Joint effort to reduce intimate partner violence funded

Domestic violence services are slated to receive increased support as Monroe County implements a $3 million grant that assists evidence-based strategies to reduce intimate partner violence. Statewide, grants totaled nearly $20.3 million.

The Willow Domestic Violence Center of Greater Rochester will get a significant portion of the local grant’s dollars—$904,071. The Rochester Police Department will receive $600,000 to assign a detective to investigate domestic violence offenses and provide necessary equipment and training.

The Statewide Targeted Reductions in Intimate Partner Violence initiative, announced in October, represents an effort between local law enforcement agencies and domestic violence service providers toward a coordinated community response rooted in trauma-informed and survivor-centered care. 

“This gives us an opportunity and the resources to be able to partner more closely, to be more in collaboration with the agencies in our community that are deeply involved in survivors’ lives and in these decision-making moments,” says Meaghan de Chateauvieux, president and CEO of Willow. 

Of the money allocated to Willow, roughly a third will fund client assistance for survivors. The remainder will be allocated to staffing, including a new high-risk team coordinator position. 

Modeled after the state’s Gun Involved Violence Elimination initiative, STRIVE partners will deploy a comprehensive plan using one or more evidence-based strategies, including a Domestic Violence High-Risk Team model, Lethality Assessment Program, and Intimate Partner Violence Intervention.

“We’re trying to apply a lot of the success we’ve seen in those collaborative approaches (to) drive down intimate partner violence,” says Michael Bontz, Office of Public Safety deputy commissioner with the state Department of Criminal Justice Services. “This is probably the largest investment ever placed in intimate partner violence, where we’re collaborating at the local level with so many different stakeholders.”

The three evidence-based strategies are designed to work in tandem among collaborators and service providers to develop a collaborative, comprehensive response for survivors, says Johanna Sullivan, Office of Public Safety director. A lethality assessment, for instance, would allow investigators to ask questions to assess urgent situations. From there, a high-risk team can help connect that survivor with domestic violence service providers or intervene further.

“Historically, systems have had problems because of staffing resources (or) communication breakdown,” notes Bontz. “If we can use what we know to streamline communication, to make assessments quicker, and ultimately to get survivors to services a lot quicker, the hope is that we’re going to make a lot more people safer in a (much) faster timeline.”

For survivors of domestic violence, the goal is to apply a comprehensive approach where police, investigators, and service providers can have greater resources to collaborate and respond more effectively.

“Between law enforcement, the DA, the court process, the survivors engage in that world; having everyone at the table and being able to have these open conversations about what’s going on will also help us to kind of infuse the work with, you know, the principles of trauma-informed care,” explains Chauteauvieux.

“We’ll be able to talk about how we truly are survivor-centered and how we are helping our community move towards safety, and to be that support for our partners as well, because they have so much on their plates,” she adds. “(With) the expectations that we have of the system to respond in these ways, we want to be able to show up in different ways for our partners and for survivors in the moment when they need us.”

Monroe County is expected to receive its funding this year. Implementation remains the primary focus at this time.

“It really is groundbreaking,” says Sullivan. “There’s always a lot of research that we connect with and look to sort of be a model for the rest of the country to help continue to build and support all of those involved with helping to reduce domestic violence.”

Narm Nathan is a Rochester Beacon contributing writer and a member of the Oasis Project’s inaugural cohort.

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