Domestic Violence Survivors’ Parenting Strengths

Focusing on the impact of domestic violence on children, in many ways, has been synonymous with a “failure to protect” approach to mothers who are domestic violence survivors. This approach can come with the cost of alienating adult survivors and their children from support and services, increasing danger from the perpetrator, and removing children unnecessarily. As strengths-based work with families becomes more prevalent, the research on the protective capacities of domestic violence survivors as parents becomes more important to support a shift in policy and practice from “failure to protect” to domestic abuse-informed. In this briefing, we explore some of the research that demonstrates the protective capacities of adult survivors and their implications for policy and practice.