Bridging trauma-informed care and organizational accommodations: an ethnographic analysis of tensional knots in an anti-violence nonprofit

ABSTRACT

Accessible services are not always available for survivors of sexual assault and intimate partner violence who are d/Deaf/Hard of Hearing (D/HH). Constraints on communication for staff at issue-based nonprofits often negatively impacts their work to achieve the organization’s mission. Drawing on data gathered from 12-months of ethnographic research at a regional, issue-based, anti-violence nonprofit in the southwestern U.S., this ethnography investigates tensional knots that restrict staff from supporting D/HH clients. Mandated accommodations disrupt ableist practices and construct knotted organizational tensions between: (a) generalized vs. specialized support for clients, and (b) routine vs. non-routine intervention practices. Participants describe a complex and tangled set of organizational tensions in their engagement of generalized, routine structures, while inventing new, non-routine avenues to communicate support to their D/HH clients. Ultimately, the tensional knots uncover issues nonprofits face with addressing accessibility and the interplay of tensions.

KEYWORDS:

• Nonprofit organizations
• deafness
• tension-centered organizing
• critical disability studies
• trauma-informed care

Acknowledgements

This article was drawn from the first author’s master’s thesis research completed at San Diego State University. The authors are extremely grateful to the volunteers and staff at the Western Crisis Center for their engagement, vulnerability, and guidance throughout the first author’s fieldwork. The authors would like to thank the Bread and Roses Center for Feminist Research and Activism at San Diego State University, where the first author received the Bread and Roses Activist-Scholar Fellowship to support her pursuit of this research. The authors would also like to thank the two anonymous reviewers for their insightful criticisms and contributions.

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).

Notes

1 Not all people who are d/Deaf approach their lack of hearing as a disability. Some view it as membership in the Deaf community with a capital ‘D’; and others utilize the lower ‘d’ to signify their deafness as disabling (Tucker, 1998). To be inclusive of all people affected by deafness or who are hard of hearing, we use the term ‘d/Deaf’ to signify both cultural significance and individual autonomy.