Domestic abuse often gets worse when women are pregnant or when their children are very young. We know women who experience domestic abuse during pregnancy and early motherhood often worry about the impact of domestic abuse on them and their baby. However,  there is not a lot of research about how to support women through this difficult time.  We  are Jane Callaghan and Fiona Morrison, researchers at the University of Stirling. We have been asked by Women’s Aid to build a training toolkit for domestic abuse specialist workers. This toolkit will help workers to develop knowledge and skills to support women who are pregnant, or who have very young children. To help us make sure that this toolkit is really relevant for women who have experienced domestic abuse, we would like to invite you to take part in an interview about your experiences of being pregnant or having very young children, and how domestic abuse has affected that. We want to know what you did to help you manage, what you feel has helped you most, what you think the challenges are, and how you think domestic abuse specialist workers could help.

Who can participate? Any woman who has experienced domestic abuse, either whilst pregnant, or with a baby under 3. The abuse should have taken place in the last 5 years. (This is to ensure that interviews reflect what support  is being offered in services at the moment.)

How to participate: There are two ways to take part. You can either complete an online survey, or you can be interviewed confidentially by one of the two researchers (Jane Callaghan and Fiona Morrison, at the University of Stirling).

Taking part by online survey:  You will be given some questions to answer. These are open ended questions and you can write as much or as little as you want to.  You do not have to answer all the questions if you don’t want to. The link for the survey is here: https://stirling.onlinesurveys.ac.uk/support-for-women-in-pregnancy-of-with-babies-under-3-wom

Taking part by telephone: You can email the researchers by contacting Jane Callaghan (jane.callaghan@stir.ac.uk ) . We will send you more information on the study, and will book a time that suits you,  to talk to you on the phone.