Michigan communities currently have or are in the process of developing coordinating community response (CCR) efforts to domestic violence. A critical component of CCR efforts is developing policies and protocols, but this is inherently challenging because domestic violence is a multifaceted problem involving complex relationships between policies, protocols, and their effects. Advocates, police officers, prosecutors, judges, probation officers, and batterer intervention group facilitators each operate with their own models for defining and responding to domestic violence. Tools that help councils develop a better understanding of the interactions between their individual activities and the community as a macro system can therefore assist CCR councils with developing policies and protocols that increase the safety of victims and hold assailants more accountable. Successful in other areas, modeling and computer simulation can help councils foresee the consequences of their own decisions on the larger system. These efforts are most successful when the end-users are actively involved in developing and testing the model. However, maintaining an evolving model on participants’ computers or in centralized locations is impractical. One alternative is to use the Internet as a distance education tool. This paper presents CCRSIM 1.0, a public web-based computer simulation or websim for training domestic violence community coordinating response councils.
Learning Objectives: At the conclusion of this session, participants will be able to:
Keywords: Domestic Violence, Distance Education
Presenting author's disclosure statement:
Organization/institution whose products or services will be discussed: Michigan Department of Community Health
I do not have any significant financial interest/arrangement or affiliation with any organization/institution whose products or services are being discussed in this session.