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Improving Outcomes for Families Experiencing Intimate Partner Violence Through Home Visiting

Statement of Problem

Within the maternal and early childhood home visiting sector, families experiencing intimate partner violence (IPV) represent a critically important subgroup. Home visited families are primarily from under-resourced neighborhoods where IPV frequently occurs alongside other challenges rooted in social and structural inequities, such as housing instability, substance use and mental health conditions.  

In the national evaluation of the Maternal Infant and Early Childhood Home Visiting (MIECHV) program, nearly one-quarter of women had a recent IPV experience. In combination with building parenting and community resources, the success of home visiting relies on strong home visitor-family relationships built through weekly or biweekly home visits. Home visitors are well-positioned to address IPV and receive training on standard practices, however, the dynamics of IPV contribute to barriers in client engagement which may inhibit the foundation for a trusted home visitor-client relationship and willingness to disclose IPV. Furthermore, the evidence continuously points to IPV as a challenging area for home visitors to meaningfully address even under circumstances where robust training and clear screening protocols have been established. 

Strengthening connections between home visiting and IPV agencies for a partnered response is a promising approach to delivering comprehensive and sustainable IPV services for families, yet exploration of formalized partnerships has been limited. Our multidisciplinary team, the Intimate Partner Violence-Home Visiting Collaborative (“IPV-HV Collaborative”) is taking steps to advance the field toward a greater understanding of programmatic components and contextual factors to fully support families affected by IPV.  

Description

Improving Outcomes for Families Experiencing Intimate Partner Violence Through Precision Home Visiting

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These research findings will be used help develop an intervention to more clearly define, integrate and strengthen the role of home visiting agencies within the greater network of local supports for families experiencing IPV.

Next Steps

The IPV-HV Collaborative is now embarking on the next phase of work to fully define the Champion Model within a home visiting context and develop tools in preparation for model expansion. We collectively decided that the next training iteration will be a 25-hour training with deepened curricular components on topics most relevant for the home visiting workforce. We are excited to pilot and evaluate this revised training with a new Champion cohort in November 2024.  

As we continue to build on the momentum of our cross-sector implementation efforts, we aim to:   

  • Train new home visitors in the champion model, convene the cross-agency cohort of champions, and collaborate to further training and technical assistance related to specific focal areas identified by the cohort of champions 
  • Strengthen evaluation capacity to measure impact  
  • Convene home visiting agencies and other community and governmental stakeholders to share lessons learned from our work, identify opportunities to scale and expand, and develop a policy agenda 

This project page was last updated in October 2024.

Suggested Citation

Children's Hospital of Philadelphia, PolicyLab. Improving Outcomes for Families Experiencing Intimate Partner Violence Through Precision Home Visiting [Online]. Available at: http://www.policylab.chop.edu. [Accessed: plug in date accessed here]. 

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