First of all:  educate yourself on what resources are
available in your community.  When doing an initial
intake, one can include questions that can help a
practioner determine if there is domestic violence
occuring in the mother's home.  You can start with
questions of support systems in the home.  If you need
assitance with how to go about this, you can turn to
your local women's shelter.  Often the first time a
woman experiences physical violence in a relationship
comes with pregnancy.

At our facility, there are stickers up in the
restrooms on the restroom mirror with the phone number
for the women's shelter.  We also have posters in the
clinics as well as scattered throughout the hospital.
We also have buttons stating that people can discuss
domestic violence with us.  You could also have a
pamphlet holder with information from the women's
shelter in your area.  I worked in the inpatient area
and part of our admission history included the
question "Do you have a safe place to go after you
leave here & after your child is discharged?"  The
question proved useful not only in domestic violence
situations but also when families were experiencing
homelessness or assistance with maintaining their
basic utilities.

Sincerely,
Linda Madsen, RN, IBCLC

__________________________________________________
Do you Yahoo!?
Yahoo! Platinum - Watch CBS' NCAA March Madness, live on your desktop!
http://platinum.yahoo.com

             ***********************************************

To temporarily stop your subscription: set lactnet nomail
To start it again: set lactnet mail (or digest)
To unsubscribe: unsubscribe lactnet
All commands go to [log in to unmask]

The LACTNET mailing list is powered by L-Soft's renowned
LISTSERV(R) list management software together with L-Soft's LSMTP(TM)
mailer for lightning fast mail delivery. For more information, go to:
http://www.lsoft.com/LISTSERV-powered.html