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>View discussions about this entry Country: Canada
Organization: Centre for Children & Families in the Justice System
Focus of activity: Education
Year the initiative began: 2003
Positioning in the Mosaic of solutions
Description of Initiative: UNICEF estimates that 275 million children live with violence against their mothers. Consequences for children are now well documented. A topic drawing less attention is how being a victim of domestic violence may affect a women as a mother. Parenting Tips for Mothers who Survived Woman Abuse is a research-informed parenting support system for children exposed to domestic violence embedded in a comprehensive, multi-faceted and accessible training initiative for helpers. Helping women as mothers is among the best ways to help children. However, most parenting courses and books are not appropriate for families where an abusive man was in the father role. An abusive man affects family dynamics in many harmful ways and his abuse and parenting style can compromise a womans efforts to be the best mother she could be.
Recognizing the unique dynamics of parenting in the presence of domestic violence, we developed material to help the helpers – broadly defined – support woman abuse survivors as mothers. Working backwards from an understanding of how children are shaped by domestic violence, we crafted ten concrete and straightforward parenting tips. These tips are embedded in a package of background material on how woman abuse affects parenting and how to help women as mothers. In the "Helping Children Thrive" resource, service deliverers find 27 handouts they are encouraged to copy and distribute to women in a one-on-one or group intervention on woman abuse or on parenting. A number of corollary resource documents are available at no cost through the Internet. A workbook for mothers of self-study exercises and homework assignments and a companion book appropriate for both mothers and their supporters is being written. It is called Making Tomorrow Better: Helpful and Hopeful Ways to Support Children as they Heal from Domestic Violence and Abuse. We are seeking a publisher. Many other future directions exist including the capacity for on-line training. Innovation: 1. Focusing on quality research, not all the research
Borrowing a systemic review techique from the Campbell Collaboration, we analyzed over 500 sources of information. This led to the development of a framework to guide assessment, program development and research, as summarized in “What About Me! Seeking to Understand the Child’s View of Violence in the Family” (2004). 2. Supporting the mother to help the child 3. Listening to children 4. Listening to service deliverers 5. Attending to transportability 6. Accessiblity 7. Diffusing service delivery 8. Sustainablity Delivery Model: Delivery of support and information to mothers is accomplished by helpers around the world who find the material through word of mouth, at conferences, at training workshops, or through the Internet. The approach is not prescriptive nor does it constrain service deliverers to set modalities or timing of intervention. We assume that helpers are best able to appreciate and meet the needs of women. The material is flexible and adaptable, designed to be integrated into existing services. Some women – the ultimate "clients" – use it for self-study.
The Centre supports the use of the material by making it available on the Internet (in a small but increasing number of languages); and by providing on-site training tailored to local needs mostly in the U.S. and Canada but also Europe and Asia. These documents describe the parenting information: Helping Children Thrive: Information for Mothers who Have Left Abusive Relationships (2004). Helping Children Thrive / Supporting Woman Abuse Survivors as Mothers: A Resource to Support Parenting (2004). Also available as corollary resources are: Little Eyes, Little Ears: How Violence Against a Mother Shapes Her Children as they Grow (2007). Learning to Listen, Learning to Help: Understanding Woman Abuse and its Effects on Children (2005). Professors Resource Guide to Teaching About Woman Abuse and its Effects on Children (2005). What About Me! Seeking to Understand the Child’s View of Violence in the Family (2004). Key Operational Partnerships: In effect, any woman-serving organization, anywhere in the world, is a potential partner.
The resources comprising our parenting support for women abuse survivors have a strong empirical and practical base, are user friendly, and are accessible at no cost. Our philosophy is to attract partners by producing high-quality products that meet the needs of service deliverers and their clients. Financial Model: The developmental phase was funded by foundations and government grants while the sale of resources and revenue from training and public speaking partially supports the evolution of new material. Book royalties will greatly augment our work when we are able to complete and publish our new workbook for women and accompanying book: "Making Tomorrow Better: Helpful and Hopeful Ways to Support Children as they Heal from Domestic Violence and Abuse." Careful attention to the language and terminology makes it suitable for an American audience but also appropriate in Canada, Australia, the United Kingdom and other places where English is spoken understood. Therefore, we anticipate the the royal revenues will be significant.
External agencies can use the existing material without incurring any cost. To our knowledge, women who access services informed by the resources are not charged a fee. Moreover, women with access to the Internet can find the material themselves. We are always sensitive to the issue of cost because we never want money to be a barrier to the ability of women or the people who serve them from accessing help.
Effectiveness: At the request of the project funder, feedback was solicited from users of "Helping Children Thrive" via an Internet form in 2004. Most of the respondents were Canadian while 8% were American. Respondents worked at women’s shelters or in the children's mental health field. They found the literacy level appropriate for the women they serve. Almost all (97%) agreed the material helps their work and 94% said it is helpful to the women they serve. Many respondents (53%) indicated that their knowledge of child exposure to domestic violence was fairly extensive before they read “Helping Children Thrive.” Even so, 76% said their knowledge level increased after using it. All the people whose knowledge level had not increased considered themselves highly knowledgeable already. However, half of the people who rated themselves as highly knowledgeable said that their knowledge level increased. Similar findings were evident when asked about knowledge of parenting interventions, and perceived capacity to assist women as parent. Recommendations for future directions included translation into other languages, creation of a video, and more of the activities and fill-in-the-blank exercises already there.
Australian Pilot in Women's Refuges
Scaling up Strategy: When an abusive relationship ends, women often worry about their children but have difficulty channeling that love and concern into concrete strategies to help them heal. In the research literature, virtually all empirical work on parenting by abused women was concerned only with documenting their deficits as mothers. At the same time, the enormous volume of parenting resources was not addressing the unique needs of children who lived with domestic violence. Some staff of women’s shelters were telling us they did not always feel prepared to help women with questions about parenting children who had lived with domestic violence. Staff of mainstream counseling services recognized how the dynamics of abuse created unique challenges when delivering parenting support to families characterized by domestic violence. Integrating these streams of ideas, we spent several years developing the material in a triangulated process of reviewing the literature, interviewing mothers and children, and listening to the feedback from front-line professionals who attend our training sessions.
The plan is to continue developing new materials, especially that appropriate for self-study by women. Raising awareness about the availability of the material is an on-going activity. For example, we are giving a full-day workshop to premier some of the new material at the Third International Conference on Children Exposed to Domestic Violence in May, 2007. We want to explore and develop expertise in alternate modalities of knowledge transfer, such as on-line classes, CD-ROM based training modules, and perhaps DVD-based information for mothers. These technologies would expand the capacity to meet demand for training and permit training in a wider number of languages. We welcome opportunities to work with agencies in other countries to adapt the material to specific cultures. We would very much like to develop similar material suitable for men as fathers.
Origin of the Initiative: Over 30 years, the Centre for Children and Families in the Justice System has earned a reputation for excellence in service, innovation in program development, and rigorousness in the applied research which informs both. In the 1980s, staff at the Centre (then known as the London Family Court Clinic) were among the first front-line professionals to observe how exposure to domestic violence manifest in the worrisome behavior, emotions and thoughts of children. Until that point, it was generally assumed that children were affected only if directly maltreated themselves. The first opportunity to reflect our experience in resources for the front-line came with a generous grant from the Packard Foundation. Four resources were created for police, educators, early childhood educators and staff of juvenile custody and detention facilities in the United States.
Main Obstacles to Scaling Up: Time and resources. We have many ideas about future development and are limited only by time and resource constraints.
Main Partnership Challenges: Our partners value greatly the work we produce to support their work. They themselves are challenged by time and resource constraints, and we wish we could do more pro bono work for them.
Contact Information:
Alison Cunningham
Director of Research & Planning Centre for Children & Families in the Justice System (NGO) alison@lfcc.on.ca 200 - 254 Pall Mall St. LONDON ON N6A 5P6 CANADA Canada Tel: 1-519-679-7250 Fax: 1-519-675-7772 Website: www.lfcc.on.ca Discussions about this entry |
Helping Children Thrive: Supporting the Mothering of Woman Abuse Survivors
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Indeed, these violence abuses must stop. The google magic formula review may the helpful in this domain. Take care!
People are asking about our new resource coming out -- Little Eyes, Little Ears: How Violence Against A Mother Shapes Children as they Grow. It goes to print this week and will be available in electronic format very soon (in English and French). Anyone (not only Canadians) can order free copies through the National Clearinghouse on Family Violence web site. We thank the Public Health Agency of Canada for taking on this distribution task. Look for it mid-May. And thanks to everyone -- like Berry Mugo -- for their kind words of support and encouragement.
Alison Cunningham
Director of Research & Planning
Centre for Children & Families in the Justice System
200 - 254 Pall Mall St. London ON CANADA N6A 5P6
alison@lfcc.on.ca
www.lfcc.on.ca
A very innovative and strategic apprach in responding to violence within families. By responding to the effect and impact of violence to children, this approach in itself challenges responding to the effects of violence on children with complacency. By so doing, this project is a pace setter in breaking the cycle of violence.