Strengthening Domestic Violence Relief Services

To help children who are victims of domestic violence and living in shelters, The Duke Endowment granted $200,000 for a yearlong project to train shelter staff to screen and treat children for post-traumatic stress and other mental health issues.

Insights

Domestic violence shelters can and should effectively serve as mental health assessment and triage points for children and their parents who receive services. While domestic violence shelter staff members involved in this project were often extremely knowledgeable about the effects of domestic violence on children, many did not have the skills or training necessary to adequately meet children's emotional needs in recovering from violence within their families. By training domestic violence program staff to screen, intervene and refer children to expert services, the quality of services will improve and more children will get the help they need. We invite others to use these findings as a starting point for their own efforts.

1. Training staff to use standardized screening tools to systematically evaluate children entering shelters can work. The key: provide affordable and accessible training, including online courses, allowing a broad range of staff to participate.
2. Focusing on providing developmentally appropriate, structured activities for children, rather than simply occupying their time and attention, represents a significant shift in practice and philosophy for shelters. Staff viewed screening tools as a good ways to engage, educate and support parents to interact more positively with their children. Strategies to teach parenting skills were more readily adopted by staff than other approaches and seemed to fit best with the shelters' focus on stabilizing and empowering adult victims of abuse.
3. Equipping shelter staff to better assess mental health concerns in child residents is key to strengthening the system of domestic violence relief services. Due to the transitory nature of shelter residents, it is unlikely that they would receive long-term services from the shelters; however, shelter staff trained to screen and refer children can make a significant difference in ensuring that domestic violence victims are connected with expert help.
4. Strengthening partnerships between shelters and community service agencies is critical to getting children the help they need. In some cases, shelters deliberately avoid being connected to other agencies as a response to the fear and suspicion that victims of domestic violence often display toward these organizations. Because relationships between the shelters and other agencies were often very weak or non-existent at the start of the project, it was important to promote partnership-building as a primary project objective.
5. Shelters that were the most successful in overcoming barriers to training staff and incorporating child screening as standard practices had strong leadership and were able to garner the commitment of key shelter staff. Also, they conducted screening immediately upon a child's arrival at the shelter, as well as at various points in a child's stay, rather than just once. Multiple barriers that could impede the adoption of the new screening and referral methods included limited resources at the shelters; unpredictable admissions and length of stays; a focus on the urgent or immediate needs of adult victims; and high turnover among frontline and administrative staff.

Impact

The Domestic Violence Shelter Project resulted in measurable improvements in caring for children affected by domestic violence.

• Of the 423 children who resided at the six shelter sites over the course of the project, 273 were eligible to be assessed for mental health and other behavioral problems. About 40 percent (109) of these children received screening from shelter staff.
• Three of the six shelters were able to refer children to community services at rates higher than 55 percent, a sign of growing partnerships with service providers.
• Staff continued to use strategies taught during training, even after the end of the pilot project. In particular, staff continued to work with parents to improve their parenting skills and help children overcome behavioral problems resulting from exposure to domestic violence.
• Staff reported high degrees of self-confidence in their abilities to screen and refer children, helping to increase the likelihood that they would follow through with these activities.

Contact Us

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Associate Director of Child Care
704.969.2117