6033.0: Thursday, November 16, 2000 - 8:40 AM

Abstract #15838

Coordinating Community Response Across Diverse Services: The Dorchester Community Roundtable

Tompkins Mercedes, Northeastern University School of Law, Dorchester Community Roundtable, 250 Columbus Ave, Roxbury, MA 02120, 617-373-8233, bherbs@juno.com

Intimate Partner Violence is among the most serious public health and law enforcement concerns in Dorcester, Ma, a neighborhood also characterized by low educational achievement, high unemployment, poverty, and youth assaultive violence. The Dorchester Community Roundtable is a broad-based coalition of individuals, groups and institutions whose evolving mission is to facilitate a coordinated community response to IPV which respects and utilizes the resources of Dorchester's families and the diverse racial, ethnic and religious resources that have traditionally sustained them. Moving from its initial form: a court-based meeting of domestic violence legal and law enforcement professionals, the Roundtable has been funded in part by a coordinated community response grant from the CDC, beginning in 1996. It now supports communication, coordination and collaboration between and among virtually all major health, law enforcement, civil legal services, shelters, and non-governmental victim services organizations providing IPV services in Dorchester. The Roundtable works toward shaping a coordinated primary prevention and victim services program that is family and community-centered. Enhanced services to families affected by IPV are provided through a network of advocates at community locations, local health centers, courts and others, where residents first turn for help. Building the trust, broad-based community participation, and capacity for true interagency collaboration is particularly challenging in communities where there already exists autonomous, entrenched and sophisticated service organizations, that often include powerful, and competing, institutional players. This presentation focuses on the vision, difficulties and success of creating and maintaining the coalition.

Learning Objectives: 1.To understand the construction of collaboration within a particular community to respond to domestic viilence. 2. To appreciate the impact of different speciality training in responding as part of a community to the challenge of DV intervention and prevention. 3. To envision the [possibilities of future enhanced collaboration to eliminate disparities in the prevention and intervention of domestic violence

Keywords: Domestic Violence, Community Collaboration

Presenting author's disclosure statement:
Organization/institution whose products or services will be discussed: Dorchester Community Roundtable CDC community collaboration grant
I have a significant financial interest/arrangement or affiliation with any organization/institution whose products or services are being discussed in this session.
Relationship: Employed by the roundtable as executive director

The 128th Annual Meeting of APHA