Event Description

This presentation draws on two research projects undertaken in Victoria, designed to improve knowledge of pregnant women’s experiences of homelessness and the systemic challenges they face receiving appropriate housing and pregnancy care (Murray et al., 2020). Results showed how the resource-depleted housing context, combined with organisational restrictions that constrained care coordination and continuity, generated exclusionary outcomes for pregnant homeless women. These findings, informed by a feminist critical social work framework, draw attention to: the harms of gender-blind policy and practice; the approaches to providing care that work; and a need within social work to address challenges unique to pregnant women experiencing homelessness. Finally, we explore ways our findings can inform social work practice and policy responses to pregnant homeless women.

Murray S et al (2020), 'Not pregnant enough? Pregnancy and homelessness', RMIT University, Melbourne.

Presenters

Dr Jacqui Theobald is a senior lecturer in Social Work and Social Policy at La Trobe University and board member of Centre Against Sexual Assault Central Victoria. Jacqui’s primary areas of research interest include the historical and contemporary context of domestic violence services, gendered violence, women’s homelessness, and their related social policy and practice responses. She also has extensive teaching and practice experience in homelessness, social policy and poverty and inequality. Jacqui is the author, with Suellen Murray, of From the Margins to the Mainstream: The Domestic Violence Services Movement in Victoria, Australia 1974-2016 (2017).

Dr Juliet Watson is a senior lecturer in Social Work and Human Services at RMIT University and a past president of the Australian Women’s and Gender Studies Association. Juliet has extensive research, teaching, and practice experience in homelessness and gender-based violence. Her recent research includes studies of pregnancy and homelessness, older women and homelessness, and feminist activism. Juliet is the author of Youth Homelessness and Survival Sex: Intimate Relationships and Gendered Subjectivities (2018) and Hashtag Feminisms: Australian Media Feminists, Activism, and Digital Campaigns (forthcoming with Sarah Casey).