I provide services
Creating real safety and well-being for families experiencing domestic violence requires child welfare, dependency courts, and community partners to create the conditions and experiences that help people find stability, heal, and achieve their desired future.
What if…
we redesign child welfare in partnership with survivors of family violence?
Adult survivors wouldn’t be blamed for the abuse they are enduring. Instead we would believe and care for them.
Community partners and child welfare workers would go the extra mile to keep child and adult survivors safer and together
We would actively hold the person using violence accountable and find help for them to change
Service/case plans would be unique to each survivor and respond to what they say they need.
Agencies would embrace a culture of curiosity and innovation.
Systems would acknowledge and repair harm to families and communities.
Bridges to Better guides leaders and practitioners in communities to collaborate and:
- Learn about the impacts of systems like child welfare and courts on survivor safety and well-being, and take action.
- Work more strategically and holistically with survivors and with people who use violence to achieve positive outcomes.
- Empower staff at all levels to innovate to advance a shared vision for a safer and more just future for all survivors and families.
Strategies for Community Support
Expand Pathways to Healing
Integrate protective factors into practice, procurements, policy, and programming to reduce the impact of domestic violence, build strengths, and support the healthy development and well-being of both adult and child survivors.
Build Pathways to Accountability
Rather than focusing on punishment, build accountability within relationships, communities, and systems to create pathways to positive change for people who have harmed their families.
Center Racial and Gender Equity
Collaboratively examine and eliminate the race- and gender-based biases that create disparities in practices, access to services, and family outcomes.
Shift Resources to Communities
Fund community-connected organizations to lead the design of new avenues for survivors and families to obtain resources, services, and supports that are outside of the child welfare system.
Survivors, DV programs, culturally specific and other community based organizations, schools, judges, courts, and other child-and-family serving agencies all have roles to play in laying groundwork for survivor-centered and community-connected practices and solutions to domestic violence and child maltreatment.
What can you do?
Explore the Groundwork for Service Providers and Local Leaders. Share information with funders and policymakers.
Check out our Resource Library for tools, training and information. For more resources check out Promising Futures.
Conduct listening sessions with survivors of domestic violence involved in child welfare to identify problems and opportunities.
Disaggregate data on domestic violence and child maltreatment by race and ethnicity, and work with survivors and partners to make meaning of data and take action.
Assemble partners in your community to co-design new pathways to safety and well-being for children and adult survivors of family violence.