Domestic violence and abuse (DVA) in pregnancy is common in Ireland. Pregnancy is a time when many women will first be subjected to abuse by their partner or face an escalation of abuse.
Pregnant women who are subjected to DVA face a range of barriers to help-seeking and disclosure during a vulnerable and high-risk period.
The time that a woman is pregnant, giving birth or just after having a baby, is also a time when women interact more with health services.
They are more likely to be contemplating their future. For those who decide to continue their pregnancy they are also thinking of their baby’s wellbeing.
This presents a vital window of opportunity for maternity services to support women to tell someone about the abuse and to access help. Evidence and policy strongly indicate that maternity services are crucial in supporting women during this time.
The evaluation ran alongside the roll out of the project. The aim was to evaluate the implementation and early impact of the maternity project for maternity services, staff and the role of the outreach worker.
CES evaluated the implementation and early impact of this innovative and complex pilot project. We worked closely with Women's Aid and the project advisory group to design the evaluation beginning with facilitating work on develop a logic model for the project.
We also worked to capture the lived experience of women who experienced DVA in pregnancy, through an online survey and focus group with Pavee Point, an advocacy and support organisation for the travelling community in Ireland. This work underscored that women have not been receiving adequate screening, response and referral to support in Ireland and also informed the co-design of project training and resources.
Our formative mixed-methods evaluation brought together multiple sources of data to evaluate how the project was implemented, highlighting what worked well, barriers to implementation and areas for improvement.
Our interim report on the outreach worker role, highlighted how valuable and effective this service was for women. Women received an almost immediate response once they agreed to be referred, making the most of the crucial window of opportunity to connect women to support quickly after disclosure of abuse. The outreach worker offered high-quality person-centred supports in the community that complemented the support available through the maternity services.
Women's Aid valued our comprehensive report, synthesising key data, showing where there was success and highlighting critical points of learning.
Our recommendations were
“directly instrumental in the successful mainstreaming and continuation of many of the key strands of work piloted”.
Our work found that the outreach worker role provided timely, highly responsive, practical and emotional support during a crucial window of opportunity to support women experiencing domestic abuse during or after pregnancy. The evaluation report was successfully used by Women's Aid to secure ongoing funding for two outreach worker roles that now serve the three Dublin maternity hospitals.
The report was launched by Women’s Aid in November 2024 and received widespread media coverage. You can read about the launch here: https://www.effectiveservices.org/journal/ces-evaluation-of-womens-aid-maternity-project
You can read the Executive Summary of the evaluation report here.
You can read more about Women’s Aid maternity support services here.
To speak to our team about this work contact us here
