An exploration of African American women's experiences with a culturally specific domestic violence intervention

Despite over thirty years of tremendous progress addressing domestic violence, intimate partner violence still remains a serious problem. Until recently, very little attention has been devoted to women of Color and women from disadvantaged backgrounds as distinct populations in the domestic violence research and literature. This dissertation: (1) highlights the limited attention that has been given to examining intimate partner violence in the African American community; (2) defines and exemplifies culturally appropriate interventions and highlights the need for such interventions to address intimate partner violence within communities of Color; (3) argues for a qualitative investigation of African American women's experiences with the only culturally appropriate domestic violence intervention in existence that targets the African American community, and (4) presents the results of this investigation and discusses its implications.;There is limited research on intimate partner violence in the African American population and scarce attention has been paid specifically to the experiences of African American women who have been battered. Several authors have indicated a need for culturally appropriate domestic violence interventions for African American survivors and perpetrators in order to adequately deal with the issues of intimate partner violence within the African American community. The purpose of this current study was to qualitatively investigate how helpful a culturally specific domestic violence program (Asha Family Services), which targets the African American community, has been to African American female survivors of intimate partner violence. The study also examined how women's experiences with this culturally specific agency differed from their experiences with mainstream services. Fourteen African American female survivors of intimate partner violence who received domestic violence services from the Asha and three staff members from the agency were interviewed in order to define the agency and explore survivors' experiences with it. Results suggest that this agency does indeed provide culturally specific domestic violence services which target the African American community and that survivors benefit greatly from these services. In addition, survivors indicated that they benefited more from the culturally specific services provided by Asha than they had from mainstream domestic violence interventions. Implications for practice and research are presented.