Session: Engaging Communities to Challenge Domestic Violence: Global Comparisons (Society for Social Work and Research 23rd Annual Conference - Ending Gender Based, Family and Community Violence)

This symposium takes advantage of three research studies on community engagement situated in the United States, Aotearoa/New Zealand and Germany, respectively. All three are grounded in innovative community engagement strategies that aim to increase the participation of family, friends, neighbors and community members to prevent and intervene in domestic violence. Each of the three national contexts feature the prioritizing of individualized direct service and law enforcement responses to domestic violence and the relatively more recent attention to community engagement as a strategy to build participation of community members in domestic violence prevention and intervention. Each country also has sectors of human services or social justice that have built considerable knowledge about community engagement, community mobilization and community organizing that have not necessarily intersected with the domestic violence sector.

Together, this research builds new empirical knowledge as well as theory building to better understand how social networks, community members and community leaders can become more central social change agents in domestic violence prevention and intervention. A discussion on what these global comparisons contribute to the significance of national context, historical relationships to community organization and the particular development of each respective domestic violence sector will add to the research findings of each study. Furthermore, the sharing of innovative conceptual frameworks, new measurement instruments and case studies of community engagement strategies will serve to enrich social work's research agenda towards the Grand Challenge to end gender-based violence.