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Screening for Domestic Violence

Help desk screening/triage process

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To improve the availability of child-related relief in protection orders, identification of cases where the parties share children is necessary. By using its already existing help desk, the team developed a screening questionnaire that identified when concerns regarding children were present and referred the survivor to appropriate resources. Also, an alert card was created, to be provided to the survivor, when the parties had shared children; this alert card notifies any others helping the survivor with the protection order process to be aware of child-related issues and the possibility that a request for child-related relief may be needed and appropriate.

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Access to Justice/Community Feedback

Court access for Native Americans (Hennepin)

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Native Americans experience domestic violence at higher rates than any other group in the United States, yet the Hennepin County team found that very few accessed the relief available from orders for protection in family court or tribal court. To meet this need, the team created two positions, a Native Liaison and a Community Outreach Specialist, to build a relationship between the court and the Native population and to provide information about what family court can do to help. Below are some of the materials that were developed as well as job descriptions of the two positions.

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Access to Justice

Procedural fairness: Court user feedback and responses (Multnomah)

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Early data indicated that litigants with cases involving domestic violence did not feel respected or understood and did not believe they were treated fairly in many instances. A list of recommendations to improve litigants’ court experience was developed. These included easy tips that can be easily incorporated using existing resources in every day court interactions as well as more involved policy recommendations. Of course, the ultimate arbiter of whether these efforts have been successful is the survivors themselves, so the site developed an annual survey and comment cards to provide ongoing feedback about how the court is doing and where additional improvements might be needed.

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Training Resource

Training protection order judges on child custody analysis (Cook)

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Part of the challenge for Cook County’s Domestic Violence Division, which is not a family court accustomed to making custody determinations, was a hesitance to include child-related relief in protection orders because of an unfamiliarity with the applicable legal standards and a perceived lack of understanding about how to create appropriate orders that effectively addressed the domestic violence in the case and protected survivors and children while permitting parenting time for the respondent. A judicial training was held to introduce a framework for analyzing these issues, with practical scenarios to allow participants to apply the framework to a set of facts. Also, the judges were provided with information about judicial duties regarding neutrality when considering a settlement proposal that raises safety concerns. To request similar information or a training in your community, please use the Contact link above.

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