Taking Research into Practice: A practitioner journey into domestic abuse counselling

Counsellor researchers often want to do research that can be of value to their clients, themselves and the profession. But how do you take your research into the wider world to make a difference?

In this presentation, Dr Jeannette Roddy will talk about domestic abuse as a significant problem in society with 1 in 5 people experiencing this within their lifetime. Research has shown clearly over the last 50 years that there can be significant mental health difficulties during and after domestic abuse, including depression, suicidal ideation, anxiety and complex post-traumatic stress. Jeannette Roddy will explain how the idea for her PhD, exploring the client experience of domestic violence counselling, came into being and how she managed to take her research from PhD through to a published model of practice and practice implementation within a counselling service with excellent results. She will also discuss opportunities and barriers to next steps.

The presentation will be interactive, and questions and comments are always welcome!

Dr Jeannette Roddy has spent more than 10 years exploring what is needed for domestic abuse counselling. Her research has included both female and male participants sharing what they felt helped and hindered their recovery during counselling. She is the author of Counselling and Psychotherapy After Domestic Violence: a client view of what helps recovery (Palgrave Macmillan, 2015) and the editor and main contributor to Working with Client Experiences of Domestic Abuse: a handbook for counsellors, psychotherapists and other mental health professionals (Routledge, 2023). Jeannette set up the Domestic Abuse Counselling Service at the University of Salford which grew from start-up in October 2019 to seeing over 60 clients per week with over 20 counsellors by October 2021. Jeannette is a BACP accredited counsellor/psychotherapist in private practice, an Honorary Senior Lecturer at the University of Salford and an Honorary Research Fellow at York St John University. She is also the CEO of Dactari, which specialises in delivering specialist online counselling and counsellor training in domestic abuse counselling. She can be contacted at jroddy@dactari.co.uk