Adele Sheridan-Magro, my guest in this podcast, came to social work later in life. Her first degree in sociology was undertaken in her forties: specialising in women and gender studies. She was particularly taken by post-stucturalism, including the theorists Foucault, Lacan, and the feminist Helene Cixous.
In our conversation Adele described how she faced the challenges of using these perspectives in her social work degree and her subsequent clinical practice.
Adele now has extensive experience in the NGO sector as a specialist domestic violence counsellor, educator, trainer and service coordinator. She has presented on domestic violence at conferences both nationally and internationally, including the 2015 European Conference on Domestic Violence, held in Belfast.
Adele points to the research that now makes a compelling case for a direct link between women’s experience of intimate partner violence and heightened rates of depression, trauma , and self-harm. Critically however, women who are victims of intimate partner violence, consistently report poor treatment by mental health services. It is clear that the service paradigm is often unhelpful, and profoundly lacking in its recognition of the complex and multilayered trauma experienced by victims of intimate partner violence.
Adele makes the crucial point that communities will have a far greater chance of keeping a child safe if the mother is kept safe.
Our conversation turned to exploring ideas of love, where Adele has been very much influence by queer theory. We go on to discuss how rigid, stereotyped notions of love may carry within them the seeds of oppression.
Podcast: Play in new window | Download
A very refreshing and very interesting pod cast. I love it
Very enlightening but also a very complex subject. I think it is innate for most men to want to dominate women because it is accepted as a social norm in most societies. It doesn’t mean its right and thank goodness society is changing, albeit slowly to see violence towards anyone is a form of assault, whether in the home or outside. Everyone deserves to feel safe and just because people are in a relationship doesn’t mean it’s ok to dominate the other. However, this can be very subtle and in cases I have been involved with are complex because of dealing with a range of behaviours and emotions when tackling the construct of love. Sexual abuse of a child can be construed (wrongly) as an act of love until maturational processes deem otherwise. Interesting topic.