Posted By CotoBlogzz
Rancho Santa Margarita, CA - According to a Department of Justice press release issued
March yesterday, the DOJ’s Office on Violence Against Women (OVW) do not know
if what they are doing is working.
This is not surprising, A while back we were looking into at a number of elder abuse cases and wanted to see what the state was doing about it. We asked a number of Adult Protective Services (APS) and Financial Abuse Services Team (FAS) (http://www.coaoc.org/pdf/fast_info.pdf) representatives as to whether they knew they were doing a good job or not. We also contacted the a representative of the California Consumer Affairs ( http://www.dca.ca.gov/consumer/seniors/elder_abuse.shtml) and the Chairwoman of the California Committee on Aging and Long-Term Care (CCALC)
This is not surprising, A while back we were looking into at a number of elder abuse cases and wanted to see what the state was doing about it. We asked a number of Adult Protective Services (APS) and Financial Abuse Services Team (FAS) (http://www.coaoc.org/pdf/fast_info.pdf) representatives as to whether they knew they were doing a good job or not. We also contacted the a representative of the California Consumer Affairs ( http://www.dca.ca.gov/consumer/seniors/elder_abuse.shtml) and the Chairwoman of the California Committee on Aging and Long-Term Care (CCALC)
With the exception of the CCALC chairwoman, in general all went
through the first three stages of grief during the first ten minutes of our conversation,
but never got anything substantive. An Orange
County APS representative told us that she knew she was doing a good job
because she got surveys from the training she provided. But outside of training, no metrics were
available. As to the CCAL Chairwomen, we
gave up when after repeated attempts, she never even acknowledged our request
for information.
In the case of Violence Against Women, the DOJ’s OVW has launched a Research and Evaluation Initiative “to
help grantees align their work with practices that are known to be effective
and to strengthen communities’ capacity to generate knowledge on the efficacy
of new and promising ways of doing things.
According to the OVW, the first step of the new initiative was to develop a
comprehensive understanding of what we know about the effectiveness of
approaches funded by the Violence Against Women Act (VAWA) and determine which
practices require a closer look and further study. A report summarizing this effort and describing OVW’s plans
for evidence-based and evidence-building grantmaking is now available.
The report identifies
the following six areas of study:
- Victims’ needs: how
victimization and its aftermath affect people’s lives, especially people
who are marginalized (including but not limited to victims who are: people
of color; immigrants; male; Deaf or hard of hearing; lesbian, gay,
bisexual or transgender ; people with disabilities; elderly; members of
cultural, linguistic and/or religious minority groups; incarcerated or
formerly incarcerated; and/or living in poverty), and what they need to
cope, heal and achieve safety and justice.
- Cultures,
disparities and access: ways
in which cultural differences and social inequalities matter in terms of
where and to whom people go for help, and whether people are able to
access justice and get services that are useful to them.
- Justice:
ways the justice system can effectively pursue and achieve justice in
cases involving domestic/dating violence, sexual assault and stalking;
with justice broadly understood to include autonomy for victims,
accountability for offenders, procedural fairness for all and restorative
justice.
- Impact:
short- and long-term impact of the justice system’s response, victim
services and other VAWA-funded interventions on victim safety and offender
accountability.
- Indicators
of success: what success looks like and how to measure it
– for victims pursing safety and justice, for offenders being held
accountable for their violence and for people who work with victims and
offenders.
- Reducing
recidivism: how
to prevent violence from recurring.
Finally, in order to understand what works in
each of the areas of study, OVW is now inviting applicants to propose projects
to conduct research and evaluation on VAWA-funded activities through a solicitation released today.
This first-ever funding opportunity is
designed to support researcher-practitioner partnerships, with an emphasis on
enhancing knowledge and practice related to underserved and marginalized
populations.
OVW is seeking field-initiated research that
will produce findings that are relevant to the day-to-day work of victim
advocates, law enforcement officers, prosecutors, healthcare providers,
attorneys, judges and others committed to helping victims and making
communities safer.
Applications are due on Monday, May 2, 2016.
Based on our previous efforts, Indicators of success may
just be the most important are of study.
However, the other five areas of
study should include some sort of performance indicators and or establish
benchmarks.
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