Creating Responsive Environments

When we are able to consistently provide protective factors in any environment, (home, school, community, or peer group) we promote positive child and youth development. Creating responsive programs and partnerships for children and youth exposed to domestic violence helps to support important protective factors that promote resilience:

  • Making intentional linkages to programs that support children/youth
  • Fostering a strong working relationship within our communities and systems
  • Developing policies and procedures that are grounded in the unique needs of children and youth who uses services
  • Providing clear social messages about violence and that children and youth are not responsible for the violence within their homes
  • Establishing predictability and security in order to support growing competence
  • Ensuring that safety for parents who are abused and their children is centralized in the work of the organization/agency
  • Fully understanding the dynamics of abusing and developing a coordinated community response to enhance resilience
  • Ensuring that accountability for stopping the behavior rests with the person abusing
  • Creating interventions to strengthen the primary parent-child relationship and repair possible harm caused by the violence and control of the person who is abusing