding to do the paperwork (and keep it up to date), rather than working with the beneficiary. And somehow the work becomes more frustrating from this point of view because you are effectively being taken away from working directly with the person. The working hours are the same, it’s just that now you have to spend more time on the files.
And it’s not just about social assistance procedures, for example the amount of the allowance or the criteria for accessing a social right can be changed. We need to know all these things because we need to guide the beneficiaries on how to get certain documents, where to submit them, what is needed for the file, and you need to be aware of all the changes. The good thing is that now we have the internet and we can access information anytime, plus there is effective inter-institutional collaboration and that helps a lot.”
The community is all of us.
Mariana told me that “lately I have seen that things have been slowly getting better. I have noticed that in Brasov the volunteering and support component is starting to be seen differently”. Thanks to the extraordinary mobilization of dedicated people and gradual changes in the general mindset, a difficult socio-economic and personal context is no longer necessarily an insurmountable obstacle – with the right help and sufficient motivation to get out of a bad situation, there is a chance to reintegrate and regain independence.
If you are experiencing domestic violence or have difficulties in communicating with family members during this difficult time (or in general), seeing a psychologist can help to resolve and prevent critical situations. There’s never any shame in admitting to behavioral problems (your own or those of people close to you) and seeking professional help!
Useful phone numbers and information campaigns to combat domestic violence during isolation:
0800 550 333 HELPLINE, the single national freephone number for victims of domestic violence, set up by the National Agency for Equal Opportunities for Women and Men (ANES)
ANAIS Association: 0736 380 879, https://www.izoleazaviolenta.ro/
Solwodi Association: 0756 514 940, http://solwodi.ro
Association Necuvinte: 021 243 33 33 33, http://www.necuvinte.ro
Association Casa Ioana: 021 332 63 90, https://casaioana.org
Casa Blu Advice Center: 021 311 46 36, http://www.fundatiasensiblu.ro/programe/program-casa-blu/programul-casa-blu/
The websites of the General Directorates of Social Assistance and Child Protection(DGASPC) for information on the existence of emergency accommodation centers or temporary social housing for victims of domestic violence at county level: http://anpd.gov.ro/…/directiile-generale-de-asistenta-soci…/
112 SINGLE EMERGENCY NUMBER available free of charge nationwide
Sources:
APFR – Causes of domestic violence
Romanian Police – Causes of domestic violence
National Center for Health Assessment and Promotion – Causes of domestic violence
World Health Organization – Intimate partner violence and alcohol
