Invest Toolkit

• Strangulation – The Training Institute on Strangulation Prevention (Institute) is a program of Alliance for HOPE International. The Institute was launched with support from the United States Department of Justice, Office on Violence Against Women. The Institute provides consulting, training, resources, and support services to professionals working in the fields of domestic violence and sexual assault.
  
• American Humane Pets and Women’s Shelters (PAWS) Program Startup Guide – Recognizing both the urgent need to protect domestic violence victims from further abuse and the comfort that pets provide people, especially in times of stress and trauma, American Humane is leading a national program to guide domestic and family violence emergency housing shelters toward permitting residents to bring their pets with them. American Humane Pets and Women’s Shelters (PAWS) Program Startup Guide provides simple, how-to methods for starting a PAWS Program at a domestic violence center.
  
• Intimate Partner Homicide: An Overview – by Margaret A. Zahn
  
• How Can Practitioners Help an Abused Woman Lower Her Risk of Death? – by Carolyn Rebecca Block
  
• Risky Mix: Drinking, Drug Use, and Homicide – by Phyllis Sharps, Jacquelyn C. Campbell, Doris Campbell, Faye Gary, and Daniel Webster
  
• Assessing Risk Factors for Intimate Partner Homicide – by Jacquelyn C. Campbell, Daniel Webster, Jane Koziol-McLain, Carolyn Rebecca Block, Doris Campbell, Mary Ann Curry, Faye Gary, Judith McFarlane, Carolyn Sachs, Phyllis Sharps, Yvonne Ulrich, and Susan A. Wilt
  
• Lethality Assessment Tools: A Critical Analysis
  

• Advocacy Beyond Leaving – Advocacy Beyond Leaving is a guide for domestic violence advocates to help battered women who are in contact with current for former partners.
  
• Culturally Specific Service for African American Families – This publication documents the development and growth of Asha Family Services, Inc., a comprehensive family violence intervention and prevention agency located in Milwaukee, WI. Asha, the first and only recognized culturally-specific family violence intervention and prevention program in Wisconsin, employs methods specific to African American families. Asha is a private, nonprofit, spiritually-based agency. Asha is also a state-licensed outpatient mental health and substance abuse treatment clinic. Asha employs a holistic family approach and through collaborative efforts strives to provide effective, comprehensive family violence, mental health, HIV/AIDS education and counseling and substance abuse intervention and prevention.
  
• Creating Trauma-Informed Services: Tips for Creating a Welcoming Environment – The environment we create communicates our beliefs about the people we serve. This environment and the way we offer services are critical aspects of our work to increase access to our programs for women who are experiencing psychiatric disabilities or the effects of trauma.
  
• Creating Trauma-Informed Services: Tips for Enhancing Emotional Safety – As DV advocates, we are skilled at attending to physical safety in our programs. Emotional safety may seem more difficult to achieve because it is harder to measure. One definition of emotional safety is “a feeling that your inner most thoughts, feelings and experience are, and will be, honored as one honors themselves. You need not prove, nor impress; you just simply are. When it is present you feel open, even, at ease, and fluid with the spontaneity of a healthy child.”* There are several steps that we can take to increase emotional safety in our programs. 
  
• Creating Trauma-Informed Services: A Trauma-Informed Approach to Domestic Violence Advocacy – This document will discuss five core components of a trauma-informed approach to domestic violence advocacy. 
  
• Intimate Partner Violence and Lifetime Trauma – For many women, abuse by an adult partner is their first experience of victimization; for others, intimate partner violence occurs in the context of other lifetime trauma. A number of studies have begun to explore the link between histories of physical and sexual abuse in childhood and experiencing partner abuse as an adult.
  
• Cultural Humility – Culture is personal and deeply rooted. It includes our environment, thoughts, values, beliefs, feelings and sensations. Culture is dynamic – changing. Cultural Humility is a life-long learning process which incorporates openness, power-balancing, and critical self-reflection when interacting with people for mutually beneficial partnerships & institutional change. This newsletter from the American Psychological Association discusses the different concepts that make up cultural humility and how to incorporate them into the different aspects of your work.

WEBINARS (ADVOCATES ONLY)

You must be a registered advocate and signed into the FCADV site in order to view these webinars.

• Exploring Trauma & Dissociation: What This Means For Your Work – Part 1
• Exploring Trauma & Dissociation: What This Means For Your Work – Part 2

• Creating A Domestic Violence Court – Creating A Domestic Violence Court Guidelines and Best Practices handbook is the results of a collaborative effort of individuals from across the country with in depth experience in creating and operating domestic violence courts. The need for these guidelines came out of the growing interest jurisdictions had in starting a domestic violence court but did not have the tools to identify an appropriate court model to do so.
  
• Essential Components of Trauma-Informed Judicial Practice – What every judge needs to know about trauma.
  
• Florida’s Domestic Violence Bench Book for Florida Judges, May 2017 – This guide is intended to provide an overview of domestic violence issues specific to immigrants and how immigrant survivors can be identified, accompanied through the legal system, and access options for safety and stability for themselves and their children.
  
• Improving Access to Justice for Immigrant Survivors of Domestic Violence – (PDF) Spanish / English
  
• The Link® for Prosecutors – The Link® between violence to people and violence to animals is well-documented by research, both nationally and internationally. When someone is cruel to animals, violence to people is more likely to be present as well. This booklet outlines what prosecutors need to know about The Link® and how to use this evidence in the courtroom to help keep families and communities safer.
  
• Preparing for Court Proceedings with Survivors of Domestic Violence – Tips for lawyers and legal advocates.
  
• Representing Domestic Violence Survivors Who Are Experiencing Trauma and Other Mental Health Challenges – This handbook was created for the overall purpose of providing guidance to attorneys so that they can help survivors achieve their civil legal objectives when trauma or other mental health challenges are a potential factor in a case.
  
• “Understanding a Survivors Experience of Trauma: What it Means for Your Work.” – By Olga Trujillo, JD (PPT)
  

• Visit the FCADV Law Enforcement page for more information related to criminal justice.
  
• Video: School Resource Officers- Engaging Students to Understand and Recognize Teen Dating Violence
  
• Video: School Resource Officers – Identifying Your Role In Responding To Teen Dating Violence
  
• Video: Photographing Domestic Violence Evidence
  
• Video: Risk Assessment Training for Law Enforcement
  
• Video: Excited Utterances – Law Enforcement Training
  
• Video: Use of Body-Worn Cameras for Law Enforcement
  
• Video: 911 Operators: Handling A Domestic Call For Service
  
• Request Cameras/Information – Please use this form to request equipment and information related to InVEST.

• The Attorney General’s Statewide Domestic Violence Fatality Review Team
  
• A Practical Guide to Evaluating Domestic Violence Coordinating Councils – Domestic violence coordinating councils, task forces and committees have become common vehicles for the implementation of a coordinated community response to domestic violence. A Practical Guide to Evaluating Domestic Violence Coordinating Councils provides a source of comprehensive information, training and technical assistance on community response to and prevention of domestic violence.
  
• Shorey & Tirone, Coordinated Community Response Components for Victims of Intimate Partner Violence: A review of the Literature, 2014 (PDF)

• Campus Program – The primary purposes of the Campus Program are to develop and strengthen effective security and investigation strategies to prevent and prosecute domestic violence, dating violence, sexual assault, and stalking on campuses and to develop and strengthen victim services in cases involving such crimes against women on campuses.
  
• A Domestic Violence Campus Organizing Guide – A Domestic Violence Campus Organizing Guide for Health Professional Students and Faculty highlights the response to domestic violence as a health care issue and a call to action for health professionals.