The Family Violence Prevention and Services Act Program has teamed up with love is respect to produce a podcast to speak to young people about healthy relationships. In this episode, the group discussed the importance of understanding the warning signs of dating violence, setting healthy boundaries, raising awareness, and promoting safe and healthy relationships.

Addressing teen dating violence, which includes physical, sexual, and psychological abuse, is a priority for healthy youth development. Teens who experience dating violence – particularly when their victimizations go untreated – may be at increased risk for a range of negative outcomes, including involvement in further intimate partner violence as adults. This National Institute of Justice (NIJ) factsheet discusses what has been learned from NIJ-sponsored research about how to understand and respond to teen dating violence. NIJ elaborates on the following five things about teen dating violence:

1. Teen dating relationships that involve violence often involve mutual violence; 
2. Teen dating violence does not tend to occur in single, isolated instances;
3. A range of risk factors are associated with becoming involved in teen dating violence;
4. Teen dating violence is associated with a range of short- and long-term negative outcomes; and
5. Programs to reduce teen dating violence perpetration and victimization have demonstrated effectiveness.

Recognizing and responding to teen dating violence requires an awareness of the prevalence of dating violence, indicators of abuse in relationships, and steps to take if someone is experiencing dating violence. Dating violence is often overlooked due to preconceived ideas about what abuse looks like in relationships or the false assumption that it is not prevalent in young people's relationships. This toolkit begins with an overview of teen dating violence for all audiences and the subsequent sections provide relevant information directed to parents and students as well as school staff. Case managers and advocates can navigate the modules for relevant resources.

Helping teens develop healthy and respectful relationships early on may protect them from the harmful consequences of dating and other forms of interpersonal violence and set the stage for healthy relationship patterns that persist into adulthood. This Children’s Safety Network recording is accompanied by presentations and supplemental resources from the September 6, 2023 webinar. The material highlighted in this resource includes the Dating Matters initiative, a comprehensive teen dating violence prevention model by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, as well as an expert’s work with Rape Prevention Education grantees, which uses evidence-based strategies to impact broader cultural perspectives on sexual harassment and dating norms.

The Domestic Violence Resource Network (DVRN) is an essential coordinating network that provides training, technical assistance, and systems-based advocacy to existing grantees or anyone wanting to help survivors. The DVRN’s efforts help ensure that every state, tribe, and community can offer essential services to individuals who experience and are recovering from domestic violence. The DVRN brings a collective voice to advocates, organizations, and programs that work to prevent and address domestic violence with the support of discretionary grant funding. This work is done through national, special issue, culturally specific, and emerging or current issue resource centers and national domestic violence hotlines. This Office of Family Violence Prevention and Services factsheet lists DVRN’s partner organizations that work together to improve domestic violence prevention and intervention for people, families, communities, and the very systems set up to support and respond to this important societal concern.

The Domestic Violence Resource Network (DVRN) is funded by the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services to inform and strengthen domestic violence intervention and prevention efforts at the individual, community, and societal levels. DVRN works collaboratively to promote practices and strategies to improve our nation’s response to domestic violence and make safety and justice not just a priority, but also a reality. DVRN member organizations ensure that victims of domestic violence and professionals (including but not limited to advocates, community‐based programs, case managers, and government leaders at the local, state, tribal and federal levels) have access to up‐to-date information on best practices, policies, research, and victim resources.

love is respect hosts Teen Dating Violence Awareness Month (TDVAM) annually as an effort to focus on advocacy and education to stop dating abuse before it starts. The theme, “Love Like That,” illuminates what ‘that’ means regarding healthy and unhealthy relationships. This webpage offers the 2024 TDVAM materials, including an action guide, a calendar of events, and a social media guide.

The National Indigenous Women’s Resource Center is hosting a re-watch of a webinar hosted originally in 2023, on February 21, 2024 at 3:00 p.m. ET. In this live re-watch, participants will hear a discussion on how youth advocates can address teen dating violence in Tribal communities. The webinar will include available tools and resources for Native youth; defining violent versus healthy relationships, and empowering the next generation through Indigenous values.

In 2020, the Urban Institute (UI) published a framework comprising 26 mobility metrics that can help communities understand and track the factors that most influence mobility from poverty. Urban Institute’s framework identifies five pillars that support mobility from poverty and their predictors, which both reflect performance and can be influenced by local leaders to help bolster the conditions that boost upward mobility and narrow racial inequities.

On January 25, 2024, the Center for the Study of Social Policy hosted a webinar where community providers discussed the challenges they face in providing responsive services, including building evidence and operating in the context of restrictive “evidence-based” standards. Panelists provided recommendations for actions that state and federal policymakers can take to ensure all families have the support they need through expanding access and availability of programs that are developed by and for communities of color.

Read the corresponding brief here.