ABSTRACT
Two areas of probation work-family court welfare and groups for perpetrators (treated separately in Chapters 7 and 9)—have, to date, been the main sites of changed practice as far as domestic abuse is concerned. The challenge now is to extend this attention to the rest of the service’s responsibilities. This will need to happen, of course, within a wider appreciation of gender oppression and its interaction with other forms of oppression-drawing, for example, on an awareness that Black women (e.g. Patel, 1990) and abused gay men and lesbians (e.g. Underwood, 1989) may be reluctant to use the criminal justice system for protection for fear of its inherent racism and homophobia against their partners or themselves. Similarly, women who do not speak English will be unable to seek police help unless interpreters are made more widely available, and women who fear deportation will be most unlikely to call the police under any circumstances.1
