Envisioning Solutions and Identifying a Research Agenda: Child-, Family-, and Community-Centered Responses to Prevent Systems Involvement When Children Are Exposed to Intimate Partner Violence

Child exposure to intimate partner violence (CE/IPV) threatens children's healthy development, their relationship to primary caregivers, and overall well-being and health trajectories. While not all children exposed to intimate partner violence (IPV) suffer poor outcomes, evidence indicates that many do, with some experiencing adverse outcomes into adulthood. As such, CE/IPV warrants a social work response -- but what should that response be? Existing approaches tend to center children to the exclusion of parents, or mothers to the exclusion of children and fathers. The influence of the family system on the well-being of all members, but especially children, necessitates approaches that center children within families. This means thorough assessment of the needs of all family members and each person's influence on the child(ren), and trauma-informed, supportive responses that prioritize safety, autonomy, and well-being for those most affected, while providing opportunities for engagement and behavior change when needed. Further, minoritized communities face structural barriers to help-seeking, underscoring the need for community focused solutions. Entanglement with systems -- be they child welfare or legal -- has done little to strengthen families and support the conditions in which children, and all family members, can thrive. There is an urgent need for prevention-focused research that leads to solutions to CE/IPV that are child- and family-centered to align with the needs of all members of the family and that are community-centered and address the structural barriers faced by marginalized communities. To advance this vision of supported and thriving families, this roundtable aims to articulate and prioritize a research agenda for the field. Among the questions guiding this interactive session are: 1) What are the consequences of children's exposure to IPV?; 2) What are current responses? And what response -- including state intervention -- is warranted? 3) What do child-, family-, and community-centered approaches look like? 4) What research priorities would help transform current responses to those that are consistently child-, family-, and community-centered? This roundtable brings together seasoned and emerging scholars whose research and practice experience spans a range of interventive approaches including broad public health prevention solutions, community-based services, including with Spanish-speaking communities and with undocumented/ mixed-status families, and approaches situated within the child welfare, and criminal and civil legal systems. One panelist will share evidence regarding the impact of CE/IPV on children and on factors supporting resilience. One panelist will share perspectives on the child welfare and legal systems and how these have shaped current responses; another panelist will discuss how a child welfare response may increase barriers to help-seeking for minoritized communities because of fear of child removal and mistrust of the state. One panelists will initiate discussion of how to involve those who engage in IPV; another panelist will discuss how undocumented Latinx IPV survivors navigate formal and informal help-seeking and emphasize the value of community-centered approaches. This roundtable will actively engage attendees through facilitated discussion and polling technology (e.g., Mentimeter) to tap the expertise of all session participants and help develop and prioritize a research agenda to advance the field.