Battered Women's Profiles Associated with Service Help-Seeking Efforts: Illuminating Opportunities for Intervention

Knowledge about where battered women present for services and the violence, biopsychosocial, and demographic factors associated with their help seeking can provide social workers with guidance in anticipating needs among this portion of their clientele. The authors examined the service contact patterns of a sample of battered women (N = 448) following an incident of partner violence that triggered legal involvement. Significant group differences, tested with t tests and chi squares, between women who sought compared with those who did not seek services were found on partner violence exposure and biopsychosocial factors. Correlations and regression analyses of relationships among partner violence and biopsychosocial and demographic factors with help-seeking indices show how battered women's needs differentially relate across a range of service types. Results show distinctive profiles of needs and resources among battered women who seek violence, legal, health, economic, substance abuse, and religious helping services.