In recognition of October as Domestic Violence Awareness Month, Administration for Children & Families (ACF) program offices have released a series of Information Memoranda (IM) and other guidance discussing the importance of addressing domestic violence situations and providing resources and support for victims and their families.

Domestic violence is a leading cause of homelessness among families with children. This blog post from the U.S. Interagency Council on Homelessness (USICH) describes how communities can use the 2017 Department of Housing and Urban Development (HUD) Continuum of Care (CoC) competition to increase access to housing for domestic violence survivors. There are four key ways that CoC leaders, homelessness service and housing providers, and domestic violence providers can strengthen their collaboration and partnerships. They can make sure they include victim services advocates as voting members on the CoC board, provide cross-training on trauma-informed care and other topics relevant to domestic violence, analyze data on the prevalence of domestic violence among people experiencing homelessness, and integrate safety planning into assessment procedures.

Domestic violence is a leading cause of homelessness among families with children. This blog post from the U.S. Interagency Council on Homelessness (USICH) describes how communities can use the 2017 Department of Housing and Urban Development (HUD) Continuum of Care (CoC) competition to increase access to housing for domestic violence survivors. There are four key ways that CoC leaders, homelessness service and housing providers, and domestic violence providers can strengthen their collaboration and partnerships. They can make sure they include victim services advocates as voting members on the CoC board, provide cross-training on trauma-informed care and other topics relevant to domestic violence, analyze data on the prevalence of domestic violence among people experiencing homelessness, and integrate safety planning into assessment procedures.

Domestic violence survivors often face challenges when trying to secure safe and affordable housing. This special collection from VAWnet provides resources to help providers of services pertaining to sexual assault, homelessness, and housing serve the housing needs of domestic violence survivors. The collection starts by describing the intersection between domestic violence and homelessness, especially for survivors of color. Next, the collection provides case studies illustrating partnerships between domestic violence organizations and affordable housing providers, and supplies four key strategies for helping addressing survivors’ barriers to safe housing. The collection also includes relevant public policies and statistics on the intersection between domestic and sexual violence, housing, and homelessness.

Children who are exposed to violence can experience negative effects throughout their lives, regardless of whether it is violence in the community or domestic violence or abuse at home. This RAND report, sponsored by the Office of Juvenile Justice and Delinquency Prevention, details the Safe Start project, which evaluated evidence-based programs aimed at mitigating the negative impact of violence on children. Safe Start consisted of two phases: the first phase was a demonstration of promising practices to address children’s exposure to violence and the second phase implemented those promising practices in 15 cities across the country. All sites were able to implement their programs, but families received fewer services than planned. The report includes these implementation challenges and offers recommendations for future programs serving children who have been exposed to violence.

There is currently limited evidence on the effectiveness of domestic violence program services. To fill this gap, the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services, Assistant Secretary for Planning and Evaluation contracted with the Center for Policy Research and the National Resource Center on Domestic Violence to identify where the evidence base could be stronger for domestic violence programs. This report summarizes the current evidence on domestic violence and highlights innovative and concrete areas of opportunity for building the evidence base. While domestic violence programs do show some evidence of contributing to survivor well-being, the research is limited and often has methodological issues. The researchers found multiple opportunities for strengthening the evidence base, such as supporting researcher-practitioner partnerships, supporting culturally-relevant research, building on the current theory of change, and developing and validating new measures of program components and outcomes.

The Promising Futures website is a useful resource for helping agencies transform or enhance their program’s ability to effectively meet the needs of women, children and youth experiencing domestic violence. The website is organized around five major topics:

• Get the Facts: includes general information and statistics about the effects of domestic violence on children, parenting, and outlines some guiding principles for enhancing our services for children and youth.
• Program Readiness: is designed to assist programs in revisiting their infrastructure, physical environment, policies and practices to better support the mother-child relationship and institutionalize the notion that our advocacy for mothers and kids should be connected in every way.
• Interventions for Children and Youth: includes searchable database of promising practices and evidence based clinical interventions for children and youth to help programs promote healing and resilience among mothers and children together. This section also includes some resources and information on working with special populations, and adaptation and evaluation of programs.
• Advancing the Field: discusses how advocates can be more intentional about implementing research informed practice including trauma informed strategies and partnering with researchers to document our success. This section also contains, Communities in Action which highlights innovative leaders in the field who are working on implementing new and enhancing existing interventions and policies to better serve children and youth within their programs.
• Tools: includes a multitude of resources to assist programs in capacity building including training curriculum, resources for families, and tools for research and evaluation.

This website was created to provide information on evidence based interventions and promising practices that are trauma informed, developmentally and culturally relevant, and strengthen the mother/child relationship.

The Family Violence Prevention and Services Act (FVPSA) is the primary federal funding stream for State and Territorial Domestic Violence Coalitions, which coordinate state- and territory-wide improvements within local communities, social service systems, and programming regarding the prevention and intervention of domestic violence. Every Coalition provides comprehensive training and technical assistance on a multitude of social, legal, and economic issues that affect victims’ safety and well-being. Each state, the District of Columbia, Puerto Rico, the U.S. Virgin Islands, Guam, the Commonwealth of the Northern Mariana Islands, and American Samoa, have a FVPSA-funded Domestic Violence Coalition. These coalitions are connected to more than 2,000 local domestic violence programs receiving FVPSA funding across the country. Every coalition provides comprehensive training and technical assistance on a multitude of social, legal, and economic issues that affect victims’ safety and well-being. Coalitions collaborate with government, private industry, non-profit organizations, faith-based communities, and other stakeholders to effectively coordinate and improve the safety net of services available to victims and their dependents.

In order to further the understanding of intergenerational transmission of violence, this review from the New York University (NYU) Applied Psychology Online Publications of Undergraduate Studies (OPUS) examines how children interpret and acknowledge familial violence. Additionally, it will also address familial and demographic factors that influence the intergenerational transmission of violence.

The Muslim Advocacy Network Against Domestic Violence (MANADV) is a national network comprised of predominantly Muslim advocates addressing domestic violence in Muslim communities through diverse faith-based and mainstream approaches and agencies. The aim of MANADV is to bring together a national network of advocates, service providers, legal and health care professionals, activists, researchers, scholars, and community based organizations to strengthen culturally appropriate advocacy, encourage dialogue and collaboration, develop models and analyses, and disseminate resources.