Addressing Needs Among Students Affected by Domestic Violence: Social Workers’ Perspectives

The issue of domestic violence is of great concerns and the impact on children is becoming more widely acknowledged. This social issue contains many consequences and ramifications and a wider understanding of children’s needs are emerging. With this growing recognition the importance to meet this children’s needs have been identified. This qualitative study explored how school social workers support children impacted by domestic violence through six (n = 6) semi-structured interviews. The findings, developed through an open-coding process, included the following themes: interventions used by school social workers to support children experiencing domestic violence; barriers to supporting children affected; resources that help school social workers; and supports school social workers obtain when working with children affected by domestic violence. These themes aligned with previous research but participants added depth and understanding to the previous research. More research needs to be performed in evaluating the effectiveness of interventions utilized to support children impacted by domestic violence.