Letting them get away with it: Fathers, domestic violence and child welfare'

Recent developments at policy, legislative and practice levels have led to
the mainstreaming of domestic violence as a child welfare issue. However,
research evidence would suggest that familiar and well established
tensions in service provision to women and children continue to be
recycled. Moreover, there remains a central dichotomy in relation to
men. Constructed as perpetrators or offenders, their identities as fathers
remain invisible with serious consequences for the development of
policies and practices which engage with them as ‘domestically violent
fathers’. The discursive removal of violent men from the category of
father or indeed parent needs addressing in order to support women and
children, but also to offer possibilities for men to develop non-violent
parenting and partnering relationship patterns.