The Minnesota Child Response Initiative (MCRI) is a
partnership of the following of domestic violence programs, mental health
agencies, and child-serving systems: African-American Family Services,
CornerHouse, Domestic Abuse Project, Family and Children’s Services, Eastside
Neighborhood Services,
The intervention component of the project involves the
pairing of mental health professionals and family violence advocates with law
enforcement officers to offer a voluntary, acute advocacy and crisis response
to families who have called 911 for help with domestic violence incidents, or
other incidents involving children’s exposure to violence. These visits are meant to provide additional
resources to children and families dealing with the difficult physical and
emotional issues associated with domestic violence. Follow-up visits are made when necessary, and
the clinicians and advocates make referrals to meet the court advocacy, mental
health, and social service needs of the families.
Central to identifying and intervening with children
exposed to violence is a better understanding of the system and community
barriers that exist to working with these children. This is the motivation for the systems change
component of the MCRI project. The
systems change component is comprised of a geo-mapping project to identify gaps
between need and available resources for children exposed to violence, a policy
analysis committee that attempts to establish a picture of how key elements of
the social system work together to serve children and make recommendations
about more efficient collaboration and service delivery, and the community
needs assessments, which are the focus of this report.
The primary goal of the community needs assessments is to
gain more information about how particular communities perceive the problems of
violence and how these perceptions relate to the needs of children. Within this
context, the needs assessments attempt to identify what barriers exist in terms
of service delivery and collaboration with mental health workers. A prominent theme of the community needs
assessments is the effort to understand culturally specific needs with regard
to children and violence. MCRI’s focus
on partnership is also exemplified in this piece of the project. Each community needs assessment has been
developed in close collaboration with key stakeholders and leaders in the
communities. The goal has been for each
community to establish the best method(s) for obtaining this information. The communities have varied somewhat in their
original approaches but, somewhat surprisingly; short surveys have proved the
most effective method for gathering this information. To date, needs assessments have been
conducted in the African American, African immigrant, and mainstream or
Caucasian communities. Grant support for
this project offered the opportunity to expand this work to include other
communities in the Twin Cities in the future.
This analysis describes the methodology used in a recent
survey conducted in partnership with the American Indian Family Center in
The Center was approached because it is a hub for
culturally appropriate services for American Indian children and families in
the Twin Cities area. A center that was
initially one of the St. Paul/Ramsey County Children’s Initiative, it become
early on an independent non-profit organization. Its purpose is to support families to help
ensure the development of healthy children.
“We believe that parents can find strength in cultural traditions. It is the traditions and values of the ‘old
ways’ that will strengthen the family, keep families together and make
communities healthy and strong.”
The Systems Change Coordinator met with staff and the
management of the center to make a presentation about MCRI. The request to conduct a survey with program
participants was made and the Center staff was assured that the survey results
would be presented to respondents and the staff. They felt it would be a wonderful tool in
their program decision-making, and program management.
The existing survey was submitted for the Executive
Director and her Assistant Director’s reviews and suggestions for change were
made. They suggested modifying some
questions, adding others, or expanding on some of questions to more directly
gain input form the community the Center serves.
Due to low sample number, this is a pilot. We intend to offer this survey to a higher
number of respondents in the near future.
Three survey meetings were set where surveys were conducted: a
Demographics
The majority of the respondents (71%) in the American
Community needs assessment lived in
Perceptions
of Violence and Its Impact on Children
One of the key objectives of the community needs
assessment was to gain a better understanding of how people conceptualize
violence and its impact on children. The
manner in which people define and perceive violence is partly determined by
what they consider to be the sources of violence. There seemed consensus among the American
Indian survey respondents that violence is learned
behavior: 72.4% said that people learn violence from video games and
television, 65.5% said that violence is learned from families, and 82.8% cited
“society” as a source of learned violent behavior. 20.7% thought that people are “born
violent”.
The perception that violence is learned behavior was also
reflected in the responses to questions about the impact that violence has on
children. For example, none of
respondents said that it was true that “violence does not affect
children”. 96% of the respondents agreed
with the statement “violence at home interferes with a child’s performance at
school.” There was also consensus that
children witnessing a violent act is a form of violence (79% of respondents
agreed with that statement). Overall the
results indicate that respondents believed exposure to violence is harmful for
children.
Understanding
and Communicating About Violence
Central to effectively advocating for children exposed to
violence is getting people to talk about the problem. From this perspective, it is important to
understand what people perceive as appropriate or effective venues for
communicating about violence in both the public and private spheres. When asked about the most effective way to
get information about domestic violence out to the community, there was most
consensus (76%) that Talking Circles were effective methods. There was less support for more passive
approaches to providing information about domestic violence, such as
advertisements and pamphlets (45% and 48% respectively). When asked with whom they feel comfortable
sharing information more generally, there was most consensus (90%) around
family. Friends and people in the
community (59% and 55% respectively) came in close “seconds.”
The survey also asked questions about how and whether people discuss violence at home. Many of these questions suffered from relatively low response rates in the mainstream community (see data tables in Appendix 2 for details). This was possibly due to a perception among respondents that discussing violence at home or with others meant that they had experienced domestic violence. Among those that did respond to the questions, there was consensus that it was appropriate to talk with children about domestic violence at home (79% agreed with that statement). 68% said that “other people talk to my kids about domestic violence.” Of the people with children that answered the survey, 100% agreed with the statement “I feel comfortable talking to my children about domestic violence”. A somewhat smaller number of respondents (80%) agreed with the statement “I feel comfortable with others talking to my children about domestic violence.”
Responding
to Violence
Tailoring domestic violence services and education
requires information about how people currently feel violence should be
handled. The responses from the American
Indian survey participants displayed a general feeling that domestic violence
is a public issue that requires outside intervention. For example, 85% of the respondents did not agree with the statement “When
couples hurt each other, it is their own business.” 93% also disagreed with a similar statement
about harming children. Additionally,
84% agreed with the statement “People who are victimized should involve the
police.” There was considerably less
agreement about whether “violence should be responded to by leaving the
situation”. 55% agreed with this
statement, 44% did not.
Perceptions
of Social Service Agencies and Other Public Advocates
Trust is an extremely important factor in developing effective intervention and advocacy systems for children exposed to domestic violence. A few of the questions on the survey tried to get a feel for how social service agencies and their capacity to deal with the problems of domestic violence were perceived. These responses are potentially biased because all respondents knew that the survey was being conducted by a group of domestic violence advocacy agencies. As a result, people may have been less willing to express unfavorable opinions about such organizations. 69% of the respondents considered social service agencies to be “helpful”. 24% consider them “overly involved”. 10% said that social service agencies are “unnecessary”.
When asked about who or what helps address domestic
violence in the community, there was most consensus (76%) that domestic
violence advocates served this purpose.
Community organizations, neighborhood community organizers, school
social workers and child protection workers were also cited as serving this
purpose. 76% of the respondents
indicated that activities in schools were an effective way to help kids deal
with domestic and community violence.
Trainings about domestic violence for people that work with kids on a
daily basis was also commonly cited as an effective way to help children deal
with violence (66%) of the respondents selected this response).
Parenting
Strategies
A set of questions on the survey was only asked of people with children. A few of these questions dealt with parenting strategies. (84%) of the respondents with children felt that their parenting strategies were effective. When asked about parenting techniques, the most frequently cited methods were talking about the behavior (69%) and positive reinforcement (52%). Physical punishment was also selected (59%). Most of the respondents are young families attending parenting classes.
Feelings
of Inclusiveness and Security
An important component of successful intervention is helping families feel more secure and connected to their communities. Most (52%) of the respondents felt that their basic needs in terms of clothing, shelter, and food were being met. (89%) of the respondents with children agreed with the statement “I feel that the community we live in welcomes and cares about my children.” (97%) of all respondents felt welcomed in the community.
Definition of Domestic Violence
The American Indian Family Center suggested questions that would inform their work about program participants knowledge about the definition of domestic violence.
(100%) of the respondents agreed with the list provided as
“all of the above,” with a few choosing some specific responses over
others: only 5% agreed that unwanted
touching/unfaithfulness/false accusations;
(65%) agreed that name calling/yelling/making threats; (55%) marked
intimidating/disrespecting/isolating; and (75) chose punching/throwing
objects/kicking; as forms of domestic violence.
Similarly at the question: Violence is an attempt to initially harm an individual:
(100%) marked on a physical level; (30%) on an emotional level; (25%) on a verbal level; (20%) on sexual level; and (20%) marked all of the above.
To the questions whether Domestic violence is violence involving people in intimate relationships, (84%) responded True, and (16%) False.
Multiple-choice questions also contain an “other” option
for respondents to write in.
Their comments to questions such as:
1. People learn violence from:
Role models/childhood problems/molestation/abandonment/mental
illness/learned behaviour
2. Who/what helps address domestic violence in the
community:
Police intervention-sometimes they aren’t helpful/legal
services/Women of Nation Shelter/the ones who are abused should start training
their spouse/family
3. Who/what might help kids deal with domestic violence
and community violence:
Parents/adult classes on human development/community role
models(healthy)/outside activities
4. Information about domestic violence could best be
provided to the community by:
Human development classes/also family/legal forums/phone
help lines
5. I feel comfortable sharing information and getting help
from:
Community classes/anyone who can
help/professionals/American Indian Family Center
6. I perceive social service support agencies as:
All three at the same time –(helpful/overly
involved/unnecessary/other)
Note: everybody has been impacted by violence at least one
time in their life
Other: necessary
I’m not sure
Some people/agency really understand and care and then
there a some who don’t know anything
7. My parenting strategies are:
I don’t know what to do when nothing seems to work.