Coordinated Community Response in Rural Indiana to Prevent Family Violence, "Getting into Your Neighbor's Business"

Research has discovered that when different members of the community coordinated their efforts to prevent family violence, these efforts were more successful. Coordination helps to ensure that the system which surround the family works with a better understanding of the individual needs of the families who live in the community. A critical first step toward coordinating responses is developing a common understanding of family violence and a coordinated community response that everyone within the system can buy into.

Education, Law enforcement agencies, victim advocates, health care providers, child protection services, local businesses, the media, employers and the family based community can—and must be engaged and involved in working together to identify problems in addition to the development and creating solutions that will work for the community. A coordinated community response develop sustainable programs that can work to create a network of support for families that are accessible. Coordinated community response programs also often engage the entire community in efforts to change the social norms and attitudes that contribute to family violence. However, many communities lack the resources to carry out or even ignite the coordination of such a response which was found this study population. Though a CDC Epi-Aid identify a community need of a laundry list of needs with solutions, the challenge was how to carry out the evidence based preventions. With key stakeholders from the community who were not willing to give up, prevention efforts with little to no financial support from the state or federal level.