A talk on domestic violence against women with learning disabilities by Kent Professor Michelle McCarthy has attracted more than 1000 views on YouTube in just three weeks.
The talk on ‘Who does Domestic Abuse Affect’ was delivered by Professor McCarthy (Professor in Learning Disabilities at Kent’s Tizard Centre) as part of an online conference hosted by the Kent Integrated Domestic Abuse Service (KIDAS) in December.
Professor McCarthy has a research interest in working with women with learning disabilities focusing particularly on issues of relationships, sexuality and reproductive health. In her talk for KIDAS, she shares an overview of her research and considers how health and social care professionals, and those who work in the domestic violence field, can better support women with learning disabilities.
Professor McCarthy has a social work background and has worked with people with learning disabilities in a variety of residential and field settings. For four years she was the team leader of the Sex Education Team at Harperbury providing a specialist sexuality service to people with learning disabilities and staff.
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Professor McCarthy oversees the PhD programme at the Tizard Centre and supervises qualitative PhD research on the broad areas of relationships and sexuality, abuse, sexual and reproductive health in relation to women with learning disabilities.
In an earlier Think Kent video, Professor McCarthy talks about the similarities between the domestic violence experienced by women with learning disabilities and the phenomena of ‘grooming’ and ‘mate crime’ and suggests that it is helpful to think of, and respond to, them in similar ways.