This article originally appeared in the July-August 1997 Children's Advocate newsmagazine, published by Action Alliance for Children. Also see the sidebars, "Massachusetts: A Pioneer" and "San Diego County: Linking Child Protection and Probation."

Linking Child Protection and Women's Safety

Pioneering collaborations improve outcomes for families

By Claudia Miller

To outsiders, concern for the welfare of children and concern for the safety of battered mothers wouldn't seem to be mutually exclusive. But advocates for battered women and child welfare workers have often had a tense or even adversarial arm's length relationship.

Things are changing, though, and everyone involved is hoping for increased cooperation between child welfare workers and battered women's advocates, expecting that will bring better results for families who need help dealing with violent batterers. Early indications in some model programs around the country show that where there are collaborative efforts, families spend less time in the child welfare system and fewer children are taken out of the home.

Both sides agree that there is a link between spousal and child abuse. In a 1995 survey of more than 6,000 American families, the National Resource Center for Family Centered Practice found that 50 percent of the men who frequently assaulted their wives also frequently abused their children. New research also shows that living with domestic violence is harmful to children, even if they're not physically abused themselves. (See "When Mom's Battered, Kids Suffer")

But linking the protection of the mother and her children is when things get tricky. Put very simply, the arguments go this way: Advocates for battered women claim that when child welfare workers visit a home to investigate a report of child abuse or neglect, they either overreact by blaming the mother and putting the children into foster care, or they underreact, simply closing the case because the children aren't being abused, leaving a battered mother with no help and the children at risk of harm.

Meanwhile, child welfare workers often feel that battered women's advocates do not understand the many rules and regulations that the government agency must follow, such as including the father/abuser in counseling. And they say battered women's advocates don't understand how heavy their caseload is—sometimes it's just impossible for them to accompany women to all their court appearances. Finally, in cases of severe child abuse where the mother is unwilling to leave the home, the child welfare worker must remove the children from both parents.

From different worlds

The conflict stems from the very different histories of the two groups. Child welfare agencies, at the local, state, or federal level, have been in existence in some form for more than 100 years, according to Linda Spears, director of child protection services at the Child Welfare League of America.

The child welfare system has always been focused on working with the entire family, including an abusive father, when possible. Until recently, children's protective service (CPS) workers didn't even define domestic violence as a risk factor for child abuse. "The result was that people in the two fields couldn't work well together because the framework was very different. Because domestic violence didn't constitute abuse and neglect, battered women's advocates never saw child welfare workers as a resource to them."

If the child welfare workers understood the child to be at risk, the child would enter foster care and the mother wouldn't get any support or resources, said Spears. "And because CPS has a mandate to work with the fathers, battered women's advocates were certainly leery of that."

Battered women's shelters, meanwhile, have been in existence only since the 1970s, and intensive focus on the issue of domestic violence arose in the 1980s. Contrary to the institutionalized history of the child welfare system, battered women's advocacy groups began on a grass-roots level.

The feminist model for battered women's shelters focused on making women independent and free of the abuser. Domestic violence victim's advocates tend to use the criminal justice system to go after the batterer, because "that's the way to get the message across [that domestic violence is not acceptable]" says Janet Carter, managing associate director of the Family Violence Prevention Fund. It's difficult for a woman's advocate to understand how anyone from CPS can work with batterers and believe "we can help the abuser," she says.

Seeing connections

In the mid-1980s, conflict between the two sides had intensified as the nation focused more on domestic violence. "The relationship got worse—from the policy level down to the front lines," Spears said. "Most people involved never understood what the fighting was all about, because they were working with the same sets of women and had the same sets of concerns. But the framework was such that we couldn't work together."

By the late 1980s, Spears said, "There was a realization that we were doing a disservice to the families by not addressing domestic violence." Pioneering research by Susan Schechter and Jeffrey Edelson called attention to the effects of domestic violence on children and the overlap between child-abuse caseloads and families experiencing domestic violence.

One of the first model programs to link women's safety with child protection began in Massachusetts after the murder of a child whose mother was being beaten by her boyfriend. A CPS worker had visited the family and noticed the black eye and bruises on the mother. Because the child appeared fine, however, he didn't offer any support to the mother. After the child was killed, an effort began to integrate domestic-violence specialists into the child-welfare system. (See "Massachusetts: A Pioneer")

"It became a matter of child welfare workers recognizing that in order to protect children, they have to protect the mother as well," said Carter.

Spears admits that when child welfare workers are trained to recognize domestic violence, that doesn't make them any better equipped to handle the caseloads. "As I travel around the country, people will quickly tell me that 10 percent to more than 50 percent of their caseload has a domestic violence situation. When I ask what their agency does about that, the uniform response I get is 'we refer them to a shelter.'"

So while progress has been made in some parts of the country in identifying domestic violence and seeing the link to child abuse, there remains a great deal more to be done.

The basis for many model programs is to hire domestic violence specialists who act as resources to the child welfare workers and in some instances work directly with families. Santa Clara County, for example, has hired a domestic-violence-victim's advocate for women involved with the child welfare system. The advocate is a domestic-violence survivor and sits on many committees and task forces, often representing victims. "It's so hard to establish trust with these women because the last person they trusted ended up battering them," says the advocate, Pam Butler. "When they find out I've been through it too, it opens up an incredible avenue. Because I have a different relationship with the victims than other advocates, I can tell the people who sit on these committees what the victims really feel."

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