A strength- and resilience-based approach to understanding the lived experiences survivors


Sarah Yercich, Capilano University

Experiences of domestic violence (DV) survivors are traditionally positioned within harm- and deficit-based frameworks (e.g., vulnerability, risk, trauma), which disempowers and undermines the agency of survivors. Such deficit-based frameworks are problematically and disproportionately applied to communities and survivors who have been, and continue to be, situated as vulnerable populations , such as Indigenous peoples, immigrants and refugees, and those who live in rural, remote, and northern communities. However, referring to these survivors as increasingly vulnerable disregards that they are at an increased risk of experiencing DV due to systemic and structural barriers, and not micro-level risk factors. The vulnerability-based approaches also exist in stark contrast with culturally safe and Indigenous ways of knowing and healing, which focus on strength, resilience, and joy. This presentation examines the under-researched topic of the strength and resilience of survivors of DV and creates the groundwork for building strength- and resilience-based responses to DV.

This paper will be presented at the following session: