Zero Tolerance for domestic violence

Projects

Supervised Visitation:

This program is a collaborative of the Superior Court of California, STAND! Against Domestic Violence, Community Violence Solutions, Bay Area Legal Aid, John F. Kennedy University, Familias Unidas, the Contra Costa County Probation Department, and the Richmond and San Pablo Police Departments. The program is a multi-faceted approach to supervised visitation and safe exchange between underserved non-custodial parents and their children while also preserving victim and child safety. The program model addresses the dynamics and complexities of power, control, intimidation and violence that is specific to family abuse cases. The program model also includes the development of parenting groups that are attentive to domestic violence, its relationship to parenting and children exposed to domestic violence.

Additionally, the program establishes direct linkages to advocacy resources for battered victims around custody issues as well as for immigrant victims. The program will be implemented through the following goals:

GOAL (1) Establish a supervised visitation and safe exchange center in a highly accessible location for low-income families of West Contra Costa County.

GOAL (2) Establish effective follow up communication with the Superior Court to ensure compliance.

GOAL (3) Enhance victim and child safety in the short and long-terms.

The supervised visitation facility is co-located at the office of Community Violence Solutions at 2101 Van Ness Street in San Pablo, California. The phone is 510-237-0113.

web site: www.cvsolutions.org

Digital Storytelling:

Zero Tolerance is conducting a public awareness project, Youth Speak Out Against Violence!, to target youth, parents, school personnel and service providers in District 5. Youth Speak Out Against Violence! utilizes the innovative medium of Digital Storytelling to raise awareness about the impact of the exposure to domestic violence on children and the opportunities to stop violence. The Digital Storytelling Process: Youth recruited from District V will participate in workshops designed to assist them in producing an original multimedia piece about the impact that violence has had on their lives. Through the expert facilitation of the Center for Digital Storytelling (CDS) youth will be given a vital opportunity to share their experiences, record their own voiceover narrations, and learn to construct their stories using digital editing software. Participants are given complete control over the telling of stories about situations in which they typically had no control (i.e. experiences of violence and abuse). The workshops are personally empowering for youth.

Safe & Bright Futures:

Safe & Bright Futures is a coordination model of Zero Tolerance that targets the reduction of child abuse and child exposure to domestic violence. It marks the beginning of needed system changes and cross-country practices; the development of a replicable model for other counties; and it will provide new data regarding coordinated services for children with co-occurrence of sexual assault and exposure to domestic violence and substance abuse; vital information need to advance policy development and long term improvements in child safety nationally.

Zero Tolerance will expand its activities and its outreach to agencies by addressing the full spectrum of intervention and response systems for the children who are at risk for or who witness domestic violence. The initiative will be implemented through the following goals and objectives:

Provide professional development opportunities to agency partners (private and public.)
Conduct outreach to agencies countywide to participate in service integration and coordination and engage their ongoing partnership long-term. This includes building improved relationships between law enforcement, the legal system, and child service agencies.
Establish data collection procedures to improve levels of efficiency and efficacy, to improve necessary investigation, and to reduce trauma to foster children.
Establish long-range sustainability planning for coordination of services and increase of agency resources.
Reduce disparities by enhancing cultural and linguistic competence among administrators and service providers.

	Safe and Bright Community Planning Graphic
	Safe & Bright Futures Road Map

DELTA:

The DELTA Project (Centers for Disease Control’s Domestic Violence Prevention Enhancements and Leadership Through Alliances program) was developed in Contra Costa County to prevent the incidence of first-time intimate partner domestic violence. The project has supported domestic violence skill-building trainings for human/social service providers, included a media campaign, and has launched an annual Father’s Day public awareness event. To participate, contact STAND! Against Domestic Violence at (925) 676-0449.

	Media Campaign Posters
	Contra Costa Times article about the unveiling of the public awareness campaign

web site: www.Standagainstdv.org

ARIES:

The Office of the Sheriff maintains the Automated Regional Information Exchange System “ARIES” database and the Domestic Violence Relational Database. Both have been completed to collect data from California jurisdictions; and, multiple counties are planning to go online to utilize and share information to support increased monitoring and enforcement of law.

Since 1997, almost 32,000 countywide domestic violence reports have been entered into the Domestic Violence Relational Database. It is now linked to vital criminal justice records and can be accessed on-line by 48 law enforcement agencies. This enhanced technology has linked criminal justice agencies (as well as other counties) and increased investigative capacity significantly.

Investigative capacity has been enhanced because reporting on DV cases, from all 21 jurisdictions in the county, is now 100%. The system tracks active warrants or restraining orders; case disposition information; terms of probation/parole, injury specifics; and provides complete, accurate information on DV incidents in other jurisdictions. Investigators need this information to respond appropriately for victim safety and develop cases for the District Attorney.

The Bay Area Chiefs and Sheriffs Association (Alameda, Contra Costa, San Francisco, San Mateo, and Santa Clara Counties – which includes 80 law enforcement agencies) have developed an Action Plan for counties to join this relational database. Consequently, the database maintains the potential to enhance the capability of law enforcement statewide.

web site: www.cocosheriff.org

Extended Forensic Evaluation:

Community Violence Solutions (CVS), in collaboration with Zero Tolerance, the National Children’s Advocacy Center (NCAC), Contra Costa County’s Child & Family Services, and the Office of the District Attorney, will work with agencies from five counties to implement an Extended Forensic Evaluation (EFE) training program. This cross-county collaboration intends to increase child safety and identification by also addressing the co-occurrence of child sexual assault and exposure to substance abuse and/or domestic violence.

Founded in 1974, Community Violence Solutions is one of the oldest rape crisis intervention programs in the State of California and the United States.

In a 2006 report, the National Children’s Advocacy Center addressed Extended Forensic Evaluation and the effects of age . The report demonstrated that preschool children were found to have a higher percentage of disclosures for the eight (8) session group (76.2%) than for the four (4) session group (23.8%). Further, the EFE procedure yielded clear information to be used in child protection and prosecutorial decisions in 64% of cases. Yet, there have been no resources available for training or conducting Extended Forensic Evaluations in the Northern California region. Consequently, California’s youngest and most vulnerable sexual assault victims have been placed at unnecessarily high risk for continued abuse, and perpetrators are not held accountable.

The California Office of Emergency Services has funded Community Violence Solutions to provide training resources in Northern California. The program will:

Train Child Forensic Interviewers on the EFE program model from multiple counties
Conduct Extended Forensic Evaluations for families
Establish data collection procedures to determine case outcomes and program efficacy to improve investigation and reduce trauma to victims
Conduct follow-up post training exchange sessions with evaluators
Develop a survey tool for the EFE process to screen children for co-occurrence of child sexual assault and exposure to substance abuse and/or domestic violence

This project is a component of Contra Costa County’s Safe & Bright Futures for Children Strategic Plan development: a project funded by the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services to stop the cycles of abuse and intentional injury. Community Violence Solutions has been a spearheading agency in the Safe & Bright Futures process and has recently been awarded funding for the first implementation project (Supervised Visitation facility) of this Strategic Plan.

The Cross-County Collaboration project will contribute to reducing child abuse not only through the delivery of training resources, but it will mark the beginning of needed system changes and cross-agency and cross-county practices.

web site: www.cvsolutions.org

Grants to Encourage Arrest:

The Grants to Encourage Arrest Policies and Enforcement of Protection Orders Program (GTEA) encourages the treatment of domestic violence as a serious violation of criminal law. The program also promotes mandatory or pro-arrest policies as an effective domestic violence intervention that is part of a coordinated community response. Since the launch of this program in 2004, Contra Costa County has expanded and coordinated services to ensure victim safety and offender accountability under the direction of the countywide Zero Tolerance for Domestic Violence Initiative. Project partners are: STAND! Against Domestic Violence, Bay Area Legal Aid, Superior Court of California - County of Contra Costa, Contra Costa Department of Probation, Contra Costa Department of the Sheriff, Contra Costa Office of the District Attorney, the City of Antioch Police Department, and the City of Richmond Police Department.

Services under GTEA have included:

providing domestic violence training for officers and dispatchers from multiple law enforcement jurisdictions in the county;
enhancing the investigative capacity of criminal justice agencies through the expansion of the multi-jurisdictional domestic violence database;
hiring a bilingual deputy probation officer to supervise domestic violence offenders;
providing legal advocacy for victims of domestic violence;
offering training for judges in criminal, civil, and juvenile court on the coordinated response to domestic violence; and
conducting a safety audit.

Safety Audit:

Zero Tolerance has conducted an examination of how everyday practices occur across batterers’ treatment programs and the systems that surround them (such as the Court, Probation, and DV Advocates). Reviewers looked at how organizational processes shape the activities across providers. By examining the institutional practices within Contra Costa County, Zero Tolerance can improve how systems are organized and centralize and enhance the safety of victims and children.

Safety Audit

Evaluation:

Applied Survey Research (ASR) is a nonprofit social research firm dedicated to conducting and using community-based research to help people build better communities. For over 23 years, ASR has employed best practices of the survey research, assessment, strategic planning and evaluation fields in order to better serve public and private agencies, health and human service organizations, cities and county offices, school districts, institutions of higher learning, and charitable foundations. ASR has worked with Zero Tolerance to evaluate its effectiveness over the past years, and to develop an Evaluation Plan for the coming years.

Evaluation Plan

Strategic Plan:

The Zero Tolerance initiative has engaged the community and numerous agencies in the development of its 3-year strategic plan. Highlights include:

MISSION: The mission of the Zero Tolerance initiative is to effect a systems change that reduces domestic violence, family violence and elder abuse by fostering the development and implementation of collaborative, coordinated and integrated services, supports, interventions and prevention activities.

GUIDING PRINCIPALS: The work of the Zero Tolerance initiative is devoted to the creation of safe and nurturing communities through the elimination of all types of domestic violence/elder abuse in families and personal relationships and is guided by specific overarching principals and values in the plan.

STRATEGIC PLAN GOALS:

Continue to measure and report on the effectiveness using results-based accountability.
Secure funding to advance the long-term vision.
Maintain the active leadership of Contra Costa County Board of Supervisors and partner agencies.
Continue to build the capacity of those who provide services within government and community –based organizations.
Identify and enhance successful strategies and move them toward institutionalization. Build new strategies as needs are identified and as resources allow.

Strategic Plan