Tricia B. Bent-Goodley

HEALTH DISPARITIES AND VIOLENCE AGAINST WOMEN Why and How Cultural and Societal Influences Matter

This article encourages readers to consider the cultural and societal influences that impact health and health disparities among women survivors of intimate partner violence (IPV). Health consequences caused by IPV are widely documented and broadly discussed. Connections between health disparities and IPV are also discussed as related to women of color. Cultural factors and societal influences are identified to provide the reader with greater awareness of how these issues intersect with and impact IPV. Finally, the implications for scientific research and practice are discussed to include considerations for stronger assessment tools, greater collaboration and community participation, determination of best practices, requirement of cultural competence, mandated accountability, encouragement of mentorship, increased funding for research, increased advocacy, and increased culturally competent media and health promotion campaigns.

Eradicating Domestic Violence in the African American Community: A Literature Review and Action Agenda

Though all cultural, religious, sexual orientation, and socioeconomic groups experience domestic violence, people of color continue to be largely ignored in domestic violence literature. African Americans sustain serious and lethal injuries as a result of domestic violence. Domestic violence poses a grave threat to the preservation of African American families and communities. In an effort to create an agenda for further discussion, this article provides a critical analysis of the current literature on domestic violence in the African American community, identifies gaps in knowledge, and discusses an action agenda to help eradicate domestic violence.

Spiritual and Religious Abuse Expanding What is Known About Domestic Violence

Domestic violence reportedly affects more than 5 million Americans each year, more than 85% of whom are women. Many of these women turn to their faith-based communities for support and guidance, but little is known about how the church members they turn to perceive or understand domestic violence. This article reports the outcomes of three focus groups in three diverse communities of faith in the African American community that resulted in a better understanding of how church leaders and congregants view spirituality and religion and how they converge with domestic violence. Implications for research and practice are presented for domestic violence intervention

GUEST EDITORIAL: THE ROLE AND STATUS OF WOMEN IN SOCIAL WORK EDUCATION: PAST AND FUTURE CONSIDERATIONS

Survival is not an academic skill. It is learning how to stand alone, unpopular and sometimes reviled, and how to make common cause with those others identified as outside the structures in order to define and seek a world in which we can all flourish. It is learning how to take our differences and make them strengths. (Lorde, 1984, p. 112)

Defining and Conceptualizing Social Work Entrepreneurship

This article presents the results of a study investigating social work students’ and professionals’ perceptions of social work entrepreneurship (SWE). A purposive sample of 52 social work professionals and 82 social work students was selected to participate in a survey that used a two-item closed-ended and five-item open-ended questionnaire. Despite the study limitation imposed by self-selection of the sample, the findings help to define and conceptualize social work entrepreneurship. The author makes a case for including entrepreneurial training in the social work curriculum.

Social Workers as Social Change Agents: Social Innovation, Social Intrapreneurship, and Social Entrepreneurship

This article explores and describes social innovation, social intrapreneurship, and social entrepreneurship practiced by social workers within human service organizations. Each year, the nature and complexity of clients’ problems and challenges experienced by communities continuously evolves and grows. These challenges call for social workers to lead and facilitate social change that can have a lasting impact on communities and people. The authors report findings from an exploratory, descriptive study conducted with ten social workers on these practices. The findings point to the need to develop and integrate these contents within social work education and further promote dual-degree graduate programs.

Domestic violence and kinship care:connecting policy with practice.

Summary Domestic violence is known to have occurred in 40 to 70% of child welfare cases and has served in some capacity as the basis for removing the child from the birth home (Edleson, 1999). Kinship care is regarded as a growing option for many of these families. This conceptual article discusses the distinct ways that kinship care and domestic violence are linked. The authors discuss how silence, the rising incarceration of women, mistrust of the system, difficulty in securing services for survivors, and economic hardship create unique challenges that require attention at both the practice and policy levels. Policy interventions are proposed at the mezzo and macro levels. Recommendations include promoting the Family Violence Options under the TANF program. The article also discusses the unintended consequences the Adoption and Safe Families Act has in domestic violence situations.

Domestic Violence Fatality Reviews and the African American Community

Cultural competence is important to the domestic violence fatality review process. This article reviews current knowledge about cultural competence for Black women abused by men in the United States, with suggested implications for domestic violence fatality review teams (DVFRTs). Help-seeking behaviors, coping strategies, historical context, and cultural values within the African American community are explored. These areas are further examined using a framework inclusive of the structure, goals, processes, outcomes, and barriers of DVFRTs. The implications for how DVFRTs can utilize this information are discussed.

Social Justice and Civil Rights: A Call to Action for Social Work

This special issue of Social Work, in many ways, offers an opportunity to reflect on the role of the profession in addressing issues of social justice and civil and human rights. It catapults from Social Work’s 1982 Special Issue on Oppression Based on Color, edited by Dr. June Gary, in which matters of social injustice, systemic discrimination, and the language of oppression were applied to “minorities” and examined by a diverse group of scholars (Hopps, 1982). This topic was reexamined by Schiele and Hopps (2009) in Social Work’s Special Issue on Racial Minorities Then and Now: The Continuing Significance of Race. In this current special issue of Social Work, the authors build on the work of Hopps (1982) and Schiele and Hopps (2009) and argue that the current scholarship is guided by the notion that “the profession, since its inception, seems to be challenged by a ‘push-pull’ or ambivalence vis-a-vis power and powerlessness, wealth and inequality, and social control and benevolence” (Bowles & Hopps, 2014, p. 4). Therefore, this 2016 special issue of Social Work explores the continued need for social work’s presence in clarifying and advancing the intersectionality of social justice and civil and human rights. Civil rights include personal liberty; the rights of citizens to political, legal, and social equality; and fundamental protections of human rights (BentGoodley, 2014; Pollard, 2008; Valdez, 2015). Social justice is a foundational term and is extensively used throughout the profession. As such, it would seem that a working definition and consensus statement would have been articulated given the prominence attached to the term (Galambos, 2008; Rountree & Pomeroy, 2010). The term is even a central theme in some school of social work mission statements. Holosko, Winkel, Crandall, and Briggs (2015) conducted a study of the top 50 schools of social work and found that the term “social justice” was used in 33 of the 50 mission statements reviewed. Arguably, Rawls’s (1971) treatise on the subject is probably one of the most widely used in the profession. His position focuses on the principle of fairness centered around guarding equal protection to liberties, rights, and opportunities: being aware that inequalities not only exist, but are acceptable if all have an equal chance of experiencing the conditions that comprise inequality; and that inequalities must redound to the benefit of those with the greatest disadvantage. Other philosophies that help undergird the term include utilitarian, libertarian, communitarian, egalitarian, and distributive perspectives and values (Galambos, 2008). These orientations grow out of political rights; the U.S. Constitution; and the first 10 amendments, the Bill of Rights. Political and civil rights have overshadowed concerns about social components of citizenship or social rights, such as the right to education, economic security, employment, and health (Wilson, 1995). In the sixth edition of the Social Work Dictionary, Barker (2014) defined social justice as “an ideal condition in which all members of society have the same basic rights, protection, opportunities, obligations, and social benefits” (p. 398). Social justice encompasses the distribution of wealth, opportunities, and privileges within a society (Bent-Goodley, 2008). The richness of these contributing ideas, particularly around redistribution, also add some lack of consensus and perhaps polarization—in the profession and in society. As mentioned earlier, schools of social work have identified the term “social justice” in their mission statements and even as a center piece in some cases. In the Holosko et al. (2015) study, “social justice” was used interchangeably with nine other terms such as “social work justice,” “social advocacy,” “social and economic justice,” “distributive justice,”

In Circle: A Healthy Relationship, Domestic Violence, and HIV Intervention for African American Couples

ABSTRACT While marriage and healthy relationship education has grown, limited interventions have been developed specifically to support the development and flourishing of African American couples. African Americans are also disproportionately impacted by HIV/AIDS and are more likely to experience lethality and serious injury due to domestic violence compared to Whites. Despite this, African American couples have been resilient and managed to thrive in relationships. Little has been done to capture these strategies, build on cultural strengths, and design an intervention specifically crafted for this population. This article describes an intervention “In Circle” developed, implemented, and evaluated for African American couples to support healthy relationship and healthy marriage education. The intervention is based on an Ancient Egyptian value system and undergirded by three integrated theoretical perspectives. The article also includes implications for practice and research.