Grant Funded Program for Victims of Violent Crime Services Among Underserved Populations

Logistics in Aviation

Services for the victims for populations that is underserved

Once one recognizes that children, young people and grownup victims of marital violence, relationship violence, sexual misdemeanor as well as stalking living in the countryside have to face certain unique hurdles to receiving help and other challenges which are not so often encountered in urban regions, designing grant funded programs for this underserved population becomes easier. The problem however can be compounded by factors like geographical isolation, economic structure, specifically strong social as well as cultural pressures, and unavailability of available services in the countryside - all of which create major problems for those who want to get assistance as well as services to put an end to the violence affecting them. All these factors also make it hard for the criminal justice system to examine and impeach cases involving domestic violation, relationship violence, sexual misdemeanor, and stalking. Furthermore, socio-cultural, financial, as well as geographical hurdles are making it hard for victim service providers and related social services pros to recognize and help the victims of such wrongdoings (Division of Criminal Justice Services, 2009).

This Rural Program deals with a few provisions of the Violence against Women Act, which Congress passed in the year 1994 and reauthorized in the Violence against Women Act of 2000 as well as 2005. The Violence Against Women and Department of Justice Reauthorization Act of 2004 (VAWA, 2005) extended the ambit of the Rural Marital violence, Relationship violence, Sexual misdemeanor and Stalking Assistance Program (Rural Program) to also include sexual misdemeanor and stalking, and made changes to suitability standards and the statutory purpose areas so that the program could be properly executed (Division of Criminal Justice Services, 2009).

The main aim of the Rural Program is ensure that crime victim services are properly delivered to populations that are underserved. This will only be possible when safety of children, young people and adult victims of marital violence, relationship violence, sexual misdemeanor, and stalking is enhanced by supporting projects that are specially designed to meet the needs as well as prevent crimes in rural jurisdictions. The Rural Program concentrates on encouraging ground-breaking solutions to overcome the issue of marital violence, relationship violence, sexual misdemeanor, and stalking crimes and to also make sure that safety of victims is the main concern in delivering services to sufferers and their offspring created by the rural nature of individual communities. The Rural Program also tests victim advocates, police force officials, pre-trial assistance workers, prosecutors, judges as well as various court workers, probation as well as parole officers, Child Protective Service along with Adult Assistance Workers, and faith - as well as community-centered leaders to work together to solve these issues (Division of Criminal Justice Services, 2009).

C.

Narrative of the Program

Statement of the Problem

Underserved Populations - People of Color, Lesbian, Gay, Bi-sexual, Transgender, Queer and Questioning (LGBTQQ) Communities

West Virginia is mainly a state that has a big rural area and low population (1, 815, 354 people in 2000) of which five percent are colored people and homosexual households account for ten percent of the overall population. The rural communities in West Virginia have few opportunities to connect with specialized services. Furthermore, because of racism as well as heterosexism, it is hard to access social services which then limit resources as well as protection. The Women of Color Network Facts and Stats Collection says that colored women are not able to gain access to conventional services because they are afraid of rejection from the community, and they also do not trust law enforcement are also skeptical and distrustful of marital violence services which are neither ethnically nor linguistically capable. For many colored women, elevated poverty rates, insufficient education, partial job resources, language barriers, and fear of deportation are obstacles to looking for assistance and support services (Division of Criminal Justice Services, 2009).

Intimate Partner Violence (IPV) in the Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual and Transgender (LGBT) community is many times not recognized enough, despite the fact that statistics show it is just as widespread and austere as for heterosexuals. When faced with a system that is many times very oppressive and hostile towards whom are not "straight," survivors of marital violence and victims in LGBTQQ partnerships often report that they are scared of telling people about their sexual orientation or about their relationships. Furthermore, those who are brave enough to report violence in homosexual relationships often face discrimination, prejudice, and bias from law enforcement officers, prosecutors, judges and advocates to whom LGBTQQ victims ask for assistance (Division of Criminal Justice Services, 2009).

Survivors of marital violence who have children

Marital violence can have a profound effect on families, communities and the society as a whole. Those who batter their victims use various tactics to control the victim and their offspring within the family and they also use systems that have been designed to safeguard and provide accountability to sufferers. In any household which has a victim with children and who are made to endure marital violence, the environment is perfect for the batterer to maintain control, intimidate and successfully pacify the victim's efforts to get away from the batterer. It is common for the batterer to make use of custody as a medium to harass and resort to legal retaliation. In fact, just twenty-six percent of batterers are held accountable by submitting to supervised visitation (Kernic et al., 2005).

The problem is that unofficial visits make it easy for the batterer to concentrate their efforts to control the victim and inflict more violence (Sheeran and Hampton, 1999). When children of marital violence victims are exposed to a batterer, it can have a detrimental effect like having to put up with physical injuries or even death. They can also suffer from psychological deficiency, physical or emotional negligence and their childhood progression will also be retarded. By recognizing the impact that batterers have on marital violence victim's children, the child protection system has shown that it has taken notice of this issue. The child protection system framework is in fact concentrating on providing protection to children against obnoxious parents and this means that both the victims and batterers are equally responsible for the harm done to the children. This however does compromise the safety of battered mothers because they have to struggle to obey with child protection mandates which mainly ask the grownup sufferer to control the batterer's violent conduct or give up their children. Although WV has done much to change the child protection system's structure to take up partnership with grownup sufferers and to make batterers own up for their acts (through new policy and statutes creating co-petitioning and battered parent adjudication), ongoing cooperative efforts are still required to institutionalize this change from putting the blame on grownup sufferers to providing support and protection to them. A battered mother has to face additional and complicated safety concerns which are very complicated. Survivors as well as sufferers have to put up a defense against allegations by batterer of false reporting and parental estrangement when endeavoring to protect the children of marital violence victims in family court custody/visitation proceedings. At the same time, they also need to respond to "failure to protect" allegations leveled by the child protection system. Different disciplines take up complicated issues on a daily basis, but they do not always cooperate with each other, and sometimes also work in opposition to each other disciplines, which are trying to protect family members (Division of Criminal Justice Services, 2009).

Relationship violence

35 states in the U.S. allow relationship violence victims to ask for protection irrespective of what kind of relationship they are in. West Virginia is one of these 35 states but it is not among the 19 states that allow sufferers below the age of 18 to ask the court to provide them with protection without a parent, legal or appointed guardian representing them. Since young sufferers often do not tell anyone about violence committed against them, many of them continue to be part of a perilous association (Division of Criminal Justice Services, 2009).

At present, the extent to which relationship violence affects people in West Virginia is not known mainly because there is no specific data available to provide accurate statistics.

Target Population

The target population gets help, thanks to Rural Grant funding, in the following ways:

They are given ethnically subtle training and are taking part in community forums on race as well as sexual inclination for marital violence advocates along with the general public;

Marital violence and community-centered organizations that offer informed and appropriate services to marginalized communities are identified and recognized, especially in regard to colored communities and LGBTQQ organizations;

Community outreach and public awareness is provided on ethnically different populations;

Policies and practices that put the safety of sufferers of marital violence with children at risk are being improved and recognized;

Training and information is provided to rural teams, civil as well as criminal legal systems along with community-based providers on state policy/practice issues which impact the marital violence sufferers' children's safety and batterers are being held responsible for their acts;

Identify and improve statewide response as well as policy issues that have an impact on the safety of relationship violence victims (Division of Criminal Justice Services, 2009);

Scope of the problem

Underserved Populations - People of Color and Lesbian, Gay, Bi-sexual, Transgender, Queer and Questioning (LGBTQQ) Communities

Efforts from not only the past but also in the present have been concentrating on developing educational materials, training as well as outreach programs for underserved population in West Virginia. The Advocates of Color Network along with LGBTQQ Advisory Council Committee have presently undertaken initiatives that along with feedback have managed to identify the following gaps:

Direct service and systems that are specific to individual cultures need to be developed.

Dominations that tie and weaken violence against women realities need to be connected.

Services that are specific to cultures and languages must be integrated in community-based marital violence programs.

Colored people, LGBTQQ and similar groups and/or organizations need to be identified.

Also, the West Virginia Group Against Marital Violence Advocates of Color Network advanced and disseminated a statewide survey to communities of color in order to: elucidate marital violence, recognize community resources and hurdles, and to offer commendations on how best to rise marital violence public awareness in colored communities. Once these surveys were reviewed, it became clear that outlining marital violence in colored communities was not going to be easy. This is because most definitions concentrated on examples of how perpetrators used tactics of control; even so, comprehending the subtleties of marital violence concerning power and control was not present. When one tries to identify community resources it was found that about eighty-six percent of respondents indicated that they were aware about where they should go for help in regard to marital violence services. At the same time, about eighty-one percent showed that they would more often than not use family and seventy-seven percent said that the next alternative was friends and/or the church. Only about half (51%) said that they would try to contact local marital violence shelters. It is critical that the hurdles faced by colored communities in accessing services is understood in regard to determining meaningful and response services in West Virginia's rural communities. At the WV Coalition Against Marital violence LGBTQQ Institute of 2007, participants concentrated on talking to backers and partners in philosophical questions and discussions about their anxieties, expectations and involvements concerning violence in homosexual relationships. The institute has identified and recommended certain things for greater inclusion, approval and understanding (Division of Criminal Justice Services, 2009):

Give LGBTQQ Cultural Competency training aimed at marital violence projects staff, police, judicial personnel, school counselors as well as school nurses.

Back a completely inclusive ENDA (Employment Non-Discrimination Act) which offers protection to the LGBTQQ group as a whole.

Take note of civil rights, human rights, and hate crime issues in relation to general safety, enablement and inclusion of LGBTQQ group members in community-centered initiatives.

Perfect progressive leadership and show complete support for members of the LGBTQQ as they try to secure well-being, equivalence, and legal recourse in public policy and social services delivery.

When the Rural Grant is funded it will make it possible for extra cultural aptitude training for backers and partners, spreading of educational materials, and community outreach to marital violence victims who are one who consider them to be part of the LGBTQQ community.

This future scheme hopes to extend efforts by evolving precise and culturally adequate outreach programs, connections, as well as strategies for far more effectual response to colored people and those who are lesbians, gays, bisexuals, transgender, queer and questioning. Marital violence services will be improved because of exact and deliberate attempts to network, educate as well as empower the underserved community. In addition, community services will be developed, there will be an increase in community involvement and underserved marital violence victims will get responses that are safer and more effective (Division of Criminal Justice Services, 2009).

Survivors (with children) of marital violence

West Virginia is at present hosting a statewide Marital Violence/Child Oppression Study as well as Policy Workgroup that organizes multidisciplinary policy and practice problems that have an impact on marital violence victims with offspring and batterer answerability. Although the statewide group has achieved success in increasing statewide policy, offering statewide education on novel policy as well as potential practice, and cooperating frequently on statewide initiatives, implementation has been lacking coordination and state policy has not been consistently applied. The custody/visitation as well as child protection systems provide a number of defenses for those families that are affected by violence, but also are mediums that batterers use to compromise safety, reclaim control of their sufferers and wreak more violence. There is need for statewide cooperative work to help coagulate the response to battered moms across statewide systems as well as local systems. Furthermore, there are no connections with relationship violence and systemic responses. There is need to elucidate and define, understand and respond to relationship violence (Division of Criminal Justice Services, 2009).

Rural Teams

There are a number of local agencies that work with sufferers and victims of marital violence, battered moms and relationship violence sufferers. These agencies do not have the resources required to synchronize multidisciplinary response teams that include complicated issues and various experiences faced by families affected by violence. Also, a number of rural county law enforcement, lawyers, judges, marital violence backers as well as DHHR social workers are attending to families that have been affected by violence via illegal and civiclegitimate systems. They however do not coordinate their responses through community cooperatives. This particular scheme is fashioned to work directly with the reps from criminal along with civil systems, community responders that include conventionally underserved communities. This particular scheme tries to construct on statewide policy development and practices by functioning at the local execution level in 13 rural counties in West Virginia (Division of Criminal Justice Services, 2009).

There is also an ongoing need to combine cooperative efforts in rural communities that serve grownup as well as child protection systems. What's more, local rural community collaboratives have to augment the expansion and application of the statewide policy changes that are fashioned to help better safety of victims as well as survivors of marital violence and to make batterers accountable for their actions. This scheme expands efforts and also develops ethnically exact and suitable outreach, connections, and strategies for better responses to colored people and those who are lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender, queer and questioning (Division of Criminal Justice Services, 2009).

Overview of Project, Goals and Objectives

Project Description

The Rural Program executes definite requirements of the Violence Against Women Act, which Congress passed in 1994, and reauthorized in the Violence Against Women Act of 2000 and 2005. The Violence Against Women and Department of Justice Reauthorization Act of 2005 (VAWA 2005) expands the ambit of the Rural Marital violence, Relationship violence, Sexual misdemeanor and Stalking Assistance Program (Rural Program) to include sexual misdemeanor and stalking, and changed the suitability standards and the statutory purpose areas for proper execution of the program.

The Rural Program mainly aims to improve safety of children, young people, and grown-up sufferers of marital violence, relationship violence, sexual misdemeanor, and stalking by backing projects that are specially fashioned to speakto as well as avert such crimes in the countryside. The Rural Program also inspiresground-breaking solutions to overcome the problem of marital violence, relationship violence, sexual misdemeanor and stalking crimes and to make sure that victims are safe. These solutions are very important when offering services to sufferers and their offspring and must be created to address the rural nature of a definite community.

Project Goals

Recognize, evaluate, and properly answer to child, youth and grown-up sufferers of marital violence, sexual misdemeanor, relationship violence, and stalking in rural communities, by boosting cooperation among victim service providers; criminal justice officials, human as well as community-based orgianizations; educational establishments; as well as health care.

Found and enlarge nonprofit, nongovernmental, State, ethnic, territorial, and local government victim services within rural neighborhoods to child, youth, and grown-up sufferers.

Intensify the well-being and security of women and children in rural communities by dealing straight with marital violence, sexual misdemeanor, relationship violence, and stalking happening in rural communities; and making and applying strategies to grow consciousness and avert marital violence, sexual misdemeanor, relationship violence, and stalking (Division of Criminal Justice Services, 2009).

Purposes

Execute, swell, and found cooperative efforts / projects among law enforcement officers, prosecutors, victim support groups, as well as other related parties.

Offer therapy, support, and help to grown-up and minor sufferers of marital violence, relationship violence, sexual misdemeanor, and stalking in rural communities, including help in migration matters.

Exert effort in collaboration with the civic body to develop education and prevention stratagems (Division of Criminal Justice Services, 2009).

How to Reach Objectives

Making the public aware and providing community education campaigns that are fashioned mainly for rural communities with the use of public information vehicles (for example; radio programming, church bulletins, public service announcements) that are obtainable to the community to inform sufferers of services and to teach the public and also to encourage cultural change. In addition, it is necessary to encourage a strong synchronized community response to marital violence, relationship violence, sexual misdemeanor and stalking (Division of Criminal Justice Services, 2009).