Southwest Rural Family Violence Project
Funder: US Dept of Justice, Office on Violence Against Women
Project Timeline: Oct 2007 to Sep 2009
Total Amount Funded: $500,000
Project Goals: Identify, address, and prevent violence in families in the rural areas of Dona Ana County. This project has two goals: 1) to identify the areas of Dona Ana County that have a high incidence of violence in families and domestic violence risk factors, and 2) to target the areas identified as high-risk and implement a prevention curriculum and intervention services.
GOAL ONE
In order to meet Goal One, we will be using Geographic Information Systems (GIS) to compile information regarding incidents of family violence. We will also include census data on families (including demographic information related to specific family violence risk factors), county DWI data, police reports of domestic disturbances, and child abuse reports, as well as service assets available in the county.
Through using GIS to spatially represent family violence incidences in Dona Ana County, as well as risk indicators, the project will be able to pin-point hot spots, places in the county that have a greater than average number of risky events, and areas where people have a higher than average risk of victimization. Finding the hot spots will enable the project to target prevention and intervention services and develop and implement education and prevention programs in rural areas of Dona Ana County. Great care will be used to maintain anonymity of the data.
GOAL TWO
Goal Two will focus on providing targeting prevention and outreach services to targeted communities and the development of a training curriculum for use in the communities. A team of county AmeriCorps/VISTA volunteers, three social work students from NMSU, a social worker hired by NMSU and placed at the county, and an Outreach Worker hired by La Casa, will go to the county community centers in the rural areas of the county and assess the need for services, meet with the communities to develop trust, and provide crisis intervention services and case management to high risk families.
The team will conduct focus groups in the targeted rural communities to gain information on needs for prevention and to minimize negative feelings of stigmatization. Using community input, a prevention curriculum will be adapted and used in the rural, mostly Spanish speaking of Dona Ana County.
