In March 2020, the world may have been shutting down, but a door opened in a large county in Colorado. The county Department of Human Services contracted with their local domestic violence victim service agency to support domestic violence advocacy. In turn, it hired a Co-Located Advocate. The job was to work with victims of domestic violence, providing advocacy while also building and executing a training and consultation program for all 450 child welfare staff.
Over almost two years, I worked diligently with multiple sets of administrators and two agencies with extremely high turnover in staff. That was thanks to field burnout AND Covid). I also worked with two local agencies that housed DVOMB (Domestic Violence Offender Management Board). Those approved providers taking on civil case referrals outside the DVOMB standards. And finally, I worked with many systems, agencies, boards, and programs.
In January 2022, I left the position. This three-part series about domestic violence advocacy is what I learned during that time. We begin by looking at where child welfare and community agencies start on the issues.
The Challenge of Domestic Violence if It’s Not Physical
The state of Colorado passed a bill (effective January 2023) that allows child welfare caseworkers to make a “finding of abuse or neglect” claim based solely on exposure to Domestic Violence (DV). Up to this point, the only finding in a domestic situation was a complaint when there was physical violence. This falls under “injurious environment.” Of course, this completely negates the ability of a caseworker to do ANYTHING for a family. Meaning, that unless there was physical abuse under the umbrella of a Dependency and Neglect (court-involved), no one could help. Other forms of DV, such as financial control, using the children or the system as control, threats, intimidation, or virtually any emotional abuse, were almost irrelevant. And they could only get addressed as part of another family issue (i.e., substance abuse, neglect, child abuse, etc.).
Additionally, the Colorado CORE Academy offers no domestic violence training for their Caseworkers. So, most don’t know what they don’t know. In case management, domestic violence is often oversimplified, minimized, and grossly misunderstood in case management. Therefore, domestic violence advocacy will continue to fail without mandatory training and assertive policy change within CDHS. In other words, caseworkers will continue to unintentionally victim blame. They’ll continue to get manipulated by the offenders. And inevitably, victims and their children will continue to get set up for escalating abuse, violence, and control.
The Reality of Agency Staff and Workers
Victim Service agencies are almost all non-profits. As a result, they depend on grants and donations to keep the doors open. It inevitably means that their services are fluid. So, they cannot afford to pay staff well, resulting in the jobs being resume builders. For instance, therapists come to finish their hours for licensure and leave. Social workers and case managers come to gain “boots on the ground” experience. And a variety of people who believe firmly in helping others burn out quickly due to high caseload, crisis work, and lack of support. The best agencies do everything they can to pay well, offer side benefits, and show gratitude. Others don’t.
With continuous staff turnover, services available to clients change with the ever-changing set of employees based on their skillset. One moment there are two therapists on staff, offering support groups and psych-ed classes. But when the therapist running groups moves on, so do the groups. A motivated advocate may organize a community advocacy program, meeting victims in the community to offer resources—but once that advocate moves on, the program shuts down. The list goes. And it affects employment assistance, housing specialists, life skills class, etc.
Keeping track of each agency’s services is difficult. Knowing your resources means knowing if those services are still funded or staffed. And that’s a massive failure of domestic violence advocacy.
