Volunteer Perspective on Training for Support Work 2013.

As a volunteer for the domestic violence support work training program at the West Cork Women’s Project based in Bantry, I would like to give a brief detail on my training experience so far.
In the first couple of training sessions we discussed statistics, the crime of domestic violence and the emotional, physical, spiritual and financial repercussions for women. This gave us an eye opening education on the appalling level of gender based violence within Ireland and the rest of the world. The training informed us that domestic violence is unacceptable and of the dominance of male power that puts women and children at risk. We discussed how main-stream media continues to give a negative message in their portrayal of the sexualization of women and girls. We covered the imperative need for a larger community response to the violence against women issue and the recommendations from COSC’s national strategic policy to improve regular liaison between organizations as well as the need to promote ‘good practice’ within such communications.
There is an intense amount of information we need to learn in order to support the welfare of women who come for help. As well as learning the importance of being a respectful listener to the women, I also learnt how to work on a safety plan with someone and how to support her goals in a non-judgmental way. We recently covered a little on family law and the courts process with a lot more training to follow: e.g. child protection. I was so pleased to hear that the training had finally came up in Bantry, due to the government cuts. It has been needed for a long time especially as things seems to be worsening for women’s rights. I am also very pleased to hear there will be on- going training after this current program is complete.
So far I have received an excellent and comprehensive amount of knowledge on human rights from a very high standard of teaching. Our tutors and the staff involved at the Women’s Project are indeed outstanding in their fields of work – most of them have volunteered their free time in order to teach and share valuable research and experience from working within the field ranging from refuge support to court procedure/accompaniment. In fact the list of subjects involved is too huge for this article, perhaps I can cover some more in another article before the training is complete, I would gladly keep the public posted.
I would recommend to anybody to become actively involved in the project or in support work training if you feel you can help women and their children so that we can show them that they do not deserve to experience domestic violence.