A long-term plan to eradicate domestic violence in central Indiana will continue into 2016 with a new initiative in a local school district.
The Community-wide Plan to End Domestic Violence (CWP 3.0) is a partnership among several community organizations — spearheaded by Domestic Violence Network (DVN) — that launched in October 2013.
“It’s a guiding plan to bring the community together under different areas to prevent and respond to domestic violence,” said Chris Handberg, director of programs and research at DVN.
The plan was created to take a multifaceted approach to ending intimate partner violence using less “obvious” strategies.
“Responding to the needs of victims and confronting perpetrators of violence are both important pieces to the puzzle, but to end domestic violence, the whole community must participate,” according to the CWP description on the DVN website.
To involve the whole community, CWP created an “impact group” focusing on domestic violence prevention among community members and youth.
Handberg said DVN and other members of that impact group have been working on a new plan that will launch this year.
“Specifically with Playworks Indiana and Social Health Association of Indiana, we were developing and launching a coordinated education program. We’re piloting it this semester and next year at Irvington elementary, middle and high schools,” Handberg said.
Irvington Community School Inc. is a public charter school system that serves about 1,000 K-12 students. Just over 60 percent of students in the Irvington school system receive free or reduced lunch (compared to 49.1 percent of K-12 students statewide and almost 76 percent of Indianapolis Public Schools students).
Handberg said the overall goal is to teach youth about healthy relationships and recognizing and responding to unhealthy relationships.
“Representatives from each agency worked together to build a best practices, data-driven curriculum that builds off each other each (school) year. So if a student goes through Playworks’ curriculum, they’ll get some keywords and some information that’ll cross over to Social Health, and then when they get into high school, the healthy relationships education will have built off of the other material.”
For the younger children, Playworks uses play to transform schools’ culture and climate, serving 10,000 Indiana kids every day. Students involved in the program learn to channel natural leadership abilities into an inclusive environment and learn valuable collaboration skills.
Marc McAleavy, executive director of Playworks Indiana, says the group’s methods are data-proven.
“Last year in our partner schools, we had an 86 percent decrease in bullying. The direct impact of playing more is that kids become more kind,” he said.
McAleavy said participating schools also saw a decrease in students’ disciplinary visits to the principal’s office.
Anecdotally, McAleavy said Playworks receives letters from teachers, administrators and parents about how students involved in the program have begun to show leadership skills outside of school and have organized and led activities in their homes and neighborhoods.
Though Playworks doesn’t address domestic violence directly, McAleavy said its mission fits well with DVN and other CWP partners.
“(We) all share a very similar vision and mission for the world, which is a world that’s filled with communities that are inclusive, that use healthy, positive language and are founded on healthy, positive relationships,” he said.
Another such organization is Families First Indiana, the oldest social services organization in Indiana, which has been involved with CWP since the first roundtable discussions early in 2013, said Senior Vice President Michelle Gwaltney.
Families First offers family and individual counseling, chemical dependency programs and more, including domestic violence-specific services for offenders, victims and children.
Families First conducts sessions at schools, youth groups and other locations to teach about safe dating. The organization also offers age-specific groups for children of domestic violence victims.
Gwaltney said this type of program is important for prevention, because there is a correlation between growing up in a violent home and becoming a victim or perpetrator of abuse later in life.
“A lot of people who are coming through our programs, they grew up in households where that is the norm,” she said. “The more subtle things, such as being disrespectful, calling names, belittling, controlling the money … those kinds of things I definitely see where that was their norm. That’s what they grew up with, and they might not find those things wrong.”
Handberg said DVN and CWP partners have seen some progress in domestic violence awareness, but there is more to do.
“If we look at a progress chart of the awareness of domestic violence as an issue in the community, people being knowledgeable about what to do and where to go, we’ve certainly seen that number go up,” he said. “For 2016, the big goal is to reach out to those communities that have been traditionally underserved.
“I think one of the biggest things to keep in mind is half of all people know someone who is experiencing violence. When people are experiencing violence, the goal of the abuser is to isolate and to always keep connected to them. Even if they’re not ready to leave their abuser, (people need to) be that resource for them.”
For more information, visit dvnconnect.org, contact the Domestic Violence Network at (317) 872-1086 or email communitywideplan@dvnconnect.org.
