MINCAVA News Online
To read this publication online, go to: http://www.mincava.umn.edu/newsletter/Fall2008.html
The Minnesota Center Against Violence and Abuse (www.mincava.umn.edu), under the direction of Jeffrey L. Edleson, Ph.D., works to increase knowledge on violence against women and children through research, education and free access to high-quality information.
MINCAVA staff have been busy creating new online and print materials related to violence against women and children. Here are some recent developments we’d like you to know about:
The staff at the Minnesota Center Against Violence and Abuse recently re-designed and re-launched their website. With the help of feedback from our users, the staff was able to recategorize and organize content in a way that will be more easily accessible to the users of our site. In addition, the Website now has a new Spotlight section, which showcases new research in the field of violence and abuse. Our site usage has also dramatically increased to a rate of about 1.25 million unique visitors a year. Please go to http://www.mincava.umn.edu to check out the new Website!
The Violence Against Women Online Resources (VAWOR) project is a collaborative project between MINCAVA and the Office on Violence Against Women at the U.S. Department of Justice. Within the coming months, Dr. Edleson and MINCAVA Associate Director Jennifer Witt will be expanding this project to include the following work:
The National Institute of Justice has funded a three-year research project on the experiences of battered mothers and others involved in responding to Hague Convention petitions filed by abusive husbands seeking the return of their children to another country. Dr. Edleson and Dr. Taryn Lindhorst, a professor at the University of Washington, are the Co-Principal Investigators on this project.
As part of the process of beginning to disseminate the findings from their study, the research team and a group of volunteer lawyers from Thomson Reuters’ FindLaw and West divisions and students from two Minnesota law schools have developed a new website. The website is intended as a resource for battered mothers, their attorneys and the judges hearing these cases in U.S. courts. The website address is: http://www.haguedv.org
Over the next year this website will grow in many ways to offer a free resource that is available 24 hours a day, seven days a week for those needing to develop rapid responses to petitions being filed in U.S. courts.
Dr. Edleson, Narae Shin and Katy Armendariz have developed the Child Exposure to Domestic Violence (CEDV) scale, to measure how much children are exposed to violence among adults at home. The CEDV scale was designed to assess the ways that children are exposed to and involved in domestic violence. It is a self-report measure for children aged 10 to 16. The scale, a user manual and several articles on this topic are available at http://www.mincava.umn.edu/cedv/.
Shin and Edleson are using the new CEDV scale in a follow-up study examining how exposure to and involvement in domestic violent events affects children’s perceptions of both the perpetrating and victimized parent.
Shin and Edleson are also writing a paper titled The influence of informal support on domestic violence victims’ use of formal services. This paper uses data collected earlier in anonymous telephone interviews with 115 battered mothers in four cities to explore the association between informal and formal support among battered women with children. The findings will provide understanding social supports of isolated victims of domestic violence.
The Minnesota Center Against Violence and Abuse and the Center for Advanced Studies in Child Welfare are working on a joint venture study surveying child welfare workers in Minnesota and Connecticut. The research team, that includes Edleson, Dr. Traci Laliberte and MSW student Jessica Bills, is exploring how workers assess children's exposure to domestic violence and how they might utilize the newly developed Children's Exposure to Domestic Violence (CEDV) scale in their assessments of child safety. The long-term goal of this collaboration is to develop an online training for child welfare workers on how to carefully assess children’s exposure to domestic violence.
Edleson, Jennifer Witt, Sheetal Rana and Brooke Nunn are the editors of a series of concise, user-friendly research documents on domestic violence that are freely available online. VAWnet is an online resource for advocates working to end domestic violence, sexual assault, and other violence in the lives of women and their children. The Applied Research Forum is a component of VAWnet that is designed to provide applied research information to VAWnet users. VAWnet is funded by the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention and is based in the National Resource Center on Domestic Violence, a project of the Pennsylvania Coalition against Domestic Violence in Harrisburg, PA.
The following two VAWnet Applied Research documents have recently been published:
A Prevention Primer for Domestic Violence: Terminology, Tools, and the Public Health Approach by Linda Chamberlain (March 2008): As suggested by its title, this document introduces basic public health approaches to prevention, two systems for classifying prevention approaches, and a planning tool to develop more comprehensive prevention initiatives. In addition, this document emphasizes the importance of understanding prevention terminologies relative to grant and funding opportunities. The following is the link to the document: http://new.vawnet.org/Assoc_Files_VAWnet/AR_PreventionPrimer.pdf
Substance Abuse and Intimate Partner Violence by Larry Bennett and Patricia Bland (May 2008): This document discusses the prevalence and perspectives on the co-existence of substance abuse (SA) and intimate partner violence (IPV). The role of drunkenness, issues related to the victims’ substance abuse, and the different types of services for SA and IPV are discussed in this document. The document also briefly discusses the substance abuse and intimate partner violence in gay and lesbians. The following is the link to the document: http://new.vawnet.org/Assoc_Files_VAWnet/AR_SubstanceRevised.pdf
The Kami M. Talley collection contains books, tapes, videos, and other resources appropriate for use by young children and their parents, care providers, and educators on crisis, domestic violence, grief recovery, conflict resolution, self-esteem, family diversity and much more. Named for a student-parent at the University of Minnesota whose tragic death as a result of domestic violence left a young child without a parent, this collection was established by the University of Minnesota Child Care Center to promote resources for children who have experienced difficult life experiences.
MINCAVA is very excited to now house much of the collection at our Center in the School of Social Work at the University of Minnesota.
Your help is needed! Join the national call to action to support sexual assault survivors and sexual assault programs impacted by recent floods in the Midwest, United States. The Relief Fund for Sexual Assault Victims http://www.relieffundforsexualassaultvictims.org (Relief Fund) was established in 2005 by national anti-sexual violence organizations (National Alliance to End Sexual Violence, The National Organization of Sisters of Color Ending Sexual Assault, National Sexual Assault Coalition Resource Sharing Project, National Sexual Violence Resource Center, and Rape, Abuse, Incest National Network) in order to address the needs of sexual assault survivors during and after disasters.
The Relief Fund is designed to:
100% of donations will go to victims/programs in affected areas. Visit the website for more information on how to help and donate. http://www.relieffundforsexualassaultvictims.org/
This four day conference from May 12-15, 2009, will bring together professionals who intervene with men who batter. The event is a great opportunity to network with other professionals, learn about the newest methods and skills to address violence in homes. Dave Mathews, Director of Therapy at the Domestic Abuse Project in Minneapolis, MN, along with volunteers from agencies across the country, have come together to plan this event. If you are interested in learning more about this event, please visit the website at: http://www.bridgingperspectives.org/
