Helping Children Thrive: Supporting the Mothering of Woman Abuse Survivors
This entry has been selected as a finalist in the
No Private Matter! Ending Abuse in Intimate & Family Relations competition.
UNICEF estimates that 275 million children live with violence against their mothers. Consequences for children are now well documented. A topic drawing less attention is how being a victim of domestic violence may affect a women as a mother. Parenting Tips for Mothers who Survived Woman Abuse is a research-informed parenting support system for children exposed to domestic violence embedded in a comprehensive, multi-faceted and accessible training initiative for helpers. Helping women as mothers is among the best ways to help children. However, most parenting courses and books are not appropriate for families where an abusive man was in the father role. An abusive man affects family dynamics in many harmful ways and his abuse and parenting style can compromise a womans efforts to be the best mother she could be.
Recognizing the unique dynamics of parenting in the presence of domestic violence, we developed material to help the helpers – broadly defined – support woman abuse survivors as mothers. Working backwards from an understanding of how children are shaped by domestic violence, we crafted ten concrete and straightforward parenting tips. These tips are embedded in a package of background material on how woman abuse affects parenting and how to help women as mothers. In the "Helping Children Thrive" resource, service deliverers find 27 handouts they are encouraged to copy and distribute to women in a one-on-one or group intervention on woman abuse or on parenting. A number of corollary resource documents are available at no cost through the Internet.
A workbook for mothers of self-study exercises and homework assignments and a companion book appropriate for both mothers and their supporters is being written. It is called Making Tomorrow Better: Helpful and Hopeful Ways to Support Children as they Heal from Domestic Violence and Abuse. We are seeking a publisher. Many other future directions exist including the capacity for on-line training.
About You
Location
Project Street Address
Project City
Project Province/State
Project Postal/Zip Code
Project Country
Your idea
Focus of activity
Education
Year the initiative began
2003
Position your initiative on the mosaic of solutions
Which of these barriers is the primary focus of your work?
Insensitive & Unresponsive Systems
Which of the insights is the primary focus of your work?
Create Paths to Prevention or Remediation
If you believe some other barrier or insight should be included in the mosaic, please describe it and how it would affect the positioning of your initiative in the mosaic
Instead of "insensitive and unresponsive systems," we would be more comfortable with something like "working smarter in oversubscribed and underfunded systems"
Name Your Project
Helping Children Thrive: Supporting the Mothering of Woman Abuse Survivors
Describe Your Idea
UNICEF estimates that 275 million children live with violence against their mothers. Consequences for children are now well documented. A topic drawing less attention is how being a victim of domestic violence may affect a women as a mother. Parenting Tips for Mothers who Survived Woman Abuse is a research-informed parenting support system for children exposed to domestic violence embedded in a comprehensive, multi-faceted and accessible training initiative for helpers. Helping women as mothers is among the best ways to help children. However, most parenting courses and books are not appropriate for families where an abusive man was in the father role. An abusive man affects family dynamics in many harmful ways and his abuse and parenting style can compromise a womans efforts to be the best mother she could be.
Recognizing the unique dynamics of parenting in the presence of domestic violence, we developed material to help the helpers – broadly defined – support woman abuse survivors as mothers. Working backwards from an understanding of how children are shaped by domestic violence, we crafted ten concrete and straightforward parenting tips. These tips are embedded in a package of background material on how woman abuse affects parenting and how to help women as mothers. In the "Helping Children Thrive" resource, service deliverers find 27 handouts they are encouraged to copy and distribute to women in a one-on-one or group intervention on woman abuse or on parenting. A number of corollary resource documents are available at no cost through the Internet.
A workbook for mothers of self-study exercises and homework assignments and a companion book appropriate for both mothers and their supporters is being written. It is called Making Tomorrow Better: Helpful and Hopeful Ways to Support Children as they Heal from Domestic Violence and Abuse. We are seeking a publisher. Many other future directions exist including the capacity for on-line training.
Innovation
Description of Initiative
UNICEF estimates that 275 million children live with violence against their mothers. Consequences for children are now well documented. A topic drawing less attention is how being a victim of domestic violence may affect a women as a mother. Parenting Tips for Mothers who Survived Woman Abuse is a research-informed parenting support system for children exposed to domestic violence embedded in a comprehensive, multi-faceted and accessible training initiative for helpers. Helping women as mothers is among the best ways to help children. However, most parenting courses and books are not appropriate for families where an abusive man was in the father role. An abusive man affects family dynamics in many harmful ways and his abuse and parenting style can compromise a womans efforts to be the best mother she could be.
Recognizing the unique dynamics of parenting in the presence of domestic violence, we developed material to help the helpers – broadly defined – support woman abuse survivors as mothers. Working backwards from an understanding of how children are shaped by domestic violence, we crafted ten concrete and straightforward parenting tips. These tips are embedded in a package of background material on how woman abuse affects parenting and how to help women as mothers. In the "Helping Children Thrive" resource, service deliverers find 27 handouts they are encouraged to copy and distribute to women in a one-on-one or group intervention on woman abuse or on parenting. A number of corollary resource documents are available at no cost through the Internet.
A workbook for mothers of self-study exercises and homework assignments and a companion book appropriate for both mothers and their supporters is being written. It is called Making Tomorrow Better: Helpful and Hopeful Ways to Support Children as they Heal from Domestic Violence and Abuse. We are seeking a publisher. Many other future directions exist including the capacity for on-line training.
Innovation
1. Focusing on quality research, not all the research
Borrowing a systemic review techique from the Campbell Collaboration, we analyzed over 500 sources of information. This led to the development of a framework to guide assessment, program development and research, as summarized in “What About Me! Seeking to Understand the Child’s View of Violence in the Family” (2004).
2. Supporting the mother to help the child
As service deliverers, our involvement is necessary time limited. A mother’s love, affection, availability, and investment in her child’s well being and healthy development are powerful factors to harness in our efforts to help children.
3. Listening to children
An innovative part of our resource material takes the form of four models for how children of four developmental stages experience and understand the existence of domestic violence in their homes.
4. Listening to service deliverers
Thousands of professionals attend training sessions in Canada, the U.S., Europe and recently in Asia. We learn about the needs of the front line and incorporate this in resource development.
5. Attending to transportability
The material can be used outside North America. We have been notified aout translations in Portuguese, Japanese, Spanish, and Swedish to name a few. Agencies in England, Wales and Australia adapt the language to match local idioms and legal terminology and add references to nearby resources. The French versions and are used in Europe and northern Africa, principally Morocco.
6. Accessiblity
As service deliverers ourselves, we know that most NGOs are underfunded. All resources described here are downloadable at no cost.
7. Diffusing service delivery
Because anybody can find the material on the Internet and adapt it to local use, services to women are delivered potentially anywhere.
8. Sustainablity
Like others, we must continually new seek grants. However, revenue from publication sales and training now partially fund new work.
Delivery Model
Delivery of support and information to mothers is accomplished by helpers around the world who find the material through word of mouth, at conferences, at training workshops, or through the Internet. The approach is not prescriptive nor does it constrain service deliverers to set modalities or timing of intervention. We assume that helpers are best able to appreciate and meet the needs of women. The material is flexible and adaptable, designed to be integrated into existing services. Some women – the ultimate "clients" – use it for self-study.
The Centre supports the use of the material by making it available on the Internet (in a small but increasing number of languages); and by providing on-site training tailored to local needs mostly in the U.S. and Canada but also Europe and Asia. These documents describe the parenting information:
Helping Children Thrive: Information for Mothers who Have Left Abusive Relationships (2004).
A two-page information pamphlet. Available in English, French, Portuguese, Japanese (and soon in Arabic and Spanish).
Helping Children Thrive / Supporting Woman Abuse Survivors as Mothers: A Resource to Support Parenting (2004).
A 90-page resource package including background material for service delverers and 27 handouts for women, to use in individual or group interventions on woman abuse or on parenting. Presents the 10 parenting tips for mothers, an explanation of why each is important when children have lived with violence, and guidance on applying the tips at home. Available in English and French.
Also available as corollary resources are:
Little Eyes, Little Ears: How Violence Against a Mother Shapes Her Children as they Grow (2007).
Learning to Listen, Learning to Help: Understanding Woman Abuse and its Effects on Children (2005).
Professors Resource Guide to Teaching About Woman Abuse and its Effects on Children (2005).
What About Me! Seeking to Understand the Child’s View of Violence in the Family (2004).
Key Operational Partnerships
In effect, any woman-serving organization, anywhere in the world, is a potential partner.
The resources comprising our parenting support for women abuse survivors have a strong empirical and practical base, are user friendly, and are accessible at no cost. Our philosophy is to attract partners by producing high-quality products that meet the needs of service deliverers and their clients.
Impact
Financial Model
The developmental phase was funded by foundations and government grants while the sale of resources and revenue from training and public speaking partially supports the evolution of new material. Book royalties will greatly augment our work when we are able to complete and publish our new workbook for women and accompanying book: "Making Tomorrow Better: Helpful and Hopeful Ways to Support Children as they Heal from Domestic Violence and Abuse." Careful attention to the language and terminology makes it suitable for an American audience but also appropriate in Canada, Australia, the United Kingdom and other places where English is spoken understood. Therefore, we anticipate the the royal revenues will be significant.
External agencies can use the existing material without incurring any cost. To our knowledge, women who access services informed by the resources are not charged a fee. Moreover, women with access to the Internet can find the material themselves. We are always sensitive to the issue of cost because we never want money to be a barrier to the ability of women or the people who serve them from accessing help.
What percentage, if any, of the total operating costs does earned income (from products, services, or other fees) represent?
90%
How is the initiative financed? Is it financially self-sustainable or profitable? How much do beneficiaries contribute?
Our operating costs at this point take the form of supporting the development of new resources to augment the package of existing resources.
The continued development of material is funded by publication sales, training revenue, and grants. We seek sustainability rather than profit. All revenue goes back into new project develpment.
It is important to acknowledged that the background research and initial development of the resources were funded by the Packard Foundation, the Government of Ontario, the National Crime Prevention Centre (Ottawa) and, most recently, the National Clearinghouse of Family Violence (Ottawa) which supports the production of the latest resource, "Little Eyes, Little Ears: How Violence Against a Mother Shapes her Children as They Grow" (2007). That institution has a long-standing distribution infrastructure to mail free copies to those who request them. The Centre will soon use secure Internet-based e-shopping for prospective purchasers of our over 70 resources.
Hard copies are available for purchase but users are encouraged to reproduce the material through photocopying or further printing (so long as the authors and copyright holder are acknowledged and no profit will be made).
Effectiveness
At the request of the project funder, feedback was solicited from users of "Helping Children Thrive" via an Internet form in 2004. Most of the respondents were Canadian while 8% were American. Respondents worked at women’s shelters or in the children's mental health field. They found the literacy level appropriate for the women they serve. Almost all (97%) agreed the material helps their work and 94% said it is helpful to the women they serve. Many respondents (53%) indicated that their knowledge of child exposure to domestic violence was fairly extensive before they read “Helping Children Thrive.” Even so, 76% said their knowledge level increased after using it. All the people whose knowledge level had not increased considered themselves highly knowledgeable already. However, half of the people who rated themselves as highly knowledgeable said that their knowledge level increased. Similar findings were evident when asked about knowledge of parenting interventions, and perceived capacity to assist women as parent. Recommendations for future directions included translation into other languages, creation of a video, and more of the activities and fill-in-the-blank exercises already there.
Australian Pilot in Women's Refuges
Some of the handouts for mothers from the "Helping Child Thrive" resource will be tested in women’s refuges in New South Wales, Australia, on a pilot basis to replace the material previously distributed to new residents. Feedback will be garnered from refuge staff and women.
How many people have benefited from your program over the last year? Which element of the program proved itself most effective?
While confident that the material is used widely, with a diffused service delivery model we cannot answer this question. This is what we know:
Adoption or Adaption by Other Agencies
A steady stream of requests seeks permission to re-print the material, translate it, or make modifications to suit local dialects or legal terminology. For example, the Simcoe Muskoka Health Unit in Ontario used the parenting tips as the backbone of their “Think Twice” parenting campaign. They printed the tips on tray liners used in local McDonald’s restaurants. The material is also integrated into the programing delivered through the NSPCC in Cardiff, Wales. Last year, professionals from Australia, Ireland, Scotland, the Netherlands, Taiwan and Japan, visited the Centre looking for information on "children exposed" resources. These are only a few examples.
Web Site Traffic
The number of visitors to our web site increases years after year. In 2006/07, we had 265,000 visitors, up from 240,000 the previous year. They came from 206 countries, only 44% of whom are Canadian. In the previous year, there were 80,000 visitors from the U.S. including 8,000 from California and 6,000 from New York state. Next on the list is the United Kingdom, Australia, France, South Africa, India, New Zealand, the Philippines, Malaysia, Portugal, Ireland, Belgium, Japan, Germany and Singapore.
Web Access to E-resources
The resources forming the package of parenting material are consistently the most popular of the over 70 documents available on our web site. For example, the "What About Me!" research report from 2004 was read or downloaded 100,759 times in the previous year. That is a substantial increase over the figure of 85,000 from the previous year.
The developmental model of impact of violence exposure consistently gets the best feedback. Specifically, there are four models of how violence exposure is experienced by children and teenagers in four age categories.
Scaling up Strategy
When an abusive relationship ends, women often worry about their children but have difficulty channeling that love and concern into concrete strategies to help them heal. In the research literature, virtually all empirical work on parenting by abused women was concerned only with documenting their deficits as mothers. At the same time, the enormous volume of parenting resources was not addressing the unique needs of children who lived with domestic violence. Some staff of women’s shelters were telling us they did not always feel prepared to help women with questions about parenting children who had lived with domestic violence. Staff of mainstream counseling services recognized how the dynamics of abuse created unique challenges when delivering parenting support to families characterized by domestic violence. Integrating these streams of ideas, we spent several years developing the material in a triangulated process of reviewing the literature, interviewing mothers and children, and listening to the feedback from front-line professionals who attend our training sessions.
The plan is to continue developing new materials, especially that appropriate for self-study by women. Raising awareness about the availability of the material is an on-going activity. For example, we are giving a full-day workshop to premier some of the new material at the Third International Conference on Children Exposed to Domestic Violence in May, 2007. We want to explore and develop expertise in alternate modalities of knowledge transfer, such as on-line classes, CD-ROM based training modules, and perhaps DVD-based information for mothers. These technologies would expand the capacity to meet demand for training and permit training in a wider number of languages. We welcome opportunities to work with agencies in other countries to adapt the material to specific cultures. We would very much like to develop similar material suitable for men as fathers.
Stage of the Initiative
2
Origin of the Initiative
Over 30 years, the Centre for Children and Families in the Justice System has earned a reputation for excellence in service, innovation in program development, and rigorousness in the applied research which informs both. In the 1980s, staff at the Centre (then known as the London Family Court Clinic) were among the first front-line professionals to observe how exposure to domestic violence manifest in the worrisome behavior, emotions and thoughts of children. Until that point, it was generally assumed that children were affected only if directly maltreated themselves. The first opportunity to reflect our experience in resources for the front-line came with a generous grant from the Packard Foundation. Four resources were created for police, educators, early childhood educators and staff of juvenile custody and detention facilities in the United States.
This Entry is about (Issues)
Sustainability
How did you hear about this contest and what is your main incentive to participate?
Someone from your agency called and suggested we enter.
Main Obstacles to Scaling Up
Time and resources. We have many ideas about future development and are limited only by time and resource constraints.
Main Financial Challenges
As an NGO, all our activities must be funded. Any funding we recieve supports the continued development of material, epsecially our workbook for women which is the subject of greatest demand.
Main Partnership Challenges
Our partners value greatly the work we produce to support their work. They themselves are challenged by time and resource constraints, and we wish we could do more pro bono work for them.
 | 189 weeks agopastor shahid munir said: Dear brother in Christ Please accept our Christianly greetings. You may know that our people are mostly job less and leading a very ... about this Competition Entry. - read more > |
| 189 weeks agopastor shahid munir said: Dear brother in Christ Please accept our Christianly greetings. You may know that our people are mostly job less and leading a very ... about this Competition Entry. - read more > |
| 265 weeks agoAlison Cunningham said: People are asking about our new resource coming out -- Little Eyes, Little Ears: How Violence Against A Mother Shapes Children as they ... about this Competition Entry. - read more > |
| 265 weeks agoBetty Mugo-Weru said: A very innovative and strategic apprach in responding to violence within families. By responding to the effect and impact of violence ... about this Competition Entry. - read more > |
| 266 weeks agoHelping Children Thrive: Supporting the Mothering of Woman Abuse Survivors has been chosen as a finalist in No Private Matter! Ending Abuse in Intimate & Family Relations. |
