Monday, February 17, 2025

DV Impact History


Beginning in 2017, the Jennifer Beach Foundation (JNBF) will be conducting the Domestic Violence Impact Panel (DVIP) program previously operated by the Coordinated Community Response Against Domestic Violence (CCRADV). DVIPs are one more way of making domestic violence (DV) batterers accountable for their crimes by connecting early intervention to responsibility for one’s action. DVIP attempts to achieve voluntary and informed changes in personal behavior by breaking through the denial and minimization that perpetrators have such a hard time of letting go of and helps them understand the point of why they need treatment.

 

Starting in 1994, a group of professionals and community members formed to develop processes, procedures and standards for a program that was the forerunner of the current DVIP program. In 2004, the CCRADV created the DVIP program in its present form.  Under the guidance of a facilitator, there are speakers who may be surviving family members, former victims of domestic violence, recovering perpetrators or others who grew up with domestic violence. There are no actors; only people with personal DV experiences or formal DV training. Speakers discuss the long term effects of witnessing and receiving abuse as well as collateral impacts to DV on other people such as raising orphaned children of homicide victims resulting from DV. In addition to the speakers, a domestic violence advocate closes out the two hour session.

 

DVIP usually is in addition to other criminal court mandates; often an additional requirement of sentencing, probation or mandated treatment. The program is not intended to replace more formal clinical treatment for DV, but should be thought of as a supplement to or a precursor for more formal DV treatment. Each person who attends a panel must pay a $40 fee that is used to sustain the program and provide emergency financial assistance to victims. DVIPs are held one evening a month as shown in the 2017 schedule.