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At the Institute:
Children Exposed to Violence, ASAP, and Fundraising Efforts

Penny Bain

Over the past few months, BCIFV has taken significant steps in the development of two major projects: the Working Group on Developing Best Practices: Children Exposed to Violence in Their Families; and the Aid to Safety Assessment and Planning, or ASAP.

The goals of the Working Group are to address gaps in resources, improve access to services, and enhance coordination between various types of services. The project began with the formation of a partnership with the BC/Yukon Society of Transition Houses, and creation of a group of experts including children-who-witness-abuse counsellors, and representatives of the BC Psychological Association, BC Children’s Hospital Mental Health Services, and Vancouver/Lower Mainland Multicultural Family Support Services.

The second step in this project, conducted by Dr. Sharon Agar, was a review of recent research related to children who are exposed to violence between their parents. Recently completed, this review lays the groundwork for identifying best practices in the continuum of services required to address the impact of exposure of children to family violence.

Upcoming steps will include: preparing a discussion paper of issues identified by the working group; conducting roundtables with service providers to discuss best-practice issues; drafting best-practice guidelines; reviewing and finalizing these with the experts, and, finally, publishing the guidelines. Issues include: the continuum from intervention to treatment; the role of various types of service providers; coordination of services; and ethno-cultural and First Nations issues. Service providers include: counsellors for children exposed to abuse, psychiatrists, psychologists, and community mental-health workers. The hoped-for end result will be an integration of all topics into a coordinated, working model of best practices for field use.

To obtain a copy of the literature review or learn more about the project, please contact the Executive Director at pbain@bcifv.org. A copy of a 2002 literature review Children Exposed to Partner Violence: An Overview of Key Issues is available for downloading from our website here.

The Institute is also developing the Aid to Safety Assessment and Planning with the dual goals of helping women who are targets of violence within relationships to evaluate risk, and empowering them to plan for their safety. The ASAP will provide guidelines for safety assessment and planning, and offer suggestions for protective measures that justice-system and non-justice system service providers can use to maximize women’s safety.

There will be three versions of the ASAP, one each for support workers, justice-system workers, and health-care providers. The manual will: examine the abuser risk factors developed in the Spousal Assault Risk Assessment (SARA) tool and the B-Safer tool, which is a shorter version of the SARA used by police and other frontline workers; discuss the supports women need to implement the best possible safety plans as well as the barriers that often prevent them from doing so; and describe best practices relating to actions workers can take to maximize women’s safety, with special attention to the fact that a coordinated approach is the single most effective aspect of this.

The ASAP is being developed in partnership with the Victim Services Division Ministry of Public Safety and Solicitor General, and in consultation with the BC Association of Specialized Victim Assistance and Counselling Program, the BC/Yukon Society of Transition Houses, BC Women’s Hospital Woman Abuse Program, the Pacific Association of First Nations Women, and the Vancouver Police Department Domestic Violence Unit, among others.

We hope to have the ASAP manual ready for pilot testing by the fall and are in the process of selecting pilot sites in BC and three other provinces. To learn more about the project or have your agency participate in the pilot testing, please contact the Executive Director at pbain@bcifv.org.

In addition, the Institute is in the planning stages of developing several fundraising initiatives. We advertised our first effort—the Husky and Mohawk Gas Community Rebate Program—in our last issue and again in this issue. We are also planning to re-launch our previously successful Sponsor-a-Book program to help fund our Resource Centre, and have many other ideas in the works. Please consider ways that you can lend us your support.