Immigrant Women of Color Experiences with Intimate Partner Violence and Service Access: Service Providers Perspective

Background and Purpose: Immigrant Women of Color (IWOC) experiencing Intimate Partner Violence (IPV) face unique barriers in help-seeking and accessing resources. Service providers are the critical entry point for IPV-related services. They are well-positioned to provide much-needed support to survivors. However, there remains limited research addressing service providers' perspectives on responding and providing quality and equitable trauma-informed services to IWOC.

To address this gap, this study examines the perspectives of both formal and informal service providers when working with IWOC who have experienced IPV. The overarching goal of the study is to understand how service providers deal with reported IPV, and what they need to be partners in response at different levels of service provision.

Methods: This study used a sequential explanatory mixed methods design, led through a community-based participatory action research approach. Phase I encompassed a web-based survey that was distributed to a purposive sample of formal and informal service providers that have served IWOC (N=104). Phase II of the study consisted of in-depth interviews with a nested sample of service providers (N=18). In-depth interviews were audio-recorded and transcribed. An inductive in-vivo approach was applied to create a codebook. The first cycle of analysis included in vivo and thematic coding. This was followed by the categorization of codes to create conceptual categories that were grouped into emerging themes. Any disagreements in coding were resolved through an interactive team approach by a six-person research team. After coding, sorting, and synthesizing the data, six overarching themes were generated. Qualitative and quantitative results were then integrated to generate a holistic interpretation of the data.

Results: Findings from the quantitative analysis showed that most participants were formal service providers (70%) and females (95%). Most of the service providers offered: mental health services (59%), transportation services (59%), language and interpretation services (57%), legal services (54%), housing assistance (59%), and resource identification and referral services (85%). Half of the participants (50%) reported meeting the needs of IWOC experiencing IPV. In-depth interviews revealed; (1) the presence of systemic discrimination against IWOC survivors which is a major barrier for accessing services. Other structural inequality barriers that were identified were 2) language, immigration status, resource deficiency and cultural misunderstandings about IPV, 3) compassion fatigue and burnout was also a major barrier to providing equitable services. To address these barriers, service providers indicated the need for the following supports: (1) Being intentional when engaging with IWOC survivors 2) connection and interorganizational collaboration among formal and informal services providers 3) Training for service providers to better work and engage with IWOC survivors and 4) Resilience from survivors was identified as a motivational factor for service providers.

Conclusions and Implications: These findings are important because for IWOC experiencing violence, their ability to successfully access equitable skills and resources that can meet their needs, promote healing, and live a life free from violence is crucial. Consequently, expanding IPV services to IWOC requires understanding the wide range of factors that influence help-seeking and service delivery.