Greenbook ProjectA Midpoint Evaluation

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The Greenbook Project Using Indicators to
Improve the Lives of Domestic Violence Victims
and Abused Children
Conference of the Community Indicators
Consortium Applied Survey Research Susan
Brutschy, President December 2005
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Co-Occurrence of DV and Child Maltreatment

• Approximately 50 of men who frequently abuse
  their wives, also abuse their children.
• Approximately 55 of child abuse referrals
  involve DV.
• Recent research has demonstrated the profound
  effects on children exposed to DV
• Often other co-occurring issues such as substance
  abuse and/or mental health

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Greenbook History

• Green book published in 1999
• Federally-funded demonstration initiative
• The major goal of the Greenbook Initiative is to
  get different systems to work together for the
  victim, the child and the batterer
• The systems include the courts, child protective
  services, and domestic violence service providers

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Greenbook History

• The Greenbook Initiative selected six
  demonstration sites including Santa Clara County,
  California-from among 100 candidates to be part
  of the project.
• Each site began receiving over one million
  dollars in federal grants to implement plans
• To help child welfare workers, domestic violence
  advocates, and court judges to change their
  approach to family violence to better help
  battered women and their children
• The Greenbook recommendations are designed
• To teach judicial, child welfare, and domestic
  violence advocates to coordinate more
  effectively, to keep women and children safe,
  allow women and children to have access to
  services and to allow women to access services
  without the fear of losing their child to child
  protective services
• There are two levels of evaluation local
  evaluator and federal evaluators.

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Santa Clara Project Organization

• Project is managed by Kids In Common (KIC), a
  neutral, non-government entity
• ASR is the local evaluator
• Executive Committee and Project Oversight
  Committee meet monthly
• Eight individual projects within Greenbook have
  committees that meet monthly
• KIC and ASR staff each meeting
• Implementation Team meets quarterly

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Santa Clara County Context

• Santa Clara County is one of the largest counties
  in California with one of the most diverse
  populations
• There are about 1.7 million people
• Including 456,000 children
• 34 of residents were born in other nations
• Nearly one-fourth of Santa Clara County students
  enter school with English as a second language
• One in ten children lived below the poverty level
  in 2000

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Santa Clara County Context

• In 2001, the Public Health Department reported
  6,400 domestic violence calls to police
  departments
• In 2000, the county was the 5th highest county
  for child abuse reports in California with a rate
  of 38 reports per 1,000 children.
• During fiscal year 2000-2001, there were 22,000
  child abuse allegations reported to the
  Department of Family and Childrens Services.
• In 2001, there were 3,565 new criminal cases
  children were witnesses in 1,021 cases.
• In 2001, Santa Clara County started to receive
  Greenbook funding.

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Santa Clara County Project

• The local Santa Clara County Project has eight
  components
• Developing better advocates for domestic violence
  victims and their children
• Cross training personnel from different agencies
  and systems including domestic violence
  agencies, child protective services, law
  enforcement, social workers and the courts.
• Batterer accountability and services
• Multi-disciplinary teams that respond to the
  domestic violence scene right away
• Changing DFCS agency policies and worker
  practices to ensure that the parent victim and
  children are safe throughout all stages of the
  systems.
• Improve the coordination between juvenile, family
  and criminal courts.
• Partnership Project to work across systems on
  specific cases.
• Cultural competency is built into each of the
  strategies.

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Project 1
Development and Training of DV Advocates

• Outcome
• Every adult victim has access to primary advocate
  to ensure support
• Accomplishments
• Researched different models of advocacy around
  the county
• Identified where advocates were needed and what
  role to play
• Developed functions of advocates in a grid at
  DCFS
• Drafted and approved DV advocate protocol

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Project 2 Cross-training

• Outcome
• Each social worker, advocate, judicial officer,
  and law enforcement personnel has better
  understanding of
• Dynamics of child abuse and DV
• How to screen for DV
• Services available
• Polices/procedures of other sectors
• Accomplishments
• Seminars about the Greenbook
• Developed trainings
• Conducted trainings for parent educators, law
  enforcement, court staff, CBOs, DV advocates,
  BIPs, and social workers

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Project 3 Batterer Accountability

• Outcomes
• Each batterer referred to BIP, or other form of
  treatment/accountability
• Batterer has access to mentor, to help benefit
  from and complete the program, and reduce
  recidivism
• Accomplishments
• Discussions with BIP committee about improving
  BIPs
• Needs assessment of BIPs
• Form aftercare committee to review other
  aftercare programs
• ASR conducted system mapping to identify
  impediments to batterer tracking within courts,
  probation, and BIPs

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Project 4 Multidisciplinary Response

• Outcome
• Multidisciplinary team will provide immediate
  response when DV and child abuse are detected
• Accomplishments
• Visit Florida and Colorado to investigate their
  MDT teams
• ASR conducted case study of San Joses Family
  Violence Review Team
• Finalized protocol for South County
• Launched response team
• Created database to track clients access to
  services

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Project 5 DFCS Agency Changes

• Outcomes
• Every social worker will screen for DV
• Victim, child, and batterer participate in
  dialogue with staff, and receives intervention /
  services
• Clients have greater understanding of services
• Staff create service plans that are coordinated,
  differentiated, and manageable, and follow up on
  it to ensure seamless transition to subsequent
  services
• Accomplishments
• Developed wording for allegations in petition
• Developed recommendations for case plan
• Developed format for a safety plan
• Presented petition language and case plan
  recommendations to the courts
• Prioritized access to services and consistency of
  petition recommendations with case plan

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Project 6 Integrated Courts

• Outcomes
• Better coordinated system between courts (e.g.,
  no conflicting orders)
• DV dependency court consistently provides
  supervised visitation to facilitate normalized
  relationships
• Batterers are safely reintegrated according to
  familys circumstances
• Accomplishments
• Developed unified case/court management database
  across courts but did not use it as such, used it
  as calendaring system
• Trained court staff on DV and child maltreatment

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Project 7 Partnership project

• Outcomes
• Providers/sectors have increased understanding of
  each others systems in order to respond to
  specific cases
• Providers respond by making policy changes that
  affect day-to-day practices of those serving
  clients
• Accomplishments
• Increased focus on system wide response to
  particular families

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Project 8 Respect Culture and Community
Initiative (RCCI)

• Outcomes
• Increased System Accountability to community
• Community provides input to RCCI team to shape
  system changes
• System will be responsive to feedback
• Systems response to DV and co-occurrence is
  culturally competent and relevant
• Increased Community Accountability
• Community knows how to respond to help DV victims
• Accomplishments
• Cultural competency team created
• Team decided to focus on community and system
  accountability
• Team launched community leader meetings every 6
  months

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Evaluation

• ASR is in the process of evaluating each of the
  projects including evaluation of
• Cross training,
• The most lethal cases of domestic violence,
  services offered and client outcomes,
• Case record abstraction of 150 open child
  maltreatment cases for co-occurrence, service
  referrals, and worker practices,
• A survey of direct front line workers including
  child welfare workers, domestic violence
  advocates, and court personnel,
• Secondary data regarding county rates of child
  abuse reports, substantiated child abuse, removal
  of children from the home, domestic violence
  arrests, and completion of batterer intervention
  programs.

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Methodology for Project 5 DFCS
Agency Practice

• Case Record Abstractions to Track Agency
  Practices, Rates of Co-occurrence, Demographics
  of Victims, Screenings, Service Referrals, and
  Services Used
• Timeline
• Case abstraction will be conducted three times
  throughout the Initiative once for cases that
  were opened in 2001 (Time 1), and again for cases
  that were opened in 2003 and 2005 (Time 2 and 3).
  
• Sample Selection Criteria
• Child maltreatment (CM) was substantiated by
  child welfare (CW) agency.

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Methodology cont.

• Definitions
• The perpetrator or victim of DV was the childs
  parent or primary caregiver.
• The co-occurrence population was defined as those
  for whom the DV and CM incidents occurred within
  a year of each other.
• Evidence of DV is derived from formal screening
  tools and other documents (e.g. police reports).
• Sample Size
• 25 of total child welfare case load, with a
  minimum of 75 or a maximum of 150 cases to be
  reviewed. Because of Santa Clara Countys
  caseload size, local sample size set at 150.

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Findings

• What was the rate of co-occurrence of DV and CM
  among 2001 substantiated child welfare cases?
• Site Any history of DV Co-Occurring DV
• in the family (2001) (2001)
• El Paso County 39 16
• Grafton County 53 28
• Lane County 61 33
• San Francisco County 36 20
• Santa Clara County 63 (81, 2003) 36 (42,
  2003)
• St. Louis County 16 9

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Findings

• Who were the Child Maltreatment victims in 2003?
• Who were the Child Maltreatment perpetrators?
• 94 biological parent
• Who were the Domestic Violence victims?
• 95 female
• 48 Hispanic, 30 White, 10 Asian/Pacific
  Islander

• Ethnicity
• Hispanic 49
• White 26
• Asian/Pacific Islander 10

• Age Upon Entry
• 2-5 years of age 20
• 6-10 years of age 33
• 11-15 years of age 25

• Gender
• Male 48
• Female 52

Findings are reported only for 2003 cases since
the demographics of 2001 sample are very similar
to those of 2003.
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Findings

• Is there an over-representation of children of
  color in DFCS?

Source DFCS Data 2003 DFCS case files and
Department of Finance, May 2004. Santa Clara
County Data State of California, Department of
Finance, Race/Ethnic Population with Age and Sex
Detail, 20002050. Sacramento, CA, May 2004.
Findings are reported only for 2003 cases since
these findings are consistent with those in 2001.
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Findings

• Has Greenbook implementation affected screening
  for DV?
• Yes, in 2003, DV was screened for in 88 of
  sampled cases, up from 62 in 2001.
• Was DV identified through other means?
• 121 (80) of the 151 cases contained other
  documentation indicating DV, including
• Case notes (40),
• Victim disclosure (37),
• Investigative narrative (37),
• Jurisdiction disposition (31), and
• Case summary (26).

(This was a multiple response question
categories are not mutually exclusive.)
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Findings

• How long did it take workers to identify DV?

Source 2001 and 2003 DFCS case files Sample size
45 (2001) 46 (2003)
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Findings

• Which family members received referrals to
  services?

BIP Referrals
Source 2001 and 2003 DFCS case files Sample size
54 co-occurring cases (2001) 63 (2003)
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Findings

• What type of services were referred and to whom
  in 2003? Top 10 Service Referrals

The Ns reflect the number of individuals who
received at least one referral.
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Findings

• What services were received and by whom in 2003?

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Findings

• What percentage of cases had the standardized DV
  appropriate Petition and Recommendation
  language?(Voluntary cases (N23) were not
  included in this analysis because they are not
  processed through the courts and therefore would
  not have Petition or Recommendation language in
  clients file)
• 73 (29 out of 40) of cases had standardized DV
  Petition language.
• 38 of cases had standardized Recommendation
  language.
• What percentage of co-occurrence cases were
  shared by both DFCS and CalWORKS?
• 11 (7 out of 63) of the co-occurrence cases were
  also CalWORKS cases.
• No DV exemptions were found in those shared cases.

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Summary for Project 5 Santa Clara County

• Greenbook Project has found the case abstraction
  data to be useful in monitoring system change.
• Santa Clara County uses site data and continues
  to refine and expand system capabilities.
• New data are being requested. Time 3 case
  abstraction is scheduled for January 2006.

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National Evaluation of Greenbook

• Child Welfare Departments Are Doing A Better Job
  of Investigating Cases New protocols for
  screening, more routine screening, better
  understanding of dynamics of co-occurrence
• Domestic Violence Service Providers Are Doing a
  Better Job of Assessment for Child Maltreatment
• Traditionally At-Odds Systems Now Share Staff
• Judges Are More Informed of Batterer Progress in
  Treatment and BIPs Include Child Witness Issues
• Law Enforcement and Batterer Intervention
  Programs Should Be More Involved In Greenbook

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For More Information

• Susan Brutschy
• President
• Applied Survey Research
• susan_at_appliedsurveyresearch.org
• San Jose Office
• 991 West Hedding Street
• San Jose, CA 95126
• [phone]
• Watsonville Office
• P.O. Box 1927
• Watsonville, CA 95077
• [phone]

• Jennifer SweeneyGreenbook Project ManagerKids
  in Common jsweeney_at_kidsincommon.org
• [phone] x15

Or visit the Greenbook Web site
at http//www.thegreenbook.info/