Training and Resources

Domestic Abuse Intervention Project

Background

In the 1970's, when the first shelters for battered women opened, the response of law enforcement, courts and human service practitioners to domestic assault cases was dismally inadequate. Since that time policy makers in almost every profession involved in these cases have reassessed their appropriate intervention roles in cases of battering.

As the system's response came under increased scrutiny by advocacy groups, the press, lawmakers, researchers, academics and the public, leaders within the many disciplines began to recognize the need to develop and implement new policies and protocols to protect victims. Recognizing the need for change in how practitioners within public agencies respond is only the first step in a long and often difficult process of implementing. Since 1974 hundreds of federal, state and city commissions and task forces have studied the problem and make recommendations for change.

With few exceptions, these public commissions document brutal beatings, psychological terrorism and murders that could have been prevented by altering not the perpetrator's character or the response of the victim to the perpetrator, but the reaction of the public agencies to the violence, to the perpetrator and to the victim. Public commissions consistently point to five areas to improve the system's response to assault cases:

1. A shift in the orientation of the system's response of placing the major responsibility of stopping the violence on the shoulders of the victim, to recognizing the role that community agencies must play in directly confronting the perpetrator.
2. A need to be consistent in how practitioners in a given discipline respond, and the need to exchange the information and observations of the many people involved in a case for practitioners to make informed decisions.
3. A need to enhance practitioners' technical skills in working with assailants, victims and children.
4. A need to increase the understanding of human service and court agents of the complex set of economic, physical and psychological conditions that exist in relationships where there is violence.
5. A need to insure basic protective resources for victims of violence.