Deep Listening and Relationality: Cross-cultural Reflections on Practice with Young Women Who Use Violence

This paper presents cross-cultural reflections on work with Aboriginal and non-Aboriginal young women who use violence.

Publication by Blakemore, T., Randall, E., Rak, L., & Cocuzzoli, F. (2021)

Young women who use violence in their interpersonal, family and domestic relationships commonly exist as a cross-over cohort, simultaneously victims and perpetrators, characteristically disadvantaged and disengaged and lacking accessible trauma-informed and culturally-responsive interventions.

Deep Listening and Relationality explores the tensions of honouring histories and context and acknowledging female agency, choice and control. Informed by Yarning processes the paper intentionally foregrounds Aboriginal knowledge and experience.

In doing so it highlights the power and potential of Deep Listening and relational practice for recognising the impact(s) of trauma resulting from intergenerational intersections of gendered oppression, structural racism, and social inequalities as drivers of female violence.