Abstract
Sherry Hamby has been a leader in the scholarship about intimate partner violence (IPV) for more than two decades. Battered Women’s Protective Strategies combines her clinical experience and research knowledge to contribute to a growing body of resources aimed at transforming the direct service response to IPV. The focus of the book is 2-fold: First, it presents her research, and related inquiry, about the protective strategies used by women experiencing IPV in order to illuminate their strengths; and second, it challenges the popular belief that leaving the relationship is always the best option. The book also serves as a platform for Hamby to present her vision of an approach to practice with IPV survivors using a strategy called multiple criteria decision making (borrowed from engineering) and a tool called the Victim Inventory of Goals, Options, and Risks (VIGOR).
In the foundational chapters, Hamby presents her concerns and personal evolution on approaching services for survivors, calling for a move away from approaches that overly emphasize leaving the relationship or staying in shelter as the only solution to addressing experiences of IPV. To support her claims, she uses her own research and the works of others in the middle chapters of her book to present risks (social, faith-based, financial, batterer-induced, etc.) faced by women experiencing IPV. She addresses reactions to these risks as protective strategies in a detailed analysis of her own data from survivors, highlighting their strengths in mediating the many challenges related to their experience of IPV. The final chapters of the book present frameworks for practice to assess risks and strengths from a model centered on the goals of the survivor using the VIGOR tool.
The best audience for the book is unclear. Hamby aims to contribute her vision of services for battered women, which has application in practice-related course work in social work or related human service fields. The focus of the work is probably too narrow for a course on domestic violence, or for reading by the general public, because of the specific focus on risk factors and protective strategies and lack of in-depth coverage on the experience of partner violence and related mental health issues. The book may have a place in legal settings and nonprofits that interact with women experiencing IPV as an educational tool. Much of the content of the book is similar to previously published works in the last 10 years in its exploration of survivor-centered models and critiques of current practice in domestic violence advocacy. The application of a strength-based model is not new in social work practice or research and some of the book may seem redundant for that reason. The strong merit of Hamby’s book is the use of her research to validate the charge from advocates in the last 10 years to move away from a relationship termination model. She offers specific examples of the approaches used by women experiencing IPV to protect themselves, and importantly, offers an assessment tool in the VIGOR that can be used in practice to support her model. This fills a need for both teaching and practice in social work and related fields, where direct service research about partner violence is sorely needed. Importantly, this book also signals a rising tide of published works advocating for a survivor-centered, empowerment and strength-based approach in practice that offers an intersectional view of women who have experienced IPV. That is a welcomed sign of the times.