Given the COVID 19 pandemic, and the shift to virtual home visitation, we recognize that is very difficult for home visitors to determine client safety, confidentiality and promote healthy relationships.  The “shelter-in-place” recommendations for communities can increase the risks for survivors of Domestic Violence (DV)/Intimate Partner Violence (IPV) and their children. The lack of privacy for conversations and heightened isolation makes it difficult to assess the home environment and figure out if coercion and abuse are happening to a client.

This webinar is dedicated to evolving promising practices for home visitors within a virtual space to help caregivers who may be experiencing coercion and abuse from their partner, and to help them and their children be safer – but offered virtually.

During the session, we will be reviewing how power and control issues may look different within the ‘shelter-in-place’ situation and how these policies might prevent clients from being able to disclose abuse or reach out for help.  Talking about healthy and unhealthy relationships and how to help friends and family is a strategy that builds stronger client relationships and allows survivors to hear about resources and ways to promote safety without disclosure of IPV.  The intervention strategies we will be sharing are adapted for virtual home visitation settings for staff to use with caregivers.

However, when disclosures happen, the goal is to understand the survivor’s perspective and priorities, and work collaboratively with the client to strengthen their safety plan – building on strategies that they have used in the past, and to connect with the National Domestic Violence hotline or local domestic violence advocacy programs for ongoing systemic advocacy, problem-solving around safer planning and available resources including possible financial assistance.

Learning Objectives:

1. Understand evolving practices and challenges around virtual home visits and IPV.
2. Learn CUES, a trauma-informed evidenced-based intervention, to address domestic violence, adapted for virtual home visits.
3. Learn about virtual safer planning strategies during heightened isolation and advocacy resources.

Speakers:

Rebecca Levenson, former Senior Policy Analyst for FUTURES turned consultant and co-author of FUTURES’ Curricula Healthy Moms Happy Babies: An Evidence-Based Approach to Addressing Domestic Violence In Home Visitation and Perinatal Case Management Programs.

Leigh Hofheimer, Program Coordinator, Washington State Coalition Against Domestic Violence.