Using Research Findings

In all our research we seek to create what Liz Stanley defines as 'useful knowledge, theory and research as practice' and 'committed understanding'. When producing research reports and other publications we seek to be accessible, relevant and challenging. It is also a core part of our practice to translate research findings and coherent conceptual frameworks into training. Training provided by CWASU has always been undertaken from a feminist perspective, but constructed and delivered in ways that encourages debate. We do not focus on skills or procedures, but on developing a perspective - what Mary MacLeod and Esther Saraga termed 'thinking time' - time to reflect and explore different ways of making sense and understanding issues which are surrounded by myth, victim-blame and poor practice. Since its inception CWASU has played an important role in taking feminist perspectives into training, and, as importantly, in encouraging and enabling women's organisations to believe that they have expertise to offer, and to develop training skills - most recently in the Balkans project.

One of the most important contributions of the Unit continues to be in making connections between forms of gender violence and between child and woman abuse. Our conviction in the importance of this framework has many strands:

• It is the accumulation of forms of woman and child abuse across the population as a whole, and in individual lives, which illuminates the extent to which violence is a key element in the inequalities of gender and generation.
• Whilst forms of child and woman abuse may be separated in law and in institutional policy and practice, they are not separate in women and children's lived experience.
• Having a wider perspective enables inclusion of forms of abuse that have not yet been adequately documented and/or cultural variations.

The other way in which the Unit has been committed to making connections is through networking. We seek to act as a link point, between those seeking information and who might be able to best provide it. We promote the projects and models of work that we believe represent current best practice, both within the UK and internationally. CWASU's international connections have increased, and we are often involved in linking groups across continents, groups that were not aware of the other's existence. We are also regularly contacted by isolated groups and individuals, working in countries and/or contexts where gender violence is only beginning to emerge onto the public agenda; we support them by sending packages of publications and information and linking them into existing networks and coalitions.

The most recent way in which we have been able to make connections in practice is through providing expert opinions for criminal and civil legal cases. In contrast to the medical model of expert evidence, which seeks to demonstrate the individuality and difference of the person, we are developing an approach that maps out the relevant research knowledge, and seeks to fit individual women's lives into this broader picture. We locate women's actions and situations within this collective experience and wider context.

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