Intervention sociojudiciaire en violence conjugale au Québec : représentations professionnelles des intervenantes qui en font l'expérience

Context: Examining the evolution of social response to domestic violence highlights the fact that many states, including Québec, have prioritized the institutionalization of policies and the creation of practices favouring coordinated response systems within communities to counter the problem of domestic violence. This process has led to the creation and development of various initiatives since the 1980s. Among these, we find specialized socio-legal services, interagency coordination mechanisms, as well as collaboration protocols that combine psychosocial and judicial practices. A large part of these initiatives involves psychosocial and judiciary key players and are part of various intervention systems established within the communities in the United States, Australia, United Kingdom, and Canada. In Québec, these services, mechanisms and protocols, coupled within response systems, are united under the designation “socio-legal intervention”. The subject of the following thesis is this intervention. More specifically, this thesis will aim to circumscribe, in a holistic perspective, the socio-legal intervention in cases of domestic violence in Québec based on professional representations of the key players who implement it.  Methodology: To reach this objective, a qualitative research inspired by single case study was conducted in one of the seventeen administrative regions of Québec. The selected method to collect data in this study was interviews with key informants who have professional experience with socio-legal intervention for domestic violence cases. Thus, 37 semi-structured individual interviews were conducted with key players from 10 types of organizations involved in the socio-judicial response to domestic violence. These interviews were assessed with an array of content analysis strategies, some of which were based on different models derived from conceptualization work of the research subject. Furthermore, these analyses and their results are more broadly positioned into the theoretical framework of professional representation and in a constructivist pragmatic epistemology. Results: Overall, the results of the study bring forth, describe and analyse four different and essential aspects of the socio-legal intervention with regards to domestic violence: its components, its practices, its framework and prescriptive orientations, and its challenges. For each of these elements, it has been possible to notice the presence of shared experiences and professional representation within the participants, as well different experiences according to the participants’ various affiliations, particularly in the professional field of practice and in the organizational affiliation. Through this study, it was observed that the implementation of the socio-legal intervention with regards to domestic violence in the examined region is not very integrated, since most of its practices involve little or no interdependency between its key players. Finally, numerous challenges that can compromise the coherence of the undertaken actions in the studied response system were observed.  Repercussions: At the theoretical level, the study conducted led to the elaboration of a definition of socio-legal intervention in cases of domestic violence, as practised in Québec. The study has also circumscribed this intervention in its socio-historical context and shone a light on the areas of this intervention process where notable progress was noticed; and on the areas where little evolution and even setbacks seem present. At the practical level, this study has the potential to create better collaboration, notably by promoting a better knowledge and comprehension of the different realities experienced by the key players involved in the studied response system. This study also highlights the small number of concerted practices as well as the lack of integrated practices, both of which have been proven to be more efficient in responding to more complex intervention situations. Thus, questions are raised as to the studied system’s capacity to respond to the needs of the large number of people struggling with domestic violence issues as well as with other complex difficulties.

Keyphrases: intervention, socio-legal, domestic violence, professional representations, professional collaboration