Paper long abstract:

Gender-based violence is a serious problem in Kyrgyzstan which occurs in a context of weak institutions of social protection for women and an emerging social work community of practice. Research shows that women face significant barriers to disclosing violence because of cultural and social norms that support or encourage the abuse. As a result, negative consequences are not fully addressed. To increase women's and girls' comfort and confidence in disclosing gender-based violence in healthcare and social service settings, survivors need access to skilled providers and tools/resources to confidentially disclose and seek help and support for safety planning, including referrals to appropriate health, legal, and economic services in communities. This study examines the responses of criminal justice, healthcare, and social service professionals to gender-based violence and explores their views on the feasibility of adapting, implementing, and testing an evidence and technology-based safety planning intervention called myPlan. This study outlines the preliminary results of the field work conducted in summer 2018 to obtain in-country expertise among key stakeholders and find out their reactions to myPlan. The results show that the social service providers and healthcare professionals see the strong need for safety planning and better service delivery in Kyrgyzstan. They view myPlan as a promising approach to providing women-centered safety planning and standardizing their screening and response to gender-based violence. The study deploys in-depth qualitative interviewing with a sample of informants and uses textual analysis of transcripts to generate insights for further research.