Does your county have a way to support children whose parents are in a Domestic Violence case?

Questions › Category: Child Welfare › Does your county have a way to support children whose parents are in a Domestic Violence case?

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Erin Taggart asked 5 years ago

HI team,

For children who are in homes with domestic violence but are not in DHS custody at the time:

Why are advocates not assigned to these children when parents have an active DV case?
What does your county do for advocacy in thise circumstance?
Do you think providing advocacy to these kids prior to DHS involvement could decrease the liklihood of being placed into the Foster Care system?
How many of your cases had DV reports prior to coming in to care?

We do not have a child advocacy center in the local area…we essentailly are that for our county. Any input and guidance would be great.

Thanks!

1 Answers

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Renee Buchanan answered 4 years ago

To summarize responses:
Susan Erickson (Columbia Gorge)
It would have to be a lay advocate without all the powers of a CASA volunteer as there would be no legal standing if the child is not in dependency.

Jill Bower (Central Oregon)
We cannot assign an advocate unless we are appointed to the case. For cases that have DV and children are in the home on a safety plan, we encourage the advocate to go with someone else when visiting (DHS worker, attorney, etc). We also have Peer Specialists, one in particular is our Law Enforcement specialist. He has 30 years PD experience and will go to a home with an advocate if needed but we never encourage advocates to go to a home where they don’t feel safe.

Candy Humphreys (Frontier)
If there were enough advocates in a program it would be great to support these families.

Most of the families who have a DV against them and have children in our area almost always end up with DHS involvement at some point because they can’t help but eventually do it in front of the children. We have quite a few DV cases with the CASA being appointed at shelter and children wards of court at Jurisdiction but the children are left in-home placement (after the offender has been removed). This seems to be a growing trend here. The Judges, DHS and, of course, CASA are trying to not have children removed from their familiar area, relatives and school. Since we do not have foster homes in our counties, if they are not in-home placement, they end up (in the last case) 120 miles from their home, friends, relative and school. It would certainly help the children to have an advocate working with/for them when those parent’s DV calls started coming in to LEA over a year ago.