Building Caring Families
Project Street Address
Project City
Project Province/State
Project Postal/Zip Code
Project Country
Focus of activity
Education
Year the initiative began
2005
Which of these barriers is the primary focus of your work?
Aggressive Models Of Masculinity
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
Name Your Project
Building Caring Families
Describe Your Idea
Description of Initiative
Building Caring Families is a research-based, computer-assisted education program designed to help people develop the commitment, knowledge, attitudes, and skills that will enable them to build and maintain healthy, joy-filled, violence-free intimate relationships and families. In accordance with goals articulated in the Oregon Violence Against Women Prevention Plan (http://www.oregon.gov/DHS/ph/ipe/docs/vawplan.pdf ), the main focus of our initiative is to prevent the development, maintenance, and escalation of patterns of domestic violence by promoting healthy, non-violent relationships (Goal #4). A parallel focus is to identify and change societal factors that condone, perpetuate, or mediate violence against women, especially socially prescribed gender roles (Goal #1).
We address this principal aspect of domestic violence: Whatever effect other variables may have, domestic violence occurs when people choose, mindfully or not, to act in accordance with a worldview that mandates the exercise of power and control over others through the use or threat of force, rather than one that mandates mutual respect, shared power, and collaboration.
For us, this work consists of collaborating with local community organizations to do the following: (1) Select primary beneficiaries, target groups, and program implementers. (2) Adapt the basic program to local needs and strengths, and to the gender and developmental stage of beneficiaries. (3) Enroll and train local program implementers: e.g., clergy working with premarital couples and family life groups; teachers and counselors working with students; athletic coaches working with athletes of all ages; drug and alcohol service providers working with the people whom they serve; and professionals and volunteers working with caregivers of elderly or disabled people.) (4) Make the work widely visible throughout the community.
Innovation
Building Caring Families is unique in these ways:
It provides a structured, computer-assisted program that is based in current research published in refereed journals, as well as in current evidence-based practice.
It relies for its implementation in each community on collaboration with people in local domestic violence service agencies and other community organizations to build on local strengths and to ensure cultural appropriateness.
It is designed to use unique collaborative teaching techniques to prepare local persons of influence, already parts of a local infrastructure, to work safely and supportively with program beneficiaries in implementing program activities.
It is structured to engage local persons of influence in drawing upon cultural traditions of collaboration rather than abuse by integrating appropriate material from sacred texts, wisdom traditions, and other sources.
In the context of fostering the development by program beneficiaries of the commitment, knowledge, attitudes, and skills that are predictive of gratifying and durable relationships, it teaches them how to recognize and get help in dealing with any signs of interpersonal violence.
Here is how the Building Caring Families program is designed to work:
Program personnel collaborate with local domestic violence service providers in defining local goals and in recruiting and working with local persons of influence (e.g, clergy of all faiths, coaches, health educators, teachers, human resources personnel.) After their training and with ongoing mentoring, these persons of influence (“implementers”) will use appropriate passages from scriptures, wisdom traditions, or other culturally specific sources during a series of structured individual and joint meetings with the people whom they serve (“beneficiaries”) to explore with them their experiences with the computer-assisted education program itself (www.bcfamilies.org).
Delivery Model
The Building Caring Families program is structured to reach people in these ways:
Program beneficiaries will be reached through (local) trained program implementers, working with them face-to face and providing them with access to the program’s computer-based and other materials. Program implementers will reached through face-to-face conversations, mail, e-mail, phone, meetings, workshops, and training sessions initiated and hosted by local organizations that provide services to domestic violence victims, survivors, and perpetrators. Local organizations will be reached via word of mouth, contact at conferences, and electronic mail from national organizations. To reach the general public in each community, program personnel will collaborate with local organizations in planning, publicizing, conducting, and evaluating public forums and other public appearances; interviews with print, radio, and television journalists; and meetings with school personnel and other potential program implementers.
Present plans call for ongoing measurement of impact via meetings with focus groups, feedback forms at public events and specialty workshops, data from implementers and beneficiaries, and follow-up reports generated by local domestic violence service providers and other agencies.
Key Operational Partnerships
Among the members of our core development team are the Chair of the Multnomah County Family Violence Coordinating Council; the Chair of the Prevention Committee of the Oregon Governor’s Council on Domestic Violence; the past Director of Victim Services for Yamhill County: a co-founder of Multnomah County Community Against Domestic Violence and developer of its Workshops for Clergy; and a member of the Editorial Board of the Journal of Family Violence.
In 2006, the Oregon Governor’s Council on Domestic Violence, without funding or precedent, endorsed the Building Caring Families program as an exemplary demonstration program. Subsequently, program personnel have developed working partnerships with the Oregon Coalition Against Domestic and Sexual Violence; the Presiding Judge of the Oregon Circuit Court for Coos and Curry Counties; the Coos and Curry Family Violence Council; and such specific local entities in Coos County as police, the District Attorney’s office, and the Women’s Safety and Resource Center. Through the station manager and morning host of Lighthouse Radio, a relationship has been established with the Coos County Clergy Group. We maintain active and ongoing relationships with local agencies that provide services to victims, survivors, and perpetrators of domestic violence; and with colleagues and other senior personnel at Oregon Health & Science University, Portland State University, and Pacific University School of Professional Psychology.
Financial Model
Our commitment from the start has been to keep access to the program's website free to all beneficiaries (i.e., end-users). On the basis of our experience as clinicians as well as teachers, we are particularly sensitive to the needs of such high-risk groups as low-income populations, ethnic and minority populations, Native Americans, members of sexual minorities, youth, children of alcoholics, women, people living with disabilities or chronic illness, and the elderly.
After the program moves from development and testing phases to its implementation phases – i.e., after it has been shown to be acceptable, feasible, safe, and effective in reducing the risk or reality of domestic violence – program personnel will help local community organizations generate funds to pay for the costs of program implementation through grants, contracts, donations, public events, and sale of products.
What percentage, if any, of the total operating costs does earned income (from products, services, or other fees) represent?
<1%
How is the initiative financed? Is it financially self-sustainable or profitable? How much do beneficiaries contribute?
Earned income accounts for an insignificant portion of our total operating costs: less than one percent. At this time, in addition to preparing to make use of the writing and teaching opportunities described above, we have begun marketing boxes of note cards with front-panel botanical images “reproduced directly from field drawings made by pediatrician Herman M. Frankel, M.D.,” and with back-panel text stating that “proceeds from the sale of ‘Let people know that you care about them’ cards support the activities of the Building Caring Families premarital program for creating healthy, durable families and preventing domestic violence.”
To date, the repeated cycles of development, testing, and refinement of the Building Caring Families program have been made possible because professional services have been uncompensated and expenses have been met without external funding. (From January 2005 to March 2006, more than 1300 hours of doctoral-level professional services and 178 hours of other professional services were donated. The value of other services donated in 2005 exceeded $54,000.)
It is clear to us that external funding is needed now that Building Caring Families is ready for scaling up.
Our plans call for making the program self-sustainable by developing successive cohorts of additional people who will work with local communities to carry out the program, and to conduct collaborative teaching sessions with new cohorts of program implementers. We will begin this implementation phase of our work only after the data that we gather and analyze during the next three years provide good evidence of program acceptance, feasibility, safety, and efficacy in reducing the risk or reality of domestic violence. As we see it, our work will become self-sustainable when we move from developing and testing a program for preventing domestic violence to conducting a program that has been shown to be acceptable, feasible, safe, and effective in preventing domestic violence.
All members of the Building Caring Families core development team are experienced and comfortable in conducting graduate and continuing professional education activities for such practitioners as counselors, psychologists, physicians, social workers, attorneys, judges, educators, clergy, and athletic coaches. We envision building on this experience, and generating revenue for the program by offering professional education activities for practitioners who will conduct the program for the people whom they serve, for students and for faculty at professional schools, and for HMO’s and other medical care providers. In addition, we look ahead to developing truly interactive multimedia adaptations of the program, using modeling of interactions by live actors and active user participation, for widespread marketing and sale to the public.
Effectiveness
Because our program is just ready to enter its formal pilot testing phase, our influence to date has been primarily on individuals and agencies involved (or potentially involved) in providing services to victims of domestic violence, rather than to victims (or potential victims) themselves.
Following our meetings with 26 domestic violence service providers and other human service professionals (Head Start, public schools, community college, police, Office of the District Attorney, Department of Human Services, and clergy) in Coos and Curry Counties, two economically distressed rural counties on the southern Oregon coast, the regional Family Violence Council was reactivated, and a Steering Committee for Building Caring Families in Coos and Curry Counties was formed. A meeting with the Coos County Clergy Group stimulated thoughtful discussion, and an active interest in the possibility of implementing the Building Caring Families program with clergy working with premarital couples.
We know that our conversations, workshops, and other collaborative teaching activities have involved more than 500 people. We think that they have benefited by becoming informed, aware of the choice between models of collaboration and models of interpersonal abuse, better able to respond appropriately to signs of domestic violence in their own lives and in the lives of others, and supportive of work to encourage examination of societal gender roles.
We do not know yet of any fundamental changes that communities or institutions have made as a result of our work.
How many people have benefited from your program over the last year? Which element of the program proved itself most effective?
Sixteen couples, most of them premarital, have told us that they have benefited from being guided through the Building Caring Families program during the program’s cycles of development, testing, assessment, and refinement; that their habitual behaviors have changed (without recidivism); and that they are grateful. All expressed appreciation for the website, and some made suggestions for small changes. All expressed appreciation for the face-to-face meetings conducted (weekly or bi-weekly) between work sessions at the computer.
As noted in the response to the preceding set of questions, we think that more than 500 people have benefited from participating in our various collaborative teaching activities.
Scaling up Strategy
Our priority for this year is to conduct a feasibility study of Building Caring Families in three geographically, culturally, and demographically diverse Oregon communities with which we are familiar and in which we have effective partnerships. We need to generate valid data about the program’s acceptance, feasibility, and safety before we are ready to consider widespread implementation of the program and documentation of its effects (i.e., its efficacy, in addition to its acceptance, feasibility, and safety).
Our priority for the remainder of the next three years, assuming that the data at each stage justify our doing so, is to generate the resources needed for formal pilot studies with larger populations; with late-responder program implementers as well as early responders; and in additional geographic, cultural, and demographic settings. Further, we see ourselves collaborating with others to develop the program so that it can be used in such contexts as campuses, sports programs, medical care delivery organizations, and workplaces, in addition to premarital education.
The rationale for this progression rests on our wish to move methodically from program development to pilot testing to implementation, basing our work on published research, current thinking, and evidence-based practice; and collecting valid data at every step. We see beginning in the communities with which we are familiar and with which we have effective partnerships, and expanding our work geographically as supported by data and local interest.
Stage of the Initiative
1
Origin of the Initiative
(Story told by Herman M. Frankel, M.D.)
“Hey, doc, how’s it going?”
Mike greeted me, as usual, when I pulled into the parking lot.
“Hi, Mike. Well, I just attended a fascinating workshop: The Effects on Children of Witnessing Domestic Violence.”
I gave him my keys. His smile dissolved. He paused.
“Y’know, doc, that’s very complicated.”
I tilted my head, still looking at him, and paused.
“M-m?”
“Y’got a minute?”
Of course I had a minute. I had a feeling that was about to learn something that I might not learn anywhere else.
We sat down on a low wall, and got settled. He talked slowly now.
“Y’know, doc, here’s what it is.
“A kid grows up in a house where he sees his ol’ man beatin’ up on the ol’ lady. . . It's not like he learns -- it's not like he thinks -- it’s that he knows that that’s the way it’s s’posed to be. . . Y’understand what I mean, doc?”
Pause.
“I think I’m hearing you, Mike.”
“So, y’know, the kid gets a li’l older, and then he learns that that’s the man’s job. That’s what it means to be a man. Y’gotta make sure that ev’yone is doin’ the right thing; otherwise, bam! . . . Y’understan’ what I’m sayin’, doc?”
“I think so, Mike.”
“So y’know, then maybe the guy is in a ‘batterer group’. An’ the guy in front is a nice guy: he treats ev’yone wit’ respect, he rememb’s ev’one’s name. An’ he says, like, ‘You shou’n’t do that. That’s not OK.” (Pause) Y’know , doc? This guy don’t know (nothin’)! (Pause) Y’ see what I mean?”
“I’m hearing you, Mike.”
“Y’know, whatever it is, y’ don’t turn y’ back on yo’ ol’ man.”
“You don’t turn your back on your old man.”
“Yeah. They don’ get it. And they don’ even hear your side!”
Pause.
“Mike, I’m glad you’re telling me this. Thanks. . . Anything else?”
Pause.
“No, doc. Thanks. Take care.”
Take care.
I’m a 68-year-old pediatrician, gratefully married to Ruth since 1963, grateful for our two adult daughters, Sarah and Naomi. As a way of giving back, so to speak, for ten of the past thirteen years I’ve devoted my professional life to protecting children’s well-being during and after divorce: working with individual families, writing booklets, facilitating workshops for people in every profession and for general audiences, conducting workplace brown bag sessions, being interviewed by journalists, talking at meetings of civic groups, serving on committees. I engaged people in exploring what they can do to protect children’s well-being when their parents separate and divorce, because the process itself is traumatic even when everyone in the family is better off living permanently in two households instead of one.
I used to say that parental divorce, which affects a million American children each year, is the most commonly occurring major traumatic event in the lives of American children. And then I learned that, in fact, most commonly occurring major traumatic event in the lives of American children, affecting at least three million children – and maybe ten million children – each year is witnessing domestic violence.
On May 24, 2001, at the invitation of Multnomah County Family Violence Services Coordinator Chiquita Rollins, Betsy McAlister Groves (Child Witness to Violence Project, Boston Medical Center) conducted a workshop in Portland about the effects on children of witnessing domestic violence. The same day, as I’ve recounted, I learned something from Mike (not his real name) about the some of the familial and cultural roots of domestic violence. From Betsy and from Mike, in one day, I earned something about the nature, severity, prevalence, consequences, and antecedents of the problems that challenge my friends who provide hotline and shelter and advocate and support group and law enforcement and criminal justice and batterer intervention services.
I’m a pediatrician. I think in terms of prevention. Aware of the costs of intervention services, I think in terms of prevention. Aware of the underfunding of intervention services, I have no interest in competing for the limited resources that might be made available for intervention services. At the same time, I think in terms of prevention.
At the end of 2004, I met Ron Clark, D.Min., then preaching minister at Metro Church of Christ in Gresham, OR, and co-founder of the East Multnomah County Community Against Domestic Violence. Ron graciously invited me to participate in his domestic violence workshops for clergy, and later, to co-facilitate some sessions. In the course of one such session, I asked, “How would it be for you if you knew that you would be able to prevent patterns of domestic from developing in at least some of the families at whose weddings you officiate?” Ron and I were struck by the open-mouthed silence, and then eager head-nodding, that followed.
The stage was set. Over the past two years, in the company of tireless and committed colleagues, and with thoughtful input and feedback from many other caring people, we participated in the conception, incubation, delivery, and nurturing of the Building Caring Families program. Now, joyfully and gratefully, we are engaged in facilitating its healthy growth and development. After multiple cycles of field testing, assessment, and revision, we are ready scale up, and move closer to serving the people for whom we developed the Building Caring Families program.
This Entry is about (Issues)
How did you hear about this contest and what is your main incentive to participate?
We learned of this contest from the January 31, 2007 issue of the Family Violence Fund’s NewsFlash, forwarded to one of us 02/05/07 by Sally Melton, Coordinator of the Domestic Violence Program of Asante Health System in Medford, Oregon and a colleague on the Oregon Governor’s Council on Domestic Violence.
Our main incentive to participate is to move forward with the work of preventing domestic violence, by learning from and collaborating with people, programs, and organizations reached by your website and by Changemakers.
Main Obstacles to Scaling Up
1. Our core development team lacks the expertise needed for the efficient and successful marketing of program services and products, and the generation of program-supporting revenue.
2. We currently lack the funding needed for successful beta testing of the Building Caring Families program.
Main Financial Challenges
So far, our project has been built almost exclusively using volunteer time and effort. For our program to grow, we will need to secure outside funds. Revising and printing the workshop manuals for initial (“early adapter”) cohorts of program implementers in each of three communities will cost approximately $5000; pilot testing the program in three geographically, culturally, and demgraphically different communities will cost approximately $200,000.
With no NIH institute focused on violence and with service dollars often needed for victim services, there is relatively limited funding for violence prevention efforts. We need additional funds to complete project development and implement the program on a wider scale. We are open to working with foundations, government agencies, or social investors.
Main Partnership Challenges
As described, we have identified many enthusiastic partners, and established strong connections with them. It is clear, at the same time, that implementation of formal commitments to ongoing work together has been slow because of our lack of funding.
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