ADDRESSING FAMILY VIOLENCE: ACHIEVING FAMILY HARMONY
AUSTRALIAN INDIAN COMMUNITY
The issue of Family harmony ,therefore Family Violence (FV) in the Indian community is of major significance. The family is the anchor of Indian culture and Indians regard family harmony of utmost importance. A common saying “Home is where the heart is .” An unhappy home is a place where there is Depression, Anxiety, Aggression, Abuse , Unhappy Children - consequences no community wants for its members.
Our concern for the Indian community based in Melbourne is based on a number of factors. Primarily, there appears to be a distinct lack of meaningful engagement with counseling and family violence services by Indian women and men when there is family violence such as emotional abuse, physical, sexual, financial abuse. We are disturbed by the silent suffering of Indian women, some of whom are students with no rights to access current services.
The overall prevalence of family violence or abuse is around 15-30% i.e. one third of all homes in all cultures and countries of the world have domestic violence. It would be naive to assume that the Indian homes do not have violence. Whereas 30%of Australian women use domestic violence services only 5% of Indian women do so. Indian women have the among the highest suicide rates in the world no matter where they live. We have no data for Victoria or Australia.
Issues of concern are where should they go for help and what that help should be, both for women and men. Common issues for men are anger management, sense of loss of control, issues of financial pressures, and demands from a new culture, whereas for women it is lack of power, domination by others, loss of financial power, isolation from family of origin, depression, anxiety, suicidal ideation.
What is the situation for Indian women and families in Victoria or Australia? We have no data to guide our services here. What is clear is that the model for western women and families is not user friendly for Indian women. What the model should be needs to be discovered.
Indian Family
Indians live in an extended family in Australia as in their homeland where violence may be perpetrated not only by husband but also mother in law and /or father in law. Indian culture emphasises family unity as opposed to divorce. Divorce rates in Indian marriages are 2% as compared to 30% for western marriages. That is a positive factor only if there is no family violence and where the woman has a voice that is heard and she is respected as a valuable member of the family. This significant difference of a need to maintain the family unity despite difficulties is what distinguishes Indian family from the mainstream Australian and other migrant families. Generally the services are designed with an emphasis on separation.
This leads to barriers in service utilization for Indian women and families. What the model of service delivery should be needs to be discovered.
When a police member is called out to an Indian family brawl what knowledge should he or she have about the nature of the Indian extended family to enable him to handle the situation? When the case goes to Family law court what knowledge about the Indian culture should the magistrate or the Judge have to make a fair judgment? We aim to answer the above questions by this community based action research project.
AIMS
1) PHASE 1 (1YEAR) Research is needed in Australia to understand culturally determined barriers to acknowledging and culturally determined responses to family violence, we need sound evidence based data to guide current police responses, legal and health services, to raise awareness of issues in the community, in the Indian women on their rights to seek appropriate medical and legal help and advocacy, in the Indian men their right to good mental health and happy home.
2) PHASE 2 ( 1YEAR) To create educational material for the police, lawyers and courts on understanding this complexity and culturally appropriate means of handling the situation. A further aim is to assess culturally determined barriers to accessing Legal services and provide a better understanding of Legal Services to the Indian women and the community generally.
3) PHASE 3 ( 1YEAR). To formulate and test a user friendly model of service delivery for the Indian women, men, families, extended families.
To achieve our goals we have designed an innovative research design combining art in the form of Forum theatre (requiring Indian community participation) with qualitative research. The research consists of recording every conversation, interaction in focus groups and in drama sessions, created, and acted by members of Indian community-men and women. Theater will be directed by an expert Forum Theater Director. All conversations will be transcribed and analysed with a statistical passage called ATLAS ti by an expert researcher from Melbourne University.
PHASE 4 - of the project will occur in India to discover changes in cultural attitudes to the extended family , family dynamics and family violence following migration to Australia ; the main differences in the two legal systems and their usage patterns. .
This project will be conducted by a unique partnership of four bodies(1) the Indian community through Australia India society of Victoria, FIAV, (2)Drummond Street Services, (3)The University of Melbourne’s Centre for International Mental Health and(4) Artistic Director Ms Xris Reardon.
TOTAL COST OF PROJECT= $226,500x 3years funding obtained $110,000
contact - manjulao@unimelb.edu.au
AUSTRALIAN INDIAN COMMUNITY
The issue of Family harmony ,therefore Family Violence (FV) in the Indian community is of major significance. The family is the anchor of Indian culture and Indians regard family harmony of utmost importance. A common saying “Home is where the heart is .” An unhappy home is a place where there is Depression, Anxiety, Aggression, Abuse , Unhappy Children - consequences no community wants for its members.
Our concern for the Indian community based in Melbourne is based on a number of factors. Primarily, there appears to be a distinct lack of meaningful engagement with counseling and family violence services by Indian women and men when there is family violence such as emotional abuse, physical, sexual, financial abuse. We are disturbed by the silent suffering of Indian women, some of whom are students with no rights to access current services.
The overall prevalence of family violence or abuse is around 15-30% i.e. one third of all homes in all cultures and countries of the world have domestic violence. It would be naive to assume that the Indian homes do not have violence. Whereas 30%of Australian women use domestic violence services only 5% of Indian women do so. Indian women have the among the highest suicide rates in the world no matter where they live. We have no data for Victoria or Australia.
Issues of concern are where should they go for help and what that help should be, both for women and men. Common issues for men are anger management, sense of loss of control, issues of financial pressures, and demands from a new culture, whereas for women it is lack of power, domination by others, loss of financial power, isolation from family of origin, depression, anxiety, suicidal ideation.
What is the situation for Indian women and families in Victoria or Australia? We have no data to guide our services here. What is clear is that the model for western women and families is not user friendly for Indian women. What the model should be needs to be discovered.
Indian Family
Indians live in an extended family in Australia as in their homeland where violence may be perpetrated not only by husband but also mother in law and /or father in law. Indian culture emphasises family unity as opposed to divorce. Divorce rates in Indian marriages are 2% as compared to 30% for western marriages. That is a positive factor only if there is no family violence and where the woman has a voice that is heard and she is respected as a valuable member of the family. This significant difference of a need to maintain the family unity despite difficulties is what distinguishes Indian family from the mainstream Australian and other migrant families. Generally the services are designed with an emphasis on separation.
This leads to barriers in service utilization for Indian women and families. What the model of service delivery should be needs to be discovered.
When a police member is called out to an Indian family brawl what knowledge should he or she have about the nature of the Indian extended family to enable him to handle the situation? When the case goes to Family law court what knowledge about the Indian culture should the magistrate or the Judge have to make a fair judgment? We aim to answer the above questions by this community based action research project.
AIMS
1) PHASE 1 (1YEAR) Research is needed in Australia to understand culturally determined barriers to acknowledging and culturally determined responses to family violence, we need sound evidence based data to guide current police responses, legal and health services, to raise awareness of issues in the community, in the Indian women on their rights to seek appropriate medical and legal help and advocacy, in the Indian men their right to good mental health and happy home.
2) PHASE 2 ( 1YEAR) To create educational material for the police, lawyers and courts on understanding this complexity and culturally appropriate means of handling the situation. A further aim is to assess culturally determined barriers to accessing Legal services and provide a better understanding of Legal Services to the Indian women and the community generally.
3) PHASE 3 ( 1YEAR). To formulate and test a user friendly model of service delivery for the Indian women, men, families, extended families.
To achieve our goals we have designed an innovative research design combining art in the form of Forum theatre (requiring Indian community participation) with qualitative research. The research consists of recording every conversation, interaction in focus groups and in drama sessions, created, and acted by members of Indian community-men and women. Theater will be directed by an expert Forum Theater Director. All conversations will be transcribed and analysed with a statistical passage called ATLAS ti by an expert researcher from Melbourne University.
PHASE 4 - of the project will occur in India to discover changes in cultural attitudes to the extended family , family dynamics and family violence following migration to Australia ; the main differences in the two legal systems and their usage patterns. .
This project will be conducted by a unique partnership of four bodies(1) the Indian community through Australia India society of Victoria, FIAV, (2)Drummond Street Services, (3)The University of Melbourne’s Centre for International Mental Health and(4) Artistic Director Ms Xris Reardon.
TOTAL COST OF PROJECT= $226,500x 3years funding obtained $110,000
contact - manjulao@unimelb.edu.au
