Two voices in harmony: A creative family-led intervention post domestic and family violence

Abstract

Mothers who experience DFV are often at risk of being epistemically harmed by professional discourses that are mother-blaming because professionals often overburden them with unrealistic expectations of protecting their children. In addition, children and young people who experience DFV are frequently at risk of being subjected to epistemic injustice by professional discourses that negate them as knowledge generators. Added to this tangle of epistemic misplacement is the wedge that perpetrators drive between mothers and children so they both cannot see each other survivance wisdom and connection to each other. Family-inclusive/lead therapy that epistemically privileges mothers' and children's survivance wisdom can repair the damage done to them as knowledge generators and to their relationships. This article describes an example of nondeliberative work that highlights family-inclusive/lead therapy has a place in family intervention post-DFV.