How practitioners respond to men’s use of intimate partner violence in rural areas

Abstract

This exploratory study aimed to understand the complexities and particularities of social service practices with men who use intimate partner violence in rural areas. Ten rural service providers in Western Australia, New South Wales, Victoria, and South Australia participated in qualitative, semi-structured, in-depth interviews. A combined inductive and deductive approach to thematic analysis was used to identify key themes. Themes were: metro-centrism implicit in services’ design and systems and workforce factors pertaining to experience, training, attitudes, and practitioners’ ways of working to respond to their local context. The article employs an intersectional framework to discuss the varying accounts of practitioners and the diversity between service provision in places broadly classed as “rural.” Implications are identified for the design and implementation of rural social services’ policy and, specifically, how rural communities can be best supported to respond to men’s use of IPV.