Exploring the concept of ‘service user engagement' in specialist domestic abuse services, and how its use impacts service users and service delivery.

Abstract

When victims/survivors of domestic abuse access support from specialist domestic abuse services – and others – this is labelled ‘service user engagement’, a term also frequently used in the domestic abuse literature on specialist services, with the meaning and application often taken for granted. This study represents the first qualitative exploration of the concept of service user engagement within specialist domestic abuse services, which draws on workers’ perspectives on service user engagement, and on service users’ perspectives on interactions with services. It was funded by, and took place within the parameters of, the UCLan evaluation of the SafeLives/Women’s Aid Federation England ‘Roadmap for System Change’ Project. The study was completed using interpretive qualitative methodology in the form of semi-structured interviews with 15 service users and 16 workers across four specialist domestic abuse services in England. Interviews were analysed following a process of reflexive thematic analysis informed by the study’s theoretical frameworks of feminism and social constructionism. The study demonstrates that exploring the concept of engagement is important: it directly impacts whether service users receive a service, and potentially denies service users specialist support that they cannot access elsewhere due to other services’, family and friends’ lack of understanding of domestic abuse. Service user engagement was presented by workers as a multi-faceted, complex concept; yet in practice – and in the academic literature – it has been reduced to a binary: ‘engaged/not engaged’. The ecological model developed through this study demonstrates how workers conceptualise service user engagement, and the impact this has on service users. The model shows how specialist services are shaped by commissioning and national policy to deliver generic services that focus on the engagement of individual service users, without accounting for wider structural and intersectional inequalities that impact service users and their engagement. Neo-liberal narratives of personal responsibility and the need for public services to avoid ‘service user dependency’ have influenced how workers implement the feminist ethos of empowerment. Service users feel empowered through the non-judgemental, empathetic, and understanding approach taken by workers, and by the actions workers take on service users’ behalf due to their
greater power to enact change. Service users’ lack of power, and lack of support elsewhere, can create a dependency on the specialist service despite workers’ attempts to avoid this. But within ‘engagement’, workers require evidence that service users are being empowered through taking responsibility for actions, and often don’t recognise the ways in which service users lack power compared with themselves and other services. This study has implications for the use of ‘service user engagement’ within the commissioning and delivery of specialist domestic abuse services, and academic research on such services, by highlighting the multifaceted nature of the concept of engagement and the need to understand how it is experienced by service users.