CurriculaPlease click on the links below for information about curricula produced by the Center/DVMHPI.
Risking Connection - DV: A Curriculum for Working with Survivors of Domestic Violence and Lifetime Trauma
Children Exposed to Domestic Violence and Other Trauma
Addressing Trauma and Domestic Violence in the Lives of People Living with Psychiatric Disabilities
Risking Connection – DV: A Curriculum for Working with Survivors of Domestic Violence and Lifetime Trauma
This curriculum is currently being developed by the Domestic Violence Mental Health Policy Initiative, the Sidran Institute, and the Trauma, Research, Education and Training Institute (TREATI). Adapted from the original Risking Connection curriculum, which provides an accessible, in-depth relational approach to working with adult survivors of childhood abuse, Risking Connection – DV is an integrated model for working with survivors of lifetime trauma in the context of ongoing domestic violence. The curriculum is intended to help community providers develop advocacy and clinical services that are appropriate for survivors of domestic violence but that are also trauma-informed. The curriculum was piloted at two community mental health centers and three domestic violence programs in Chicago. Contact the Center for more information.
Children Exposed to Domestic Violence and Other Trauma
The Child Trauma Capacity Building project of the Domestic Violence & Mental Health Policy Initiative offers local training and consultation for community-based service providers and their supervisors within a domestic violence-sensitive and trauma-informed framework. Experience from “on the ground” training and site-based consultation has helped us to refine our training products with lessons learned about the needs of children, teens and caregivers seeking services as well as what individual staff and agencies might need to enhance baseline knowledge and skill sets to do this work. In collaboration with national experts in domestic violence and childhood trauma, we have helped to develop several curricula for community providers. In addition to this work, DVMHPI engaged in a project with Illinois’s state-administered child welfare department in 2006 to create a “first in the nation” child trauma curriculum for training child welfare case workers, supervisors, and foster parents.
Several of our training products will be available in 2007, and may be adapted by others across the U.S.
Child Trauma Training Curriculum for Clinicians and Supervisors
This core curriculum has been developed by Betsy McAlister Groves, MSW, LICSW, and colleagues from the Child Witness to Violence Project (CWVP) at Boston Medical Center in collaboration with DVMHPI. This 20-hour curriculum is geared for master’s level children’s mental health providers, domestic violence clinicians, and supervisors. The curriculum draws on current research and offers best practice recommendations for working with children exposed to DV and other trauma, and their primary caregivers (or non-offending parents). It also incorporates an approach that is strength- and resiliency-based; focused on enhancing or repairing the parent-child relationship in the aftermath of trauma exposure; and developmentally-attuned to the needs and capacities of young children in the face of trauma. The curriculum has been field-tested with 2 community-mental health agencies in Chicago. It has been well-received at both sites, and is now being refined prior to producing a final version.
DV Advocates Child Trauma Training Curriculum
This curriculum was been developed by Patricia Van Horn, JD, PhD, at the University of California – San Francisco, in collaboration with DVMHPI. It is geared for domestic violence advocates (and their supervisors) working in shelter and non-shelter settings with children and teens exposed to domestic violence, and their mothers or primary caregivers. This 12-hour training curriculum gives advocates an understanding of domestic violence as a specific trauma that may impact a child’s ongoing development and affect the mother-child relationship. The curriculum offers information and practice tips for advocates. It also provides information and handouts to share with parents to support their efforts in helping their children and themselves heal and recover from the traumatic effects of domestic violence. The curriculum helps an advocate understand how a child may experience trauma at different developmental stages and ages; how to strengthen or repair the parent-child relationship and increase coping capacities in the wake of exposure to DV and other trauma; and ways to intervene in areas of difficulty or vulnerability. The curriculum will be field-tested in Chicago in 2007.
Addressing Trauma and Domestic Violence in the Lives of People Living with Psychiatric Disabilities
This project is designed to assist domestic violence, disability rights, mental health and consumer advocacy providers in Chicago and throughout Illinois respond more sensitively and effectively to abuse survivors living with psychiatric disabilities. Women who have a mental illness are more vulnerable to abuse by a partner and more likely to experience multiple forms of abuse across their lives. This project provides training and technical assistance to public mental health agencies, state psychiatric hospitals, and domestic violence, consumer advocacy, and disability rights programs in Chicago and across Illinois. Activities include training mental health providers and mental health consumer advocates to recognize and address domestic violence among women experiencing psychiatric disabilities, and train domestic violence and disability rights programs to better serve survivors with serious mental health needs.
The project has also created 2 sets of training and curriculum manuals: (1) [for domestic violence and disability service providers:] Access to Advocacy: Responding to Trauma & Domestic Violence in Lives of Women with Psychiatric Disabilities; (2) [for mental health providers:] Responding to Trauma & DV in Lives of Women with Psychiatric Disabilities: Assessment, Intervention, and Treatment Issues. The project will also develop assessment tools for mental health clinicians, practice guidelines for mental health and domestic violence providers, as well as informational packets for consumers on trauma and domestic violence.
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