Safe Family Unit's role in Jordan River Foundation in Battered Women's empowerment: Evaluation Study

Abstract

This study aimed to identify the role of legal and psychological services as well as the economic and social empowerment services offered by the “Safe Family Unit” in the Queen Rania Center for Women and Children – Part of the Jordan River Foundation- in empowering woman in different aspects, and to identify how beneficial those services was to the women benefited by this service, as well as identifying the strenghts and weaknesses in the nature of the services offered by the “Safe Family Unit”, and identifying the social, economic and demographic charactaresitcs of the abused women. To achieve the goals of this study, the benefited women who frequented the “Safe Family Unit” between December 15th, 2012 and February 15th 2013 were chosen. The study sample included 34 women benefited by the service in addition to 10 women that were intreviewed as part of a focused group. The study adopted the decriptive approach both in quality and in quantity, using the questionnaire as a method of collecting quantitive data followed by the private personal interview questionnare with the focus group as a tool of collecting qualitative data and information. The results of the study showed that of legal and psychological services as well as the economic and social empowerment services offered by the “Safe Family Unit” had a role in empowering women in different aspects as the sessions had helped them make the right decisions in their lives and in dealing with their children and their families in general. Their lives have become more independent than before, also it showed how the women benefitted form the pyschological services offered to them in the first place, as they could feel the difference through the sessions that were given to them by the social expert which reflected positively on their pyschological well-being and their life in general, moreover, the study showed how the women benefitted from the legal services offered to them in the second place as they pointed out the great impact the service had on solving their problems, and how important that was in solving the problems of many women, and this study further showed that the economic empowerment service was less infleuential than the other two services due to a shortcoming in the service itself. Recommendations were given to improve this service in the near future. The study highlighted the strenghts in the nature of the services offered by the “Safe Family Unit”, such as the availability and Proffesionality of the working staff, offering the services for free and having all the services in one place. It also highlightd the weaknesses which were represented by a slow procedures followed in both the legal service and the economic empowerment service, the lack of follow-up in those two services, the occasional absence of the lawyer and the unavilaibility of the services around the clock. As for the social, economic and demographic characteristics of the abused women, that issue was tackled and it was noted that the majority of these women were married women of elementary and secondary education. It was also noted that most of them were housewives with low income. In light of these results, the researcher offered a number of recommendations in the field of scientific studies and institutional work.