Social change attempts to alter a factor in society. This may include changing cultural symbols, rules, value systems or behavior, yielding profound results. Intimate Partner violence as well as child abuse scandals have become more frequent in the media. My intervention program will be an immediate intervention program for child witnesses of IPV; it aims to provide children with a positive therapeutic and healing environment. This program will promote healthy child development and alternatives to children and their primary caregivers.
An average of 3.3 million to 18 million children witness an act of intimate partner violence every year. Thirty percent of those children are also likely to become victims of violence themselves in the same household and have an increased risk of becoming an abuser as adults (T. Herrenkohl, E. Herrenkohl, Klika, Moylan, Sousa, Tajima, 2010). Intimate partner violence is actual or threatened sexual, psychological, physical or emotional abuse by an intimate partner (CDC, 2007). IPV is likely to set into motion a number of other negative processes that can hinder a child’s development. For example a Child’s exposure to violence can often lead to negative short and long term outcomes of internalizing and externalizing behavior problems during adolescence such as bullying, perpetration of violence and delinquency.
Utilizing a combination of participatory and action research I have developed an intervention to tackle the needs of children exposed to IPV. According to the text Applied Social Psychology a main factor in action research is finding a problem of consensus and attempting to create change, gathering data as well as creating an intervention. Important factors of participatory research include utilizing strategies to enhance self-reliance of oppressed groups within a community (Schneider, Gruman, Coutts, 2012).
The Intervention may provide families with mental health services, legal information/police services, and safety plans in case of recurrence of violence. The program is available to all victims of IPV and their children. Our program creates positive and nurturing environment for all children 15 and under who have witnessed an episode in the year coinciding with of date of entry into the program. Children meet a total of sixty five times over the course of the fifty week program in various settings but predominantly in intervention’s community center. Elaborating on the previous child intervention programs. The goal is to bring awareness to IPV and its negative effects on children. The program particularly focuses on creating safety plans for children in case of future violent episodes. The program is designed to help children appropriate responsibility of violent behavior, create/improve relationship with primary caregiver, and provide alternatives for a healthier environment and living arrangements. Upon completion of program children and parents must participate in a post treatment questionnaire that assesses improvement of children and caregivers over course of intervention, measures children’s understanding of IPV and children’s ability/likeliness of utilizing safety precautions in the future. Children must also provide a self-report either in essay or verbal form of how intervention methods have improved or impaired one’s ability to cope with traumatizing events and level of helpfulness in case of recurrence of violence.
According to applied social psychology, policies are plans and procedures that governments have for specific issues to ensure certain goals can be met. The intervention also aims at creating preventive policies to decrease potential abuse. For example Mandated reporting of child abuse is the legal requirement specified by states of certain professions such as teachers,counselors and health professionals, which are mandated by law to notify appropriate state child protective services. However policies may be improved to include all people to report suspected abuse these states hopefully to hold people ethically responsible and promote immediate and proper reports of abuse.
REFERENCES
Centers for Disease control (2007). Intimate Partner Violence and Sexual Violence Victimization Assessment Instruments for Use in Healthcare Settings. Retrieved from: http://www.cdc.gov/ncipc/pub-res/images/ipvandsvscreening.pdf
Herrenkohl, T., Herrenkohl, E., Klika, R., Moylan, C., Sousa, C., Tajima, E., (2010, May 10) Longitudinal study on the Effects of Child Abuse and Children’s Exposure to Domestic Violence, Parent-Child Attachments, and Antisocial Behavior in Adolescence. Retrieved from: http://jiv.sagepub.com/content/26/1/111.full.pdf+html
Schneider, F. W., Gruman, J. A., and Coutts, L. M. (Eds.) (2012). Applied Social Psychology: Understanding and Addressing Social and Practical Problems (2nd ed.). Thousand Oaks, CA: Sage Publications.