Professionals from throughout Southeast Ohio gathered in March on Ohio University’s campus to increase their awareness of the scope and effects of family violence and explore options for prevention. Attendees included representatives from local health departments, children’s services agencies, mental health, academia, domestic violence shelters, legal services and law enforcement.
The forum “Family Violence Prevention: What Can Be Done in Ohio?” featured The Ohio Family Violence Prevention Project, a study detailing the psychological, emotional and physical effects of family violence. The project presented the “White Paper on Improving Family Violence Prevention in Ohio,” which gave four recommendations to improve family violence prevention in Ohio.
- Increase the quality of Ohio’s home visitation programs.
- Create school environments that promote healthy relationships.
- Support county-level demonstration projects of inter-agency elder abuse “I-Teams” to coordinate prevention, investigation, treatment services
- Expand training/awareness of elder abuse among banking professionals.
One goal of the meeting was to collect feedback from regional stakeholders regarding the report’s findings and to discuss how family violence presents in Southeast Ohio. Panels and presenters discussed additional solutions. Ultimately, prevention requires a cultural change which involves the entire community—including the perpetrators—to create a social environment where family violence is unacceptable. Current school-based initiatives were given as successful examples.
Panelists also discussed future initiatives that would develop coalitions of agencies to administer and evaluate prevention programs. These coalitions would encourage communication between agencies and help to combat rising costs by opening doors to new funding and innovative ideas. Currently there is no system for funding family violence prevention in Ohio.
Sponsored by the Health Policy Institute of Ohio (HPIO) and The Anthem Foundation in partnership with the Voinovich School, the event was one of eight regional meetings occurring throughout Ohio, and is the only one being held in Southeast Ohio. In addition to publicizing the meeting within Southeast Ohio, Voinovich School recruited participants from the region to participate in the panels and helped facilitate the meeting. The “White Paper on Improving Family Violence Prevention in Ohio” and details on the Ohio Family Violence Prevention Project, along with upcoming regional meetings can be found at HPIO’s Web site at www.hpio.org.