On September 27, 2017 at 2:00 p.m. ET, the Office for Victims of Crime (OVC) Training and Technical Assistance Center (TTAC) will present an online Expert Q&A discussion on "Victim-Centered Approaches to Family Violence."
People who have experienced trauma, violence, and oppression are more than just these experiences. Like all of us, they are people who often face multiple challenges, juggle multiple identities, and have interests and relationships that sustain them. The term "victim-centered" means putting the person seeking services truly at the center of the work, which starts with engagement and recognizing that they are whole people, not just victims or survivors. These approaches require attention, openness, connection, and a capacity to engage and partner authentically with the person seeking assistance to support their well-being, which includes, but goes beyond, their safety. These approaches also require examining how systems—programs and services—may inadvertently create barriers to engagement and erode well-being. In this webinar, OVC TTAC will explore empathy, transdisciplinary collaboration, the art of presence in a collaborative response to family violence, and how to shift from a focus on problems to supporting well-being for those experiencing family violence.
Presenter Information:
Maureen Lowell has worked in the field of family violence since 1985, first in child welfare, then in domestic violence work, and then in a teaching capacity. Her primary work has been as a licensed marriage and family therapist, a perspective she brought to training and teaching over the years. Ms. Lowell began teaching a course on family and community violence in the Justice Studies Department at San Jose State University in 2001. In 2009, she became project director of the Institute for Collaborative Response for Victims of Family Violence, a project funded through the OVC. The project involved working with students across disciplines to respond more effectively to family violence through interdisciplinary collaboration. Currently, she is developing and launching a certificate program based on that project. Ms. Lowell and other accomplished faculty anticipate launching the inaugural cohort for this program in 2018.
Anna Melbin has more than 20 years of experience working with nonprofit organizations and on state and federal policy issues. As the director of strategic capacity building at the Full Frame Initiative (FFI), she leads the organization’s work with diverse partners and systems to orient themselves around well-being by applying the Five Domains of Well-being framework. In this role, Ms. Melbin shapes and implements FFI’s strategy for supporting partners to strengthen their practices with a well-being focus, and she manages FFI’s well-being training, technical assistance, ongoing coaching, and other forms of capacity building. She also leads a project in California to build the capacity of communities to learn from what goes well, not just from crises, and she led FFI’s multiyear project documenting how survivors and other stakeholders understand success for domestic violence survivors.