Making the Case for Domestic Violence Prevention Through the Lens of Cost-Benefit
A Manual for Domestic Violence Prevention Practitioners
(and the State and Local Policy-Makers They Present to)
The Challenges Of Funding Prevention Programs
Most people would agree that direct services to victims of domestic violence are essential. But how can we make the argument that addressing the violence before it occurs is ultimately more beneficial to society?
“As a practitioner, what would be really helpful when I go to local policy-makers is to be able to show how much has been invested in the state and nationally for domestic violence prevention. To say, ‘you’re not alone – this is what you have backing up your investment.’”
Devorah Levine, Special Projects Manager
Zero Tolerance for Domestic Violence Initiative
Contra Costa County, California. September 23, 2005.
Compared with other states, California is actually ahead of the curve with regard to funding domestic violence prevention activities, having invested over $40 million in domestic violence prevention since 1994. (Estimate by Donna Garske, Executive Director, Marin Abused Women’s Services, during an Office of Emergency Services Family Violence Prevention Project Advisory Committee meeting, March 25, 2004.) Numerous prevention programs have been implemented around the state, with activities ranging from: classroom curricula to help prevent dating violence among school-age youth; to public education campaigns in general population and ethnic media; using theatre with Spanish speaking agricultural workers; and other projects. (California Department of Health Services, Battered Women Shelter Program Prevention Grants Summary, Fall 2004.) Please see side boxes for some examples of prevention programs in California.
Yet, in a series of community hearings across California, participants – including people working in health, education, social services, local and county government, faith communities, law enforcement, grassroots organizations, and other sectors – noted as distinct obstacles in their domestic violence prevention work:
A lack of sustainable funding;
Non-integrated data-reporting and operating systems;
Difficulty in accessing locally relevant data;
A lack of resources for evaluation; and,
The fact that evaluation requirements are often unrelated to local measures.
They also stressed the need for increased leadership to support and advance prevention, and a desire to increase prioritization of primary prevention. (Baxi, S., Davis, R. (2001). A Local Call to State Action: Findings from Community Hearings in California. Prepared for the Shifting the Focus Initiative. Oakland, California: Prevention Institute.)
While prevention work is necessarily a long-term process – involving changing social norms, policies, and behaviors that indirectly and directly contribute to domestic violence – funding for prevention programs is often precarious and short-term. As people dedicated to doing prevention work, we must ask ourselves:
How can we establish an ongoing funding stream for domestic violence prevention work?
How can we demonstrate that our prevention strategies are measurably effective at substantially reducing the social and economic costs of domestic violence?
How can we convince policy-makers making decisions about funding social programs that these prevention programs are worthy of their financial investment?
“Getting the cost-effectiveness of prevention on the radar is really important. We really need to talk about how systemic and social change are the result of interconnected and coordinated efforts within communities.”
Larissa Griffin-Sponsler, Resource Coordinator
Battered Women’s Justice Project, Minneapolis, Minnesota. September 23, 2005.
“Prevention is a process of continuous improvements where you’re getting constant feedback from different groups in the community and making changes. Where it is found that the work is not quite meeting the mark, we need to make it meaningful for people, hold ourselves accountable to outcomes, and be willing to adjust along the way. The cost-benefit piece is just one way to think about the value of the whole prevention effort.”
Susan Brutschy, President
Applied Survey Research, Watsonville, California. September 23, 2005.
Side boxes: Examples of Domestic Violence Prevention Programs in California
Berkeley High School Domestic Violence Prevention Program
Christell, a senior at Berkeley High School, has the entire classroom captivated as she recites from a poem she wrote last night. The poem starts with romance and ends with the young woman protagonist realizing, “He wasn’t my everything – I was. But it was too late.”
Christell is part of a team of peer educators who reach out to other teens and raise awareness about dating and other forms of violence through the Berkeley Public Health Department’s Domestic Violence Prevention Program at Berkeley High School. Today, she is co-facilitating a series of classroom presentations with Jessica and Nilda, both juniors. The three young women are articulate and present information in a way that really grabs the attention of the other students. For example, in every presentation, they include dramatized skits that make the issue real for their teen audience. One student says at the end of class, “I thought this would just be another one of those presentations where we watch a video and adults try to relate to us. But you really know what you’re talking about. The skits show what it’s all about and how the violence progresses.”
The teen activists know their material well. Having lived through personal experiences with domestic violence, each of them decided that she had to do something to help other young people affected by domestic violence – and to invite the community to act. With training and support from adult mentors, they designed the curriculum and continue to seek ways to get their message out into the community. “We’re educated about the issue. We know why domestic violence happens, how it starts, local laws, and what people can do to prevent it. Our activism works because we speak to our peers on their level – we understand their experience.” LaTisha, also a senior at Berkeley High School, is a part of this program because of incidents she has seen and friends who have needed her help. She says, “Before, I did not know what to do or say, but since I have been active with this program I have learned what to do, who to contact and how to help my peers prevent themselves from being in an abusive situation.”
While the young women feel that their work with their peers is effective, they believe that adult attitudes and behaviors also need to be addressed. They would like to work more with adult groups – including batterers’ intervention programs – to convey the message that what adults are doing is affecting their own children. They would also like to make more links with other political issues that portray youth as the problem instead of part of the solution.
Originally printed in Catalyst: Strategies to Involve Youth in Preventing Domestic Violence, Transforming Communities Technical Assistance Training and Resource Center (TC-TAT),
Vol. 2, No. 2, Spring 2000.
Preventing Violence Against Women with Disabilities (PVAWD) Training Project
Although some strides have been made, the critical needs of women with disabilities who are abused or are potential targets of abuse have yet to be addressed in a comprehensive manner across California. This is a critical gap as research tells us that women with disabilities are more likely to experience abuse than women without disabilities and that these women are also at higher risk for abuse by multiple perpetrators for longer periods of time.
The PVAWD Project, funded by the California Department of Health Services, is a statewide training project designed to identify and enhance violence prevention programs and services to women with disabilities. This project trains disability service professionals to recognize and prevent violence among the populations they serve, and identify and increase referrals to violence prevention services. Through cross-training, this project also educates violence prevention advocates about disabilities, the barriers that exist to serving women with disabilities, and short- and long-term strategies to eliminate these barriers.
The increased communication and shared goals fostered by the PVAWD Project facilitates sustainable relationships between the disability and violence prevention communities. This collaborative effort will stimulate creative solutions, foster innovative change, and lay the foundation for additional efforts to prevent violence against women with disabilities in California.
For more information, please contact: pvawd@tranformcommunities.org
Preventing Intimate Partner Violence in the Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual and Transgender (LGBT) Community
“STOP” Partner Abuse is a prevention program aimed at reducing violence in same-gender relationships in the Los Angeles area by providing anger management groups, oppression awareness education, networking opportunities, and community-based campaigns. Providing services, prevention-oriented messages, and policy changes that are specific to Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual, and Transgender (LGBT) people helps to break down denial that intimate partner violence (IPV) happens in the LGBT community, increases people’s ability to recognize and avoid violent same-gender relationships, and creates community accountability for this problem.
This project is making a difference by:
Providing anger management educational support groups that give participants the tools they need to resolve conflicts without violence.
Helping participants to recognize internalized homophobia as well as external homophobia, giving both victim and perpetrator the ability to see red flags and not engage in violent relationships.
Offering resources (including a hotline number) and information at community events that are specific to LGBT people, thereby increasing visibility of IPV in same-gender relationships and breaking through individual and community denial.
Working with local police to implement systemic changes in the police training program, data collection and response to LGBT domestic violence calls.
For more information, please contact: Delena Couchman, Prevention Program Coordinator, Los Angeles Gay & Lesbian Center, dcouchman@laglc.org.
Preventing Domestic Violence Among Farmworker Women
Lideres Campesinas
Since 1992, Lideres Campesinas has worked to develop the capacity of and provide a unified voice for farmworker women in California. This statewide network of women activists focuses on social and health issues of farmworkers such as economic development, pesticide poisoning, HIV education, nutrition and domestic violence.
Lideres Campesinas began working in the domestic violence prevention arena after needs assessments in 1988 and 1993 indicated that intimate violence is one of the top five concerns among farmworker women. This is not to say that domestic violence is more of a problem in farmworker communities. Rather, factors such as isolation, language barriers, fears of deportation, and limited bilingual and bicultural services make it difficult for farmworker women to leave abusive situations.
The work of Lideres Campesinas is based on a peer education model. Lideres Campesinas trains women organizers in the causes of domestic violence, its symptoms and available resources. The domestic violence training program addresses how cultural and poverty issues affect the way that farmworker women deal with the violence in their lives. Organizers who go through the training return to their communities and share the information they have learned with other farmworkers.
Lideres Campesinas uses a variety of strategies to break the linguistic barriers and cultural reluctance that impede Hispanic farmworker women from being vocal about their abuse. One successful strategy has been to perform skits at forums and other community education activities. The skits are performed in Spanish and recreate scenarios of domestic abuse. The skits are followed by presentations on the cycle of domestic violence and information about community resources. Lideres Campesinas often partners with social service organizations, law enforcement, and others in the community in their efforts to prevent violence among farmworker women.
For more information, please contact: Mily Trevino-Sauceda, Founder and Director, Lideres Campesinas, 611 South Rebecca Street, Pomona, CA 91666. Phone: (909) 865-7776. Email: liderescampesinas@hotmail.com.