Supporting Family Safety in Minority Collectivist Communities in … 4... · 2019-12-21 · collectivist orientation for goodness-of-fit between available services and unique family

Running head: Family Safety in Minority Collectivist Communities 1

Supporting Family Safety in Minority Collectivist Communities in North America

Lynda M. Ashbourne

University of Guelph

Mohammed Baobaid

Muslim Resource Centre for Social Support & Integration

Author Note:

Lynda M. Ashbourne, Department of Family Relations & Applied Nutrition, University of

Guelph, Guelph, Ontario, Canada

Mohammed Baobaid, Muslim Resource Centre for Social Support and Integration, London,

Ontario, Canada

Correspondence should be directed to Lynda M. Ashbourne, Department of Family Relations &

Applied Nutrition, University of Guelph, Guelph, Ontario, Canada email: [email protected]

mailto:[email protected]


Abstract

This working paper presents a review and critique of current family violence services in a North

American context with a view to understanding how these are influenced by individualist

assumptions linked to dominant social norms. Many minority-status ethno-cultural communities

in North America share more collectivist traditions. We explore the implications of this

collectivist orientation for goodness-of-fit between available services and unique family

experiences and needs related to family violence. The paper extends current family theory in the

area of family violence and collectivist families, and proposes revisions to current practices in

order to integrate a cultural understanding more directly.


Introduction

The World Health Organization (WHO) (Krug, Dahlberg, Mercy, Zwi, & Lozano, 2002)

has identified violence (self-inflicted, interpersonal, and collective) as an important global public

health problem. They define violence as “the intentional use of physical force or power,

threatened or actual, against oneself, another person, or against a group or community, that either

results in or has a high likelihood of resulting in injury, death, psychological harm,

maldevelopment or deprivation.” (Krug et al., 2002, p. 5) One of the two categories of

interpersonal violence in the WHO typology is family and intimate partner violence. This

violence, taking place in private homes and as part of everyday life in some families, is

frequently invisible to others outside of the family and disproportionately victimizes women and

children (Krug et al., 2002; WHO, 2010). The WHO (2010), in considering how to address

intimate partner violence and sexual violence against women at the level of population health,

points to the complex nature of underlying causes and contributing factors, and the value of a

multi-sectoral preventative response.

Family violence is not only a health concern, it can also be considered as interfering with

human rights and as a criminal justice or law enforcement concern. Grounded as it is in personal,

interpersonal, community, and societal influences, various cultural factors are reflected in how

violence in families is experienced and addressed in various communities across the globe. In

some parts of the world (e.g., North America) there is a decades-long history of developing and

implementing strategies for addressing family violence – in others, this is a relatively new

concern. As a result, many of the more established practices and policies for addressing and

intervening with domestic violence reflect the social, political, and cultural context and values of


more individualistic Western societies. Strategies for addressing violence in other contexts,

reflecting more diverse cultures or locations, are limited.

In this working paper we first review current practices in a North American context where

family violence1 – also termed domestic violence (DV) or intimate partner violence (IPV) - and

child abuse in families are addressed through government-funded and mandated services. Using

a critical perspective, we will consider the ways in which these practices are influenced by their

initiation in the latter part of the 20th century and development over time in the predominately

individualist context of North American society. Secondly, we will review what is known and

understood about collectivist cultures and how this primary orientation to the well-being of the

group rather than its individual members may be reflected in notions about family violence and

safety, as well as help-seeking in these communities. Thirdly, we will consider the unique

aspects of those minority-status communities in the primarily individualist North American

context that share collectivist traditions by virtue of their ethno-cultural roots. These groups

include well-established communities originating from various parts of the globe and, more

recently, newcomer communities often comprised of refugees displaced by war and political

conflict. We will present some of the challenges in these communities with regard to their

understanding and experience of family safety and risks associated with violence, the potential

intersection of trauma and violence experienced by family members as part of their pre-

migration and migration experiences, and the impact of structural violence and racism/sexism

aspects of their post-migration settlement. While we describe these distinctions, we note also that

1 While there are distinctions between the definitions and use of these terms, for the purposes of this paper we will

use them interchangeably for the most part. Our preferred term, family violence, most likely captures a more

comprehensive and collectivist perspective on violence that occurs between family members. Intimate partner

violence (IPV) is the term most frequently used in current research and reviews of interventions directed at persons

who perpetrate violence and those who are victims of violence in families. Domestic violence reflects a criminal

justice distinction regarding the context of violence happening in the domestic or family sphere.


most people and communities exist somewhere along a continuum of collectivism and

individualism.

Finally, we will demonstrate key elements of the practice model Culturally Integrative

Family Safety Response (CIFSR) (Baobaid & Ashbourne, 2016), developed and currently being

used in London, Ontario, Canada. We will describe how this practice model addresses the

critique of current mainstream anti-violence service delivery and systems, and how it extends

these practices through attending explicitly to unique aspects of family life in minority-status

collectivist communities.

We attempt to pay close attention throughout to cultural understanding with regard to

service providers’ perspectives on family relationships, safety and risk of violence, as well as in

relation to re-visioning practices to be more in line with collectivism. There has been a great deal

written about the “cultural competence” of helping professionals, and the “cultural sensitivity”

and “appropriateness” of organizational practices of service providers in relation to minority-

status groups. We intend to demonstrate how culture can be integrated more directly into

practices at the level of practitioner and family, across service-providing systems, between

mainstream services and informal supports in the local ethno-cultural community. We will draw

on more recent research we have completed with Arab families who have been displaced by war

and political conflict, as well as our ongoing experience in implementing the CIFSR model of

practice with various ethno-cultural groups of immigrant and refugee families. These research

and evaluation findings highlight some of the key differences in the service needs of these

families in comparison with majority-status families who also struggle with threats to family

safety.


The current global context is one of increasingly multicultural populations in many places,

rapid social change, migration and forced displacement of families. In this paper we will extend

family theory to incorporate more awareness of the unique aspects of families from collectivist

cultures who are living in a dominant society that may be more strongly oriented to

individualism. We intend to provide some perspective on how this exploration of theory directs

extensions and improvements to mainstream community services (including government-funded

and mandated services) and ways of enhancing safe and effective informal local supports for

addressing family violence.

Current Practices in North America for Addressing Violence

Over the course of the past 35-plus years, North American government mandates and

community services have oriented to family violence within a pro-feminist perspective. Efforts

have been directed at criminalizing IPV, mandating psychosocial interventions for perpetrators,

and providing safety-planning and supportive counselling for victim-survivors (Eckhardt,

Murphy, Whitaker, Sprunger, Dykstra, & Woodard, 2013). This perspective advocates for

including the voices of primarily female victim-survivors of male perpetrated violence in

program design and delivery (Gondolf, 2007; Paymar & Barnes, 2008). The system of

interventions has, in the main, looked fairly similar for many years. It includes group treatment

of “batterers” or “perpetrators” consistent with Duluth model (Paymar & Barnes, 2008), a

feminist psychoeducational approach, with cognitive-behavioral treatment frequently integrated

into the treatment format (Eckhardt et al., 2013). The Duluth model is based on a coordinated

community response between the courts, police, and human service providers; a focus on

establishing and maintaining safety for victims; and a psycho-educational program for men who

batter that is based on the premise that they use abusive tactics (power and control) to control


their partners (Paymar & Barnes, 2008). Not all batterer programs are based on the Duluth model

and some are less connected to a coordinated community response. In some cases, there may be a

mix of voluntary and court-mandated participants in these group programs. Services for women

victim-survivors of family violence are often accessed through health-care services and are

offered within the context of women’s shelters offering counselling support related to the impact

of trauma/abuse, safety planning and advocacy services, as well as in community or medical

counselling services (Eckhardt et al., 2013). Women are often counselled to leave abusive

partners as part of these services (Yoshioka & Choi, 2005). Interventions for children who

witness violence in their homes are typically offered in a group context within shelters (Stover,

Meadows, & Kaufman, 2009). In some jurisdictions, child protection services become involved

when children witness violence at home, and children may be removed from their family home if

risk to them is deemed to be a concern (Rizo, Reynolds, Macy, & Ermentrout, 2016).

Entry into these established programs is either by court-mandate for perpetrators or self-

referral for perpetrators and victim-survivors. When not involved in the criminal justice system,

the health care system also provides an entry point to professional services for victim-survivors

of family violence (Kirst et al., 2012; Sugg, 2015). While evidence supports IPV screening in

health care settings, Kirst et al. (2012) found that coordination and accessibility of programs, as

well as health care providers’ knowledge, is inadequate to supporting appropriate follow-up

referrals for those who require further health and social services related to recovery from IPV.

These programs have been evaluated and effectiveness considered at the individual

program level and in more comprehensive reviews and meta-analyses which have demonstrated

relatively weak to moderate outcomes (Eckhardt et al., 2013; Gondolf, 2004; Stover et al., 2009).

The most commonly assessed outcome measure is reduced recurrence of violence or abuse


perpetrated by male partners as reported by partners or courts (Eckhardt et al., 2013). These

studies have fairly consistently reported batterer recidivism rates of 20-30% within six months of

intervention regardless of the model or type of intervention (Eckhardt et al., 2013; Stover et al.,

2009). Research has not demonstrated long term effects for victims or perpetrators (Stover et al.,

2009). Program adherence in the delivery and content is variable (Day, Chung, & O’Leary,

2009). Eckhardt et al. (2013), in a review of studies published since 1990, concluded that the

available data do not allow for “clear conclusions about effectiveness” (p. 223) and there is

insufficient evidence to determine whether or not batterer intervention programs can prevent

recidivism. At the same time, Eckhardt and colleagues (2013) found that victim-survivors of IPV

do benefit from therapy directed at the reducing the negative effects of abuse and enhancing

social support and quality of life.

Stover et al (2009) point out that, despite the presence of co-occurring problems for

perpetrators such as trauma history, personality disorders, and substance abuse, these issues have

not typically been treated within the context of male batterers’ groups. These researchers have

also levelled critique that there has not been strong uptake of promising programs such as

behavioural couple therapy targeting one partner’s substance use (violence is not the target of

intervention, but reduction in violence is noted as an unexpected outcome), or increased use of

dyadic or concurrent parent-child interventions. Most often, Stover et al. (2009) suggest, services

are offered in silos for perpetrators, adult victims, and child victims; offered at different locations

and by different agencies/service providers; and are not well-coordinated or integrated.

Current directions for changes in the field of IPV interventions are limited. There has been

increased attention from both researchers and clinicians to offering programs specifically

designed for fathers who are also batterers (Labarre, Bourassa, Holden, Turcotte, & Letourneau,


2016; Scott & Lishak, 2012). These programs are typically built around or in a similar format to

the Duluth model groups for batterers. They emphasize building fathers’ accountability for

changing their violent behaviour, including developing empathy for their children’s experience,

and enhancing their parenting skills. Because of the potential risks to children and co-parents,

and the current lack of strong evidence or evaluative basis for these programs, researchers urge

caution in their implementation (Labarre et al., 2016).

Despite increased attention to an intersectional feminist perspective in analysing the nature

of power relations at macro (societal) and micro (family) levels with increasingly sophisticated

consideration of gender –relations as multi-layered and complex (Allen & Jaramillo-Sierra,

2016; Damant et al., 2008; Few-Demo 2014; Mahler, Chaudhuri, & Patil, 2015), there appear to

be few changes made in community-level interventions addressing family violence in relation to

these analyses. Goodman and Fels-Smith (2011) have also observed that, although there is

recognition of the importance of social support and social networks for the ongoing safety and

well-being of survivors of domestic violence – and more broadly for the ways in which the

community contributes to both maintaining and alleviating such violence – interventions

continue to be aimed at the individual perpetrators and victim-survivors rather than engaging

social networks.

Most recently there has been a challenge to the primacy of gender in explaining and

understanding family violence (Sokoloff, 2008; Sokoloff & Dupont, 2005). This challenge

invokes an intersectional analysis of race, class, gender, sexuality, ethnicity, and immigrant

status alongside an accompanying structural analysis to understand the experiences and contexts

of family violence for marginalized women and the role that culture might play (Sokoloff, 2008;

Sokoloff & Dupont, 2005). Sokoloff and her colleagues underline the importance of not


trivializing the dimensions and impact of violence against particular women by making

generalizations about all battered women. The definition of violence and how it is experienced is

shaped by a person’s sociocultural background – “This does not mean that domestic violence is

relative so much as that women must be able to voice their concerns about how violated they feel

within a cultural framework that is meaningful to them.” (Sokoloff & Dupont, 2005, p.42) These

authors also speak to a propensity to blame or apply a simplistic analysis to culture with regard

to domestic violence – the protective factors that also attend cultural practices can be often

overlooked (Sokoloff & Dupont, 2005).

An example of a program designed to attend to the cultural and community context of

perpetrators and victim-survivors of family violence is that of Rhea Almeida and her colleagues

at the Institute for Family Services in New Jersey (Almeida & Dolan-Del Vecchio, 1999;

Almeida & Durkin, 1999; Hernandez, Seigel, & Almeida, 2009). This group has developed a

Cultural Context Model (CCM) that takes a social justice direction in providing treatment.

Interventions within the CCM require batterer accountability and support victim-survivors and

their children, while also acknowledging structural and social influences on all family members

within their local and broader communities (e.g., racism, sexism, heterosexism). This model also

utilizes cultural mentors to work with family members, and men and women’s culture circles for

those receiving treatment.

In summary, the typical and most well-established IPV intervention programs throughout

both US and Canada treat family members relatively separately – often in different locations and

with different service providers, sometimes with some coordination between victim advocates,

law enforcement and the courts, sometimes with screening and referral through the health care

system. Interventions with men are primarily provided in a group context, for women and


children supportive counselling and safety planning takes place in group or individual settings.

There is limited diversity in programming and a strong feminist gender analysis that informs

interventions, originating in the women’s movement of 1960’s and battered women’s advocacy

of the 1970’s (Gondolf, 2004: Paymar & Barnes, 2008; Sokoloff, 2008). Entry to these systems

may require involvement with police and courts, or, alternatively for victim-survivors at least,

through the health care system. Treatment is typically not provided to couples or families

together, and there are few programs oriented to extended families or broader communities

(beyond public awareness and violence prevention campaigns such as Neighbours, Friends, and

Families http://neighboursfriendsandfamilies.ca/ ).

While researchers continue to examine the efficacy of systemic interventions and

differentiation of the types of violence that occur in the context of intimate relationships (Stith,

McCollum, Amanor-Boadu, & Smith, 2012), these remain on the periphery of mainstream

interventions in most North American communities. The theory of family violence that is

reflected in the predominate interventions and community practices rests heavily on feminist

theory of gender influences on power in intimate relationships. In addition, attention is primarily

directed at individual needs – in effect, a psychological perspective on healing and health.

Collectivist cultures and family violence

Societies may be distinguished based on their relative collectivism or individualism, or

emphases on interdependence or independence. Much of the world, and in particular the non-

Western world, lives within a collectivist context (Dwairy, 2002). Collectivist societies place

emphasis on interdependence, obligation to the group, and social reputation. Individualist

societies are more likely to emphasize autonomy and individuation from one’s family. While

primary allegiance may vary from extended family or tribe to ethnic group or nation, members of

http://neighboursfriendsandfamilies.ca/


these communities see that the overall benefit for the collective is equal to or supersedes personal

benefit. The status of the family and collective is dependent on the reputation or standing of

individual members (Haj-Yahia & Sadan, 2008), and obedience and harmony is emphasized,

even in the face of personal cost for collaboration (Yoshioka & Choi, 2005). Within the

collective, social status, age, and gender determine who has authority and drive social

interactions. The relationship between self and the collective implicates norms governing roles,

responsibilities, self-expression, and institutional practices (Markus & Kitayama, 1994), and

complex dimensions of interdependence and individuation, cultural context, and collective

influences are key to understanding a person’s actions moreso than individual psychological

processes (Dwairy, 2002).

Taking the primary tenets of collectivist cultures (Triandis, 1993) into account, we can see

that family members’ experience and responses to IPV is likely to differ across the spectrum of

individualist or collectivist roots. For example, women in a collectivist context may experience

their spouse’s violence as threatening to members of their extended family and collective as well

as themselves. Stereotyping judgements made in individualist contexts, such as blaming a

woman for being a victim of violence or for being a poor mother, are also seen in collectivist

contexts where the blame is extended also to her mother, sisters, and children. Further, when

submission, conflict avoidance, and preserving family harmony are paramount, women may feel

forced to remain quiet about violence to avoid being seen as disruptive, rebellious, or

disrespectful (Haj-Yahia & Sadan, 2008). Women in such circumstances are likely to first turn to

family or members of their community for assistance. The support that is offered may further

disempower them when it is tied to conditions aimed at preserving reputation and avoiding

confrontation (Haj-Yahia & Sadan, 2008).


Family members’ comfort with accessing resources from the collective or the dominant

society is influenced by a range of factors including recent immigration, age, employment and

housing stability, language fluency, and availability of services. For racialized immigrant

communities, the influences of systemic racism and intersections with gender, class, and age can

contribute to isolation that increases risk (Jiwani, 2005). Intersections (Sokoloff, 2008) of social

and geographic location, mobility, and previous experience of violence or trauma contribute to

one’s choices about where to go for support and expectations about what kind of treatment they

are likely to receive (Kanagartnam et al., 2012; Yoshioka & Choi, 2005).

Yoshioka and Choi (2005) describe the important influence that a collectivist or

individualist worldview has on personal goals and relationship to one’s collective. Collectivists,

valuing harmony within the group, will use more collaborative approaches in dealing with

conflict – even at personal cost – while individualists are more likely to take an adversarial

approach – even if there is a relational cost. Also important to understanding help-seeking in the

event of family violence is consideration of the relative looseness or tightness of a culture –

whether a cultural community tolerates diversity or punishes deviation from strongly held norms

(Yoshioka & Choi, 2005). “A woman socialized with tight collectivist values does not have the

same level of access to divorce, independent living, or single parenthood as a woman from a

loose individualist culture because there are real costs to her grounded in the meaning of the

collective.” (Yoshioka & Choi, 2005, p. 514)

Yoshioka and Choi (2005) also point to the additive cultural influence of a woman’s

“colonization, immigration, or acculturation status” (p. 514) on her experience of IPV. For

example, does she worry about losing her legal status and is she eligible for services, is she

familiar with the various social, political, and cultural systems around her and comfortable to


access these, what is her sense of how receptive these systems will be to her? The avenues

available to her in seeking help will differ, as well as her subjective experience of violence,

depending on her level of acculturation, the length of time that she has been resident in her

current community and whether that community is marginalized or noncolonized, relatively

small or large, and/or subjugated over time (Yoshioka & Choi, 2005).

The established system of services in place for victim-survivors of family violence in

North America is geared toward helping women leave or consider leaving abusive relationships.

This is not a good fit for someone who holds tight, collectivist cultural values. Yoshioka and

Choi state this dilemma quite clearly:

If we are committed to the self determination of the woman, we must begin to

understand the ways that our ideology precludes us from considering certain kinds of

help for which women ask. If all we can offer a woman committed to staying with

her family are ways to leave, then at what point are we engaging in paternalism? To

provide meaningful options to all women, we must be willing to look at alternative

frameworks that will allow the development of a full continuum of services. We have

not seriously considered alternative outcomes that involve staying in the relationship

and eliminating the violence, although this is the outcome most desired by many

women. It is not that we are incapable of developing a service response that

communicates unequivocally that the violence is unacceptable and that the family

value of staying together is important. It is that there is no place for it in the current

service framework. (Yoshioka & Choi, 2005, p.516)

A critique of current models of resilience is that these typically place too much

emphasis on qualities of the individual and not enough on their ecosystemic context and


the interaction between individual and context (Ungar, 2011; Waller, 2001). Vesely,

Letiecq, and Goodman (2017) propose a conceptual model of immigrant family resilience

that includes collectivism and the potential challenges of residing within a host culture that

celebrates self-sufficiency above all. Taking into account a collectivist perspective and

context points to subjective differences in the experience of family violence, the

differential influences of interpersonal and broader community relationships on that

experience, and the importance of considering how presenting issues and concerns may

look quite different from those of individualist families. Similarly, collectivist

considerations extend to the ways in which approaches and obstacles to help-seeking may

vary for those within collectivist communities, and how broader community resources and

influences may hinder or support change within families.

Minority-status Collectivist Communities in North America Today

While we describe distinctions between individualist and collectivist communities, and the

values of interdependence versus independence, it is important to acknowledge that most people

and communities could be placed along a continuum of these extremes (Triandis, 1993).

Currently in North America, minority collectivist communities include well-established and

settled groups originating from various countries around the world. Members of these

communities may hold varying allegiance to their local ethno-cultural group and/or their

extended family and community “back home”, while others may have shifted, over time and

generations, to holding more individualist perspectives themselves. Newcomers to North

America, in the current context, are often refugees who have been forcibly displaced from their

countries of origin due to war and political conflict. These persons, in addition to adapting to the

presence of new dominant cultural norms and values, are also coping with the impact of pre-


migration traumatic experiences such as torture, war-related violence, loss of family members

and home, and the changes and challenges associated with varying periods of time living in

transit countries, often including refugee camps and multiple displacements.

Our recent research interviews with Syrian and Iraqi refugees (Baobaid et al., 2017)

suggested that collectivist traditions and values continue to be strongly held post-migration.

These adult men and women described the important role that extended family members and

other community members from their country of origin, geographically present or absent, played

in their decision-making and current lives. They pointed to traditional and religious practices that

they continue to observe within the local ethno-cultural community. They describe the challenge

of new-to-them dominant social and legal norms that are more individualist in nature such as

increased rights for women and children, limits set on parental discipline, enhanced freedom for

teenagers, and social acceptance for marital separation.

Some of these Arab families were Muslim, while others were from minority religious

groups in their countries of origin and now part of very small and disparate religious

communities in their new homes. Religious leaders and the opinion of the religious community

continue to be important to these families in decision-making and coping with ongoing

challenges related to post-migration settlement. Others in their new communities may be viewed

as standing in for absent extended families in supporting settling these refugee families and

adapting to their new home.

In this new context, these research participants described the benefits and shortcomings of

established formal services and supports for families. They saw some of these as helpful (for

example, couple or family counselling and support in coping with the effects of pre-migration

and migration-related trauma, or with children’s needs) and others as not having sufficient


language facility or cultural knowledge to help them. In addition, they expressed fears about how

systems such as law enforcement or child protective services might threaten or damage their

families further by removing their children or parents from their homes. Such fears would keep

parents from seeking assistance from existing community services. As a result of negative

experiences prior to migration, during transit, and in their post-migration ethno-cultural

communities they may also be reluctant to seek assistance from local leaders in these

communities.

These refugee families also pointed to gender role changes and challenges to their

responsibilities for provision and protection of their children. In a context of such changes and

challenges to family life and personal well-being, there may be increased risk of family violence.

In such circumstances, it is important to ensure that family members have access to formal and

informal supports. This includes knowledge about where to go as well as willingness and

comfort in reaching out to these supports. It is also vital that the persons and organizations

providing such support are knowledgeable about the risk of family violence in this context. In

particular, it is critical that programs and interventions targeting family violence are

knowledgeable about and sensitive to the unique contexts of persons from these communities

and with these migration experiences who are seeking assistance.

Culturally Integrative Family Safety Responses

Current established North American programs directed at addressing family violence

reflect their roots in the feminist analysis of violence against women and power and control

influences in families, as well as the predominately individualist socio-cultural-political context

in which policy and practices were developed. Yoshioka and Choi (2005) state the following

about women seeking services related to being victims-survivors of IPV:


When a woman approaches a domestic violence agency ready to leave or consider

leaving the relationship, there is a well-developed system of services that can help

her accomplish this. Practitioners, however, are well aware of the misfit of these

assumptions and those held by women who identify with tight, collectivist cultural

values. The difficult lies in the gap between the women’s perception of desirable

gender and marital roles and those that are implicit within the service options

available to her from a loose, individualist, dominant group service system. (p. 516)

This “misfit” is present for both men and women from collectivist cultural groups who are

seeking or receiving support in relation to family violence in contemporary North America. A

service system targeting family violence that explicitly takes collectivist traditions and values

into account should look different from current established North American services. A

culturally “integrative” model of responding to families at risk of, or currently experiencing,

family violence will be not only “culturally sensitive” or “culturally competent”, but will

integrate cultural sensitivity and competence on the part of practitioners with practices that bring

together formal and informal supports/services, bridging the mainstream community and the

local ethno-cultural community. In a culturally integrative model of services, access to support is

enhanced by identifying the most likely first points of access in local communities for

collectivist families looking for assistance with their potentially violent interactions. Once

identified, these informal community contacts can be strengthened and supported to serve as

positive resources and mentors. Education and support for these informal supports can enhance

their knowledge and recognition of risk signs and other supports directed at preventing and

addressing family violence within the local and broader community. Similarly, a culturally

integrative model of services can build on the strengths of collectivism by enhancing the


potential for service providers and community support persons to act collaboratively and build

more extensive networks of communication and holistic family support.

The Culturally Integrative Family Safety Response (CIFSR) is a model (Baobaid &

Ashbourne, 2016) that begins with these priorities of enhancing (i) awareness about risk and

responses to family violence at the local community level, (ii) awareness on the part of service

providers about the ethno-cultural context of the families to whom they are providing family

violence interventions, and (iii) bridging established services/practices with cultural groups and

informal community resources to better support these families.

CIFSR is similar, in many ways, to other current directions in family-centred services such

as family group conferencing, systems of care, and wraparound approaches. These approaches

attend to collaboration across services, and focus on honouring what the family knows, the

positive potential and resourcefulness in families, and partnerships that are empowering and

accountable to the people who are their clients (see Madsen, 2014, for a review of family-centred

services). The underlying conceptualization of families and the services and supports around

them as grounded in collectivism is what guides the CIFSR model. This echoes the

conceptualization of immigrant family resilience describes by Vesely et al., (2017).

The CIFSR model goes beyond “cultural sensitivity” which typically addresses the gap

between service providers and clients by educating service providers about cultural differences,

providing language interpretation and conducting outreach in culturally diverse or underserviced

communities. However, cultural sensitivity is not typically extended to providing a different type

of service, and largely unaltered practices may not properly account for the gap between

individualist and collectivist cultural backdrops. In order to ensure “cultural integration”, the

CIFSR model promotes dialogue between the minority collectivist community and the various


agencies involved in anti-violence work in the broader community and over time. Within the

CIFSR model, a cultural broker organization, works with service provider organizations to assist

them in the understanding of the unique aspects of each family’s situation at the point of initial

contact. The broker organization brings mentors and informal supports from cultural

communities and together with established service agencies in order to prepare coordinated

prevention, awareness, and intervention materials and protocols.

The CIFSR model includes a framework of family safety that incorporates prevention and

early intervention, even if this is somewhat outside of traditional mandated services, and also

attends to the resilience and strengths already present in the family and collective community.

Over time, and regardless of the start or completion of specific interventions with individual

families, the broker organization works to ensure that relationships between service agencies and

religious leaders, community leaders, and persons from the broader social fabric of the

collectivist community are actively initiated and sustained in a proactive manner. Such

relationships and ongoing interactions facilitate changing ideas and community norms around

abuse and violence in families. They also provide a more collaborative institutional response

grounded in the local community and the broader system (police, court, child protection,

professional counselling services, etc.). This introduces more flexibility into the system so that,

in advance of legally mandated interventions, early interventions such as education, prevention,

awareness, support, and collaboration between service providers can be utilized to develop

alternatives and supports to enhance safety and reduce risk for families.

The focus on nesting families within more collaborative services that are rooted in the

collective as well as formalized or professional services extends ecological models of

community practice. This may include more explicit attention to utilizing the potential strengths


of collectivism, addressing inherent challenges associated with beliefs and values held within

these communities, and supporting collaboration between the institutional structures around the

community. Intentional awareness of collective and individual influences on members of

minority collectivist groups in a predominantly individualist society enhances systemic and

relational practices with individual families, family members, and the local community.

The CIFSR model (see figure 1) attends to intervention at early and later stages of risk and

initiation of family violence. It also provides for formalized processes of assessment (Four

Aspects Screening Tool – FAST) and collaborative responses (Coordinated Organizational

Response Teams – CORT). These processes, often initiated, facilitated, and mediated by the

broker organization, allow for unique and well-fitting responses with each family in the context

of their cultural background and local community. The target of support is the whole family,

engaging as many family members in coordinated interventions with careful attention to safety

and the competing and complex needs of each member. These processes, with case examples, are

described in more detail in Baobaid and Ashbourne (2016).

We present here a very brief example of a recent family intervention (with identifying

information removed or changed) that was guided by the CIFSR model and brokered by the

Muslim Resource Centre for Social Support and Integration (MRCSSI) in London, Ontario,

Canada. Important context for understanding the background for this intervention is that

MRCSSI and the local child protection agency have an established relationship that includes a

protocol of understanding developed in 2009, and that the various organizations involved in

addressing family violence in the local community have been even more actively engaged in

consultation and collaboration in the past year in relation to a large influx of newcomer families

who are refugees from a conflict (war) zone.


The experience of the MRCSSI is that the CIFSR model is often very successful in

interrupting escalation of family violence in early stages of identifying risk factors. It is also the

experience of MRCSSI that good coordination between mandated services (police, child

protection, and victims’ services) and a broker agency like MRCSSI results in a much more

positive outcome when dealing with critical incidences. A recent involvement of MRCSSI with a

newly arrived Middle Eastern family experiencing intimate partner violence and child abuse has

resulted in providing meaningful support to the victims and good engagement with the male

perpetrator. At the same time the victims’ support agency and child protection agency felt

sufficiently supported that they were able to show flexibility in their responses by stretching

beyond their mandate without compromising protection of victims or those who could be at risk.

A woman who was newly arrived to Canada disclosed in one of her therapy sessions at

MRCSSI that her partner hits her in front of their children. The therapist was legally obligated to

report to the child protection service (CPS) because the children had witnessed the act of

violence. The woman did not want to involve the police or for her husband to know that she

shared this information. When the therapist called the CPS she suggested that the CPS and

MRCSSI should meet to discuss differential responses that would be more culturally meaningful

with this family, newly arrived from a war zone. The CPS agreed to meet because of the well-

established relationship between the two organizations. MRCSSI proposed a CIFSR-guided

intervention and the CPS agreed to this suggestion, calling their investigation an education to the

family about what is and is not acceptable for disciplining children in the Canadian society, and

stressing their role as a family and children’s service to educate newcomers about parenting and

disciplining children. Both organizations agreed to have MRCSSI’s worker present when the

CPS worker visited the family. This kind of bridging gaps between the family and CPS helped to


build mutual trust between the family and CPS, and as a result the family was willing to be

cooperative in the intervention. This was the first step of the CIFSR and the plan proceeded with

a FAST assessment and CORT-facilitated intervention.

The results of the FAST assessment demonstrated the main risk factors, highlighting a long

history of traumatic experiences that the man had undergone since the age of 12 years in addition

to his experience with the war in his country of origin. The FAST also identified a lot of

strengths in this family, including that the man has been able to find work that fit his job-

experience and skills less than two months after his arrival in Canada. According to his wife, he

is very supportive of her as well as her family back home, especially her mother and her

widowed sister.

The results of FAST were shared at the first meeting of co-ordinated organizational

response team (CORT), and helped to determine who else needed to be part of the CORT

meeting as well as what the focus of the discussion should be. This was very helpful for all the

parties involved with CORT. The mandated services (child protection) trusted the brokering

agency (MRCSSI) and felt that the plan provided enough community support for the family to

ensure that the children were safe and the identified risk factors were being dealt with

appropriately. The family also felt well understood and that their cultural and religious values

were well respected. The CORT participants came up with a short term response as well as a

follow up plan. The plan also included peer support for the children, mother, and father, utilizing

informal resources within the local community.

While interventions will look different across different families, communities, and

circumstances, this example demonstrates the advantages of intervening in a systemic and

relational way that takes culture and collectivism into account. It also provides an illustration of


how a collectivist perspective aids in both assessment of risks and resources, and in augmenting

professional interventions with informal community supports.

Conclusion

We see the predominately individualist direction of established IPV interventions in North

America as falling short of effectively preventing and addressing family violence more generally

and in minority collectivist communities more specifically. We conceptualize culturally

integrative services as paying careful attention to the ways in which collectivism influences the

experience of family violence and help-seeking. In addition, culturally integrative services are

offered in a context of building and maintaining relationships and community networks between

formal service providers and informal community supports for families. Bridging the differences

between primarily collectivist and primarily individualist cultures is accomplished through

cultural education in both professional and local community contexts. Providing interventions

targeting family violence in these marginalized collectivist communities also requires taking into

account ecosystemic resilience and the macro-systemic influences of war and structural racism.


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Figure 1: Culturally Integrative Family Safety Response

(from Baobaid & Ashbourne, 2016)

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Supporting Family Safety in Minority Collectivist Communities in … 4... · 2019-12-21 · collectivist orientation for goodness-of-fit between available services and unique family