Approaches Community Response

What Is Meant With “Community Response”?

“The current movement is toward a broader and more coordinated response to domestic violence cases, referred to as coordinated community response (Pence&Shepard, 1999). The objective is to develop an even more comprehensive and certain system of intervention. Battered women’s services, for instance, might maintain contact and support for women whose partners are brought to criminal court. Civil court actions might be added to domestic violence cases to increase protection for women or help with child support. Police and court response to noncompliance might be swifter and more decisive. Specialised probation officers could better manage men in batterer programs. Men with compounding psychological and alcohol problems might be referred to other kinds of treatment as well as batterer counseling.

Much of this coordination is being achieved through domestic violence councils that include representatives from battered women’s services and batterer programs, police and probation departments, court officials and prosecution officers, and other community services. There are still challenges in breaking down “turf”, focusing on the victim’s well-being, and obtaining the time and resources for these councils to meet and act (Gondolf 1994). […] batterer programs, rather than being singular treatments, are increasingly becoming part of a larger system of intervention.” (Gondolf 2002)

Key aspects are:

Comprehensive and certain system of intervention
Networks and collaborations to improve protection of battered women
Aims mainly at perpetrators

Since Gondolf (2002) the definition of “community response” has been broadened in including measures of prevention:

Primary prevention:
information about domestic violence
integrating the theme domestic violence into teaching about e.g. sexuality at schools
Secondary prevention (intervention):
Establishing intersectional intervention networks aiming at victims and at perpetrators.
Tertiary prevention:
public campaigns to raise awareness about domestic violence and disconnect manliness and violence (focus is on gender and gender roles)

The main aim of community response activities is to promote a societal atmosphere where domestic violence is stigmatized so that perpetrators do not feel supported by societal silence and victims will be protected.

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