The nature of domestic violence experienced by Black and minoritised women and specialist service provision during the COVID-19 pandemic: practitioner perspectives in England and Wales

Our article seeks to understand the contours of what has been termed a 'dual pandemic' in the UK: twin crises of increasing domestic violence and abuse (DVA) alongside the spread of COVID-19, both of which have disproportionately affected Black and minoritised communities. Our article draws upon the perspectives of 26 practitioners who provide specialist DVA services for Black and minoritised women and girls in England and Wales. Based on interviews with these practitioners, we explore the nature and patterns of the DVA which their Black and minoritised women clients experienced during the pandemic. Our findings highlight the pandemic-related risks and challenges that lead to specific manifestations of DVA within Black and minoritised communities and reveal the practice and policy landscape of the 'by and for' DVA sector during the pandemic and beyond.

Domestic violence during the pandemic: ‘By and for’ frontline practitioners’ mediation of practice and policies to support racially minoritised women 1 : The Interdisciplinary Journal of Organization, Theory and Society

This article analyses 26 interviews with frontline female practitioners from domestic violence and abuse (DVA) services for racially minoritised women in England and Wales, exploring how these practitioners – who are from the same racially minoritised communities as the women they support – responded to the challenges of the COVID-19 crisis. These specific practitioner perspectives offer valuable insights into the specific ways in which the pandemic exacerbated the intersectional vulnerabilities of minoritised women experiencing DVA. Interpreted through a standpoint feminist lens, the findings reveal how frontline practitioners used bureaucratic discretion both to meet minoritised women’s changed needs during the pandemic in order to enhance their safety and to challenge the exclusions and intersectional inequalities underpinning pandemic policies. The study illuminates the institutional dimensions of frontline practitioner responses to the pandemic and contribute to debates within the street-level bureaucracy scholarship about the nature of bureaucratic discretion exercised by frontline practitioners.