Dr. Wendy Haight
School of Social Work, UIUC
1105 W. Oregonn Street #10
Urbana IL 61801
U.S.A.
wlhaight@uiuc.edu

Woochan Schola Shim
School of Social Work, UIUC
1105 W. Oregonn Street #10
Urbana IL 61801
U.S.A.
wsshim@uiuc.edu

Purpose: This study aims to destabilize the binary categories of oppressor-oppressed in the understanding of battered women’s experiences of and with mandatory DCFS intervention. The data used in the study was part of a larger qualitative study titled: “Supporting the Parenting of Battered Women with Children in Foster Care”.

Methods: In-depth, semi-structured interviews with seventeen battered women regarding their experiences of parenting, domestic violence and DCFS intervention in Champaign, Illinois were conducted. The questions analyzed for this study include smaller narrative segments within the larger narratives, pertaining to the women’s involvement with DCFS, and their experiences, feelings and interactions with the intervention. All narratives were identified, coded, and verified with reliability checks by members of the main project team.

Results: The results indicate that women experience DCFS intervention both through forms of resistance, and positive acceptance, which often work as forms of agency. Three different categories of resistance emerged, and the significance of the affective quality of women’s voices emerged as a strong theme in the narrative analysis. The findings bring forth women as not just passive receivers of intervention, but active negotiators in their relationship with DCFS. It also highlights that the affect and the state need to be paired for a more meaningful understanding of what goes on in these interactions. This would lead us to explore in the future, the political source of the affect.

Social Work implications: This study was foregrounded in the literature that recognizes women’s resistance as a form of agency, and at the same time acknowledges that DCFS interactions are also aggressive and ‘repressively successful’ in some domains. The intention is not to glorify any simplistic of ‘agency’ or ‘resistance’, (Burton, 2003), but this study recommends that social workers view resistance as powerful, positive negotiations, which create space for women’s own voices to be heard.