Finding a solution
to domestic violence
MOVING THE NEEDLE
While SafeHaven is best known for victim services, and we certainly prioritize keeping victims safe, that doesn’t entirely meet our mission of ending domestic violence. While we are committed to continuing our services for victims, we understand that in order to make systemic change in our society, we have to both address the root of this problem and prevent domestic violence from ever occurring.
Prevention Services
According to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, domestic violence is preventable, and SafeHaven’s prevention department focuses on preventing and decreasing dating violence and bullying by implementing evidence-based programs in Tarrant County schools.
Our prevention team works primarily in Everman ISD, a K-12 school district serving just over 6,000 students in the city of Everman and portions of Fort Worth, Forest Hill and Burleson. The staff focuses not just on the individual student, but also those who have a relationship with the student, including teachers, support staff and parents. The team also works with the school to address school policies related to teen dating violence and bullying.
The SafeHaven prevention staff has a combined 53 years of experience in the field of primary domestic violence and has presented at numerous conferences across the state of Texas and across the United States. They have worked with the Center on Research and Evaluation (CORE) at Souther Methodist University to research the effectiveness of the PALS model they created for late elementary students.
reformative Services
We believe everyone has the capacity to change and are here to facilitate that process for domestic violence offenders through our Partner Abuse Intervention and Prevention (PAIP) program.
PAIP is SafeHaven's fully-accredited Batterers’ Intervention and Prevention Program (BIPP) provider for domestic violence reform, and our program has been a trusted community partner providing BIPP services in Tarrant County for more than 30 years. At PAIP, we work with both court-mandated clients and volunteer clients, and our work is a large part of SafeHaven's mission to end the epidemic of domestic violence.
SafeHaven’s PAIP was a trailblazer in extending the length of our program beyond the minimum length to align with best practices nationally and internationally. The evidence shows the longer someone has engaged in groups, the lower their risk of reoffending. We partnered with Dr. Deborah Levesque, renowned behavioral scientist and change researcher, to use the URICA domestic violence change assessment and found that our program had a clinically significant effect on clients’ readiness to change, with 62.3% progressing one or more stages in readiness to end their abusive behavior.
Our program offers specially targeted groups for men, women, bilingual, and LGBTQ client populations.
The goal of the Tarrant County Domestic Violence Fatality Review Ream is to prevent intimate partner violence homicides by identifying how our coordinated response to domestic violence in can keep victims safe and hold offenders accountable.
Each year, the Fatality Review Team collaborates to determine possible systemic, policy, and practice improvements in our county. In October, the team publishes their findings in an annual fatality review report.
