Commit to Antiracist Practice 
Help Families with Actual Needs 
Advance Legal/Policy Protections 
Nurture Partnerships 
Generate Relevant Research 
Eliminate Incentives for Child Removal Families navigating domestic violence within the child welfare system require attention to their actual needs. However, interventions often become solely fixated on white centric notions of child safety with case plans that require survivors to jump through hoops to prove their worthiness rather than provide resources that actually address a survivor parent's safety and immediate needs. Survivors face a host of individual, social, and systemic barriers such as fear, shame, distrust of police and courts, and a lack of appropriate, trauma-informed, culturally relevant services. Amplifying these challenges is the notable absence of access to services such as housing, childcare, healthcare and basic food and clothing. Effective interventions would provide resources that meet actual needs rather than inadvertently destabilize families and intensify existing barriers.
A Tool to Create Change
Get access now to a sample tool that will help you identify the critical needs that systems frequently fail to provide to families experiencing domestic violence.
Strategies to counter these challenges can include:
Provide access to meaningful employment
- Facilitate substantial employment opportunities that lead to economic stability
Create tangible opportunities for wealth building
- Challenging historical injustices like redlining, meaningful access to wealth-building opportunities, including clear pathways to homeownership, fosters equity, empowerment and economic stability
Advocate for expanded federal funding for long term housing, childcare, basic income, and other economic supports for survivors
- Collaborate with domestic violence advocacy groups and other stakeholders to advocate for increased funding and resources at the federal level to support survivors' long-term needs
- Work with community partners to identify and access additional funding sources and grants to supplement existing resources
Offer flexible funding, relevant services, and competent system advocacy for survivors
- Conduct in depth assessments for each survivor family to understand their unique circumstances and challenges and respond accordingly
- Provide survivors with a range of resources, such as housing assistance, childcare options, meaningful access to employment options, and legal support, tailored to their specific needs
- Train child welfare workers to provide culturally competent and trauma-informed services that are responsive to the diverse backgrounds and experiences of survivors
- Practice the implementation of flexible funding strategies within organizations. The effective application of these strategies necessitates a paradigm shift that center survivors and their needs as stated by them
Develop multiple strategies for survivor safety and well-being beyond leaving the person who uses violence
- Recognize that leaving an abusive relationship may not always be the immediate or best option for survivors
- Collaborate with survivors to develop safety plans that consider their individual circumstances and may involve various options, such as accessing support from community networks, relocation assistance, or rental assistance
- Recognize that survivors may be in contact with the partner that caused them harm for a variety of reasons and adapt safety planning to include systems, community members, extended families, etc. as relevant
- Continuously reassess and adjust safety plans based on the survivor's changing needs and goals
Avoid requiring trauma narratives from survivors as a prerequisite for accessing supportive and affirming services
- Ensure that survivors are not re-traumatized by requiring them to repeatedly recount their experiences of abuse to access services
- Establish trauma-informed intake processes that prioritize survivors' safety, dignity, and well-being without imposing unnecessary burdens on them
- Encourage the use of survivor-led approaches that empower individuals to guide their own healing journey
Share stories about how experiences of love, parenting, child development and healing are all culture bound in efforts to reimagine child, family, community well-being in systems and services
- Utilize storytelling and narrative-based approaches to promote understanding and empathy among child welfare workers and stakeholders
- Highlight diverse cultural perspectives on love, parenting, and healing, and how these perspectives can inform more effective and culturally relevant services
- Collaborate with community members and organizations to share their stories and experiences to help shape child welfare policies and practices
Provide affordable, high-quality, and secure childcare options empowers parents to seek employment and attend to their children's well-being
Offer culturally responsive healthcare that is affordable and culturally relevant healthcare as this ensures survivors' physical and mental well-being
Resources
- Issue Brief on Protective Factors for Survivors of Domestic Violence
Protective factors for survivors of domestic violence (DV) are an essential component of the Risk and Protective Factors Framework of the Adult & Child Survivor-Centered Approach (the Approach) developed by the Quality Improvement Center on Domestic Violence in Child Welfare. This brief provides guidance for child welfare, domestic violence programs that serve both survivors and offenders, courts, and other collaborative partners about building protective factors that studies show lessen the impact of DV on both child and adult survivors and promote their safety, healing, and well-being.
- PIVOT Towards Promising Futures
What pivots are needed to create a future where families are not surveilled and separated, where communities are resourced and parents and caregivers get what they really need? Grantees are invited to join the conversation by tuning in to our new podcast, launching next Wednesday! PIVOT Towards Promising Futures is a podcast for activists and advocates who work in the field of gender-based violence. Episodes examine our work over the decades – where we have fallen short and in some cases been harmful to families – and explore what it takes to slow down, reassess and pivot in a new direction. Available on all major platforms - Housing and Domestic Violence
Victims of domestic violence struggle to find permanent housing after fleeing abusive relationships. Many have left in the middle of the night with nothing but the clothes on their backs, and now must entirely rebuild their lives. As long-term housing options become scarcer, victims are staying longer in emergency domestic violence shelters. As a result, shelters are frequently full and must turn families away.” -- National Network to End Domestic Violence In this episode, we talk about the intersections between affordable housing and domestic violence with two experts at the National Network to End Domestic Violence: Monica McLaughlin, Director of Public Policy; and Debbie Fox, Senior Housing Policy & Practice Specialist
- Accountability Dialogues
People of color who live the problems we aim to solve have the most important information and the most unobstructed point of view. They see and experience on a daily basis what other solution designers only hear about from others – who themselves are usually not impacted people. Unfortunately, our current model of policymaking often excludes meaningful partnership with people of color who are survivors themselves – and fails to recognize and follow their leadership. The Accountability Dialogues aimed to change that. This three-part series of online discussions modeled a process for the co-design of policies to improve the lives of adult and child survivors of domestic violence who are involved with the child welfare system. It centered the voices, experiences, and wisdom of survivors of color and provided an opportunity for policymakers and influencers to hear directly from them about the impact the child welfare system has had in their lives and their communities. In doing this, the Dialogues catalyzed new ways of seeing and working oriented towards justice for survivors, as well as a poignant awareness of the urgent need for change and accountability in child welfare - Building Healthy Environments for Children and Youth Impacted by Violence Webinar
This webinar presents five research-based protective factors that illustrate opportunities for prevention and early intervention with families impacted by co-occurring domestic violence and child maltreatment. In this webinar, Dr. Tien Ung and Mie Fukuda will present new resources for the field, including an issue brief and practice tips on protective factors for survivors -
Hatred, Hope, and Healing: Personal Reflections from an Adult who Witnessed Domestic Violence as a Child
Learn about a family-centered approach to responding to domestic violence--one that engages and supports not only victims and survivors, but also the children who witness violence, as well as the adult perpetrators
- Adult Children Exposed to Domestic Violence (ACE-DV): A Project of the National Resource Center On Domestic Violence
The ACE-DV Leadership Forum is comprised of advocates in the movement to end gender-based violence who identify as having experienced domestic violence in childhood. The Leadership Forum was established to amplify the voices and experiences of ACE-DV to enhance our work to end domestic violenc - Domestic Violence Housing First
a program of the Washington State Coalition Against Domestic Violence, focuses on getting survivors into housing rapidly, and then providing flexible, trauma-informed, survivor-driven advocacy, flexible financial assistance, and community engagement - Casa Myrna
Casa Myrna in Boston, Massachusetts is leading the way in housing for survivors in collaboration with the Boston Regional Domestic Violence Partnership. With a mix of public and private funds, Casa Myrna is prioritizing and expanding access to housing and economic supports for survivors