Session: Impact of Intimate Partner Violence Exposure: Recommendations to Better Serve Children (Society for Social Work and Research 22nd Annual Conference - Achieving Equal Opportunity, Equity, and Justice)

Background and Purpose: Exposure to intimate partner violence (IPV) continues to be a serious and highly prevalent problem that negatively affects children. While there is ongoing work to reduce IPV and the negative associated consequences, barriers to effectively serve these children still exist. This symposium includes three studies that culminate in identifying the barriers in serving IPV-exposed children. The fourth presentation focuses on the recommendations for how to better serve children exposed to IPV.

Methods: Study 1 is a systematic literature review examining the effects of IPV exposure in articles published up until December 2016; 12,579 citations after de-duplication were double-coded, resulting in a total of 328 included citations. Study 2 is a systematic literature review examining intervention articles for IPV-exposed children published up until December of 2016; 6,420 citations after de-duplication were double-coded, resulting in a total of 411 included citations of 140 interventions for IPV-exposed children. Study 3 is a statewide survey that was conducted with agencies offering services for IPV-exposed children. Agency directors provided information about the number of children served annually, programs currently being implemented, and their ideas about reducing the effects of IPV on children. The fourth presentation addresses the barriers derived through the three previous studies by presenting recommendations to better serve IPV-exposed children.

Results: Study 1's results clustered across six primary domains of children's behavioral, mental health, cognitive, social, physical health, and physiological outcomes. Protective factors also emerge within this literature, identifying child characteristics and non-offending parent characteristics to buffer the effects of IPV exposure on children's negative outcomes. Study 2's results were organized into five main themes of interventions: child psychotherapeutic interventions, parent-child interventions, parent programs, prevention programs, and community-based interventions. Study 3's results indicate that a reported 85,312 children across the surveyed state received services from these agencies, which included child advocacy, case management, counseling, and mental health assessments, among others. Over two-thirds of the agencies used one or more evidence-based interventions, promising interventions, or prevention programs for children.

Conclusions and Implications: The following recommendations will be discussed: (1) Develop and support a coordinated statewide response among all child-serving systems for addressing childhood exposure to IPV. (2) Provide age-appropriate, targeted teen dating violence prevention programs in grades 5–6 to complement what is being offered in grades 7–12. (3) Initiate trauma-informed care training for educators and health care professionals and implement assessment and screening standards for IPV exposure in health care institutions. (4) Address barriers to services for children exposed to IPV. (5) Promote the use of evidence-based programs that have been shown to be effective in reducing the negative consequences of IPV exposure. (6) Provide training and resources to representatives of law enforcement and judicial system to help them make better-informed decisions in IPV cases. (7) Build a body of knowledge about the effects of prenatal exposure to IPV and the specific protective factors that are most beneficial for children. Recommendations will be discussed in detail.