Offender Offender Focused Domestic Violence Initiative (OFDVI)

This workshop will focus on the implementation of focus deterrence style of policing, as applied to the Offender Focused Domestic Violence Initiative (OFDVI) that was piloted by the High Point (NC) Police Department. This model has been replicated in different communities, tailored to each specific community. 

From Dream to Reality: Starting a Family Justice Center in Your Community 

A Family Justice Center (FJC) is a multi-agency, multi-disciplinary co-located service center that provides support to victims of interpersonal violence. FJCs house a multi-disciplinary team of professionals under one roof and provide one place where victims can receive a holistic array of services. Due to their centralized intake system and victim-centered approach, FJCs reduce the number of times victims must tell their story, reduce the number of places victims must go for help, and increase access to services and support for victims and their children. FJCs go well beyond co-location of services and serve as a vital coordinating entity in the community, facilitating collaboration among all agencies that address domestic violence, sexual assault and child abuse. This workshop will cover the key elements and core partners of a FJC, best practices for planning and implementing a FJC, and action steps you can take prepare your community to begin the planning process. 

Trauma Coercion Attachment, "Trauma Bond": Identification and implications in relationship and family violence, child abuse, and human trafficking. 

Participants will gain an understanding of how trauma bonding is present in domestic violence, relationship violence, human trafficking, and other situations involving fear, coercion, and trauma.
The purpose of the course is to explore the nature of trauma coercion attachments in terms of how they are developed in cases of child abuse, relationship, family violence, and human trafficking. Understanding how trauma bonds develop sheds insights into the implications for recovery from violence and facilitating the safety of vulnerable people. Strategies for identifying trauma bonding will be presented along with suggestions for responding. 

Bridging the Gaps from the Ground Up: Building an Evidence Based Case from 911 Call to Sentencing and Beyond

This workshop will explore gaps that form in the justice system from case initiation through closure with the use of case studies and guided discussion with attendees. We will look at several gaps we have seen across jurisdictions from gaps in legislation to gaps in communication amongst agencies and beyond. After an introduction to common hurdles, participants will be asked to explore ways in which these gaps can be closed utilizing evidence-based investigation, collaboration, and prosecution. We will examine multiple areas that impact case outcome including legislation, training, resources, intra-agency communication and, understanding the effect of trauma on victims and witnesses. 

Engaging Communities to Improve the Mediation Process in Cases Involving Issues of Domestic Violence

This workshop is designed to give participants an overview of court-connected mediation in Georgia and the new Supreme Court Rules for Mediation in Issue in Cases Involving Issues of Domestic Violence. These rules were developed by a working group consisting of members from the dispute resolution and domestic violence communities and highlight the success of working together to better the process. The rules were endorsed by the Georgia Commission on Family Violence and will become effective January 1, 2021. Participants who attend this workshop will become familiar or more familiar with mediation in Georgia, better prepared for the upcoming changes, and understand how to be an effective advocate for at-risk parties.

#MeToo Meets the Emergency Room: Providing and Paying for Care after a Sexual Assault 

Recognizing that survivors of assault are a highly vulnerable population who have been subjected to physical and emotional trauma, states and the federal government have enacted laws to promote access to appropriate care free of charge. Yet, all too often, survivors are denied such care or charged large sums, in violation of the law.

Sexual assault is most frequently perpetrated by someone a survivor knows personally, such as an intimate partner. Survivors who are erroneously charged may receive a bill at home or calls from collection agents. If the perpetrator lives with the victim, such bills or calls could put the survivor in danger.

Our workshop will identify problems that survivors often face when seeking treatment after assault; provide an overview of state and federal protections for survivors of sexual assault, highlighting Georgia law, in particular; address areas in which legal protections fall short; and provide recommendations on legislative, regulatory, and enforcement changes to address these problems.

The workshop will also provide advocates with strategies to increase access to care specific to survivors of intimate partner abuse, including an overview of health care privacy protections for survivors and special marketplace exchange insurance enrollment and tax credits for domestic violence survivors. 

Women Who Were Sexually Abused as Children: Mothering, Resilience, and Protecting the Next Generation

Teresa Gil, PhD, has been a psychotherapist, professor, and trainer for more than 30 years. She has a private practice working with women dealing with recovery from child abuse and trauma. She is a full professor and teaches Psychology and she has also taught courses in both Social Work and Sociology. Teresa works as a trainer and consultant in human service settings and has developed and facilitated dozens of workshops on pertinent therapeutic issues. 

Opening your own Family Justice Center: Experience from the Athens-Clarke County Family Protection Center, 15 years and counting. 

Family Protection Center (FPC) in Athens-Clarke County has operated for 15 years as the only Family Justice Center in Georgia with multiple agencies working together. The FPC provides a single location for of different agencies that work with survivors of domestic violence, sexual assault, and child abuse. This interagency network creates a “one-stop-shop” where survivors can receive necessary services. Come learn from experienced user group members as they discuss the successes and challenges in opening and maintaining the FPC.
After providing a brief history on how the FPC began, this workshop will focus on creating effective interagency relationships by using the experiences of professionals working in the FPC. Through a Q&A session, presentation, and activity, the workshop will use the history and start-up of the FPC to demonstrate how to create this method of collaboration. It will also focus on how to foster an environment of respect for each agency's perspective and goals and highlight the benefits of working together to better serve clients and the community. The workshop will culminate in an activity that capitalizes on the lessons learned and prompts further reflection on the topics covered in the workshop.

Firearm Removal: Preventing Family Violence through Protection Orders

Guns make family violence situations lethal. A woman is five times more likely to be murdered when her abuser has access to a gun. Just as gun violence is a uniquely American problem, domestic violence perpetrated with a gun is also a uniquely American problem: 92% of all women killed by guns in high-income countries were Americans.

Evidence shows that policies that prevent abusers from accessing guns reduce domestic violence homicides. Two policies, domestic violence protective orders (DVPOs) and extreme risk protection orders (ERPOs), are effective tools for gun violence prevention.

DVPOs can, but don’t always, involve firearm removal. ERPOs are civil orders and follow the well-established path of domestic violence protective orders, except they only address the issue of gun possession and acquisition. ERPOs offer an opportunity for law enforcement and family members to petition a court to remove a firearm from a person who is at risk of harm to self or others before a tragedy occurs. As of February 2020, this legal innovation is available in 19 states and the District of Columbia.

In this workshop, we will discuss how ERPOs and DVPOs can be used to keep guns out of the hands of abusive individuals.

Factions & Fractures: Multidisciplinary Collaboration in the #Hashtag Era

The goal of this workshop is to help attendees identify barriers to effective coordinated community responses to interpersonal violence (IPV) in a polarized climate and how to overcome them. While multidisciplinary efforts are now commonplace, many organizations and systems still operate in silos, viewing each other with mistrust and defensiveness. The current climate of extreme polarization in the US augments those barriers and further erodes critical elements to effective collaboration. We will share concrete, evidence-based strategies and tools to overcome those roadblocks to build and maintain multidisciplinary efforts that result in victim safety and wellbeing, offender accountability, and reduction in violence and trauma. Attendees will learn how to identify unconscious biases or expectations regarding different types of victim service professionals and how those biases negatively impact working relationships on multidisciplinary teams. Attendees will also learn effective cross-communication skills, and receive best practice strategies and tools for handling situations likely to cause tensions on teams including addressing individual or departmental failures, case review, and audits. Attendees will leave with strategies and tools to strengthen the teams they serve on by building and maintaining relationships that yield concrete, victim-centered, trauma-informed outcomes for survivors and communities. 

Surrendering Firearms, Saving Lives

The most dangerous time for a domestic violence victim is the time immediately after leaving the relationship. Women are 3.6 times more likely to be killed shortly after leaving their partner. The presence of firearms increases the lethality of the violence and expands the number of victims. Research has shown that state laws prohibiting persons subject to protection orders from possessing firearms and requiring them to surrender firearms in their possession were associated with a 14% lower rate of intimate partner firearm homicide. Taking the steps to ensure that those who are ineligible to possess surrender their firearms could very well save a life. In this session, participants will learn the steps necessary for developing a firearm surrender protocol in their community. We will explore all aspects of a successful protocol from getting buy-in from the necessary criminal justice partners to procedure and paper work. We will present some of the protocols/procedures utilized by communities that are already successfully surrendering firearms.

Addressing the Intersection of Domestic Violence and Mental Health

This training is provided through a partnership between Partnership Against Domestic Violence; Georgia’s first and largest domestic violence agency and View Point Health; a community behavioral health center providing services to individuals needing treatment and support for mental illness, substance abuse and intellectual and developmental disabilities. During this training, attendees will learn more about the fields of domestic violence and mental health, and how to incorporate this knowledge into their work. Presenters and attendees will discuss the intersection between domestic violence and mental health, gaps that exist in service delivery to individuals experiencing both of these issues, and how to fill these gaps to provide more comprehensive and effective services. The goal of the training is to help ensure that professionals who come into contact with individuals with Domestic Violence and Mental Health needs are looking at the individuals in a holistic manner, comprehensively assessing them for service and safety needs, and effectively connecting them to available supports and services. 

Child Abuse Registry - How courts and advocates can reduce trauma risks to families and survivors

Legal services and parent attorneys are seeing cases where families involved in DV are being placed on the child abuse registry (CAR). Sometimes it is the victims accused of failing to protect when they are themselves victims of abuse. Sometimes non-parent relatives or other household members are the risk to the children, but the parent is put on the registry as the focus of the investigation. The CAR can have long-term impacts on family stability and income, and recent changes and developing case law make the 2020 CAR different from past years. This workshop will discuss new caselaw and statutory developments and assist advocates and case handlers in assisting families for long-term success.

Understanding the Multi-Disciplinary Team (MDT) Approach from Theory to Practice

According to Georgia Statue O.C.G.A. § 19-13-1, family violence is defined as “the occurrence of one or more of the following acts between past or present spouses, persons who are parents of the same child, parents and children, stepparents and stepchildren, foster parents and foster children, or other persons living or formerly living in the same household.”
There is no individual agency, nor profession that has the ability to respond adequately to any allegation of family violence alone. It has been proven that the best practice for responding to family violence is the MDT approach. The MDT approach supports the healthy restoration of families experiencing incidents of family violence. The MDT approach extends far beyond joint investigations, and interagency coordination into team decision making, and an overall more effective, least traumatic response.
This workshop will include a roadmap to understanding the importance of MDT to client outcome. Throughout this workshop we will discuss the many facets of MDT including topics such as: protocols, interagency agreements, confidentiality, jurisdiction, roles and responsibilities of members, agenda development, case review, case additions and removals, and best practices.

This workshop will also include an interactive mock MDT meeting.

Child Abuse Registry - How courts and advocates can reduce trauma risks to families and survivors

Legal services and parent attorneys are seeing cases where families involved in DV are being placed on the child abuse registry (CAR). Sometimes it is the victims accused of failing to protect when they are themselves victims of abuse. Sometimes non-parent relatives or other household members are the risk to the children, but the parent is put on the registry as the focus of the investigation. The CAR can have long-term impacts on family stability and income, and recent changes and developing case law make the 2020 CAR different from past years. this workshop will discuss new caselaw and statutory developments and assist advocates and case handlers in assisting families for long-term success.

Cross Cultural Collaboration

Attendees will learn how Raksha, Inc and Jewish Family Career Services (JFCS)Shalom Bayit Program along with other organizations built a foundation that led to collaboration and cooperation for over 25 years to ensure holistic and culturally responsive services to their respective communities and other underserved communities. Participants will have opportunities to apply this to their own experiences and work. 

"Working Together, Not Apart”: Child Protection and IPV

This workshop explores the relationship between child maltreatment and Intimate Partner Violence/DV, including:
(a) the history of Child Protection and IPV/DV service provision, and how over the last 30 years we learned to "work together, not apart"
(b) the relationship between IPV/DV and other types of child maltreatment, especially the question: "Does the presence of IPV/DV--especially Coercive Controlling Violence-- increase the likelihood of other types of child maltreatment?"
(c) current DFCS practice and policy regarding DV/IPV

Conducting Offender Focused Trafficking Investigations to Identify Trafficking Victims

The goal of this training is to equip law enforcement and prosecutors with intelligence and data driven investigations to target human traffickers and identify victims of trafficking in the most victim centered way possible, and to build cases that do not rely on victim testimony.

The Cycle of Violence Behind Bars

An examination of jail calls illustrating how abusers continue to attempt to control survivors from behind bars. This presentation will include real recordings from a closed case to illustrate how manipulation can continue despite a lack of physical contact. We will discuss strategies to prevent contact, how to intercept communications placed in violation of "no contact" orders through artful practice to conceal, and how to manage violations with the courts. 

"Planning for Language Justice: Creating or enhancing your language access plan"

Participants will learn the practical tips and skills to developing a language access plan for survivors with limited English proficiency or who are Deaf or Hard of Hearing. They’ll discuss the allocation of resources, policies, strategies for implementation, and ongoing staff training necessary for successful language access plans
Participants will conduct a mock assessment of a specific community to gain knowledge on how to conduct a language access assessment in their own communities.
This workshop is Module 3 of the Office for Victims of Crime approved Translating Justice curriculum. Task force members can in turn utilize this or related presentations to ensure that other task force member agencies can comply with language access requirements. Resources will be shared to that extent. 

Violence Across the LifeSpan - A Novel Collaborative Approach

The Injury Prevention Research Center at Emory (IPRCE) was redesigned in 2015 to respond to the impact of violence inflicted on people in Georgia. In a novel approach, IPRCE created 5 task forces one of which is the Violence Prevention Task Force (VPTF). The task force goals are data-driven with the intent to develop an action plan, translate information and participate in advocacy efforts. With more than 30 members, the task force model has brought together practitioners, researchers, university and community partners to address violence across the lifespan from children to older adults. 

Look who's stalking: Why stalking victims contact the police and how first responders can enhance cooperation

A recent review of the research found that victims who are stalked by an intimate partner are three-times more likely to be murdered by the same partner (Spencer & Stith, 2018). In other words, inadequate responses to stalking complaints homicides waiting to happen. Understanding victims’ experiences, what made them decide to report stalking behaviors to the police, and how we can improve our responses as a system is vital for homicide prevention. This interactive session will identify ways to improve victim participation in stalking cases, identify tactics for corroborating victims’ accounts, as well as discuss strategies for enhancing our ability to hold stalking suspects accountable. Using actual case studies and recent data collected from stalking victims, police, and prosecutor case files, we will discuss concrete ways first responders can use this information to inform our ability to work with victims of stalking.