PolicyLab

In 2020, with support from the Vanguard Strong Start for Kids initiative and the William Penn Foundation, our team of community-academic partners that make up the IPV-HV Collaborative (including PolicyLab, Maternity Care Coalition, ParentChild+, National Nurse-Led Care Coalition, Lutheran Settlement House, Courdea, and the City of Philadelphia’s Office of Domestic Violence Strategies) came together for a research project.  

This project sought to understand the existing local landscape of services for home visited families experiencing IPV and to pilot a training and consultative model between the home visiting and IPV agencies. The ultimate goals of this project are to improve outcomes for home visited families experiencing IPV by strengthening family engagement and retention, home visitor capacity to address IPV, and the referral network and interagency collaboration among the system of family-serving entities in Philadelphia. 

To work towards these goals, we first used social network analysis to describe the existing service landscape for families with young children impacted by IPV and measure the connectedness that exists within this landscape. This method allowed us to understand where relationships already exist and identify opportunities for improving community connections. Survey findings from nearly 50 organizations in the Philadelphia area found great variability in the number, type and strength of existing interagency collaborations.  

Additionally, qualitative findings from four focus groups with IPV and home visiting service providers gave an in-depth look at the priority issues they experience in supporting clients impacted by IPV. These sessions also produced prioritized lists of potential innovations to overcome these issues, including stronger or alternative methods of interagency collaboration.  

Informed by our research findings and in response to the needs of our project partners, we co-developed and piloted a training- and capacity-building model (‘Champion Model’) wherein a group of home visitors complete an adapted version of the Pennsylvania Coalition Against Domestic Violence’s 40-hour training and engage in small-group multidisciplinary meetings following the training.  

To date, the first cohort of champions completed training and attended cohort meetings to discuss opportunities for integrating learnings within and across organizations and to continue building relationships across our collective of organizations. Survey and interview data collected from champions and training facilitators during the pilot year demonstrated the early impact of the champion training and highlighted a shared commitment to use this newly developed model to create a stronger system of services for families who are impacted by IPV.