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General
Resources designed specifically for communities considering or currently working on institutional analysis, community assessment, best practice assessment or a Safety Audit; available for free download or to purchase.
Please note: Use Internet Explorer as the browser for downloading documents.
 Planning and Conducting a Best-Practice Assessment of Community Response to
Domestic Violence
Two
new Best Practice Assessment Tools are available for communities who
want to use the lessons learned from CCR efforts and Safety Audits to
examine their system's response to battering. The assessment tools will
help you analyze your community's response in these areas:
 Emergency Communications (911) & Police Patrol
Police Follow-up Investigations & Prosecution Charging Decisions
 Implementation of Safety Audit Recommendations to Domestic Violence
Communities across the country have struggled with how to move from the investigation phase of the Audit to the crucial phase of the implementation of audit recommendations. To find out more, in March of 2010, we interviewed seven audit coordinators and two lead audit team members from eight different communities about their experience implementing recommendations identified by their audits. This report is an overview of the interviews that we hope will assist current and future auditors to anticipate and avoid common pitfalls and plan for and utilize successful strategies to implement recommendations. The report summarizes themes that arose during the interviews in the following areas related to implementation of audit recommendations: process and administration, impact of the audit, challenges to implementation, recommendations not implemented, and central lessons for other communities. Also included is a site-specific summary of approaches to implementation.
Implementation survey
Best Practice Checklists for Improving Community Response to Domestic Violence
Praxis has condensed and revised the Best Practice Assessment tools we
released in 2010 (scroll below for more information) into four separate best
practice checklists. These checklists can be used by interagency groups to
conduct abbreviated reviews of case files produced in 911, patrol,
investigation and prosecution charging decisions. The checklists lend
themselves to a relatively quick review of case files or reports by an
interagency team to help your community’s intervention agencies determine their
adherence to best practices. The essence of the fuller assessment guide is now
more accessible to communities who wanted to do a quick review or use them as
an exercise in their CCR work.
911
Patrol
Investigation
Charging
 The Safety and Accountability Audit Informational Video
This 14-minute DVD features a description of the Audit process as well as feedback and testimony from criminal justice practitioners across the U.S. who have been a part of Audits in their communities.
To request a free copy, email your name and the name of your OVW grantee program.
The cost is $6 for non-OVW funded programs to defray production and mailing costs.
 Order Form
Domestic Violence Safety & Accountability Audit
A three-page handout briefly describing the Safety and Accountability Audit’s philosophical underpinnings and methodology. This can be used as a reference when describing the Audit in grant applications.
Handout
Domestic Violence Safety & Accountability Audit - Potential Interagency Connections
Mapping is a method used in the Safety & Accountability Audit process to breakdown the steps taken in an agencies response to a case. This is a sample map of potential inter agency connections arising from the processing of a domestic violence case in the criminal justice system.
Sample interagency map
 Text Analysis as a Tool for a Coordinated Community Response: Keeping Safety for Battered Women and their Children at the Center
This guide for Coordinated Community Response (CCR) and Audit teams will help you identify gaps in safety in your criminal justice system response to battered women and their children. All practitioners charged with intervening in cases of battering—from law enforcement officers to advocates to child protection workers—are organized by guidelines, report-writing formats, intake forms, and policies so that they do their jobs with relative consistency. To enhance safety for battered women and their children, a CCR team can examine the gaps between the safety needs of battered women and how an institution has organized its workers, through "text", to respond to domestic assaults.
 Guide (1.7 MB)
Appendices (7.5 MB)
Working from Inside and Outside Institutions: How Safety Audits Can Help Courts' Decision Making Around Domestic Violence and Child Maltreatment
 Ellen Pence and Martha McMahon, 2003
Reprinted with permission from the National Council of Juvenile and Family Court Judges, Juvenile and Family Court Journal, Vol. 54, No. 4.
As systems begin to work collaboratively to address the overlap of domestic violence and child maltreatment, systems analysis approaches are also being explored to test the effectiveness of collaborative interventions in meeting the needs of victims and their families. This article provides a detailed overview of the Safety Audit model, describes how Safety Audits are being used in the field, and discusses how the courts can incorporate Audit findings into decision-making around domestic violence and child maltreatment.
Download article
Building Safety for Battered Women and Their Children into the Child  Protection System
Ellen Pence and Terri Taylor, 2003
This report draws from the experience of three separate communities that wanted to explore the use of the Safety and Accountability Audit in child protection cases where there has been a history of domestic violence. This report shows how to use case files and focus groups to locate systemic problems in the handling of these cases. It is a preliminary examination of the problematic practices in working with battered women within a child protection case.
Download article
Praxis Audit Toolkit
The Safety and Accountability Audit Toolkit is a critical how-to guide for Audit Coordinators. Guides, templates, illustrations and check lists outline the Audit's philosophical underpinnings, clarify the data collection steps and methodologies, and provide a knowledge base for the team's work.
Order Form
Safety for Battered Women in a Textually Mediated Legal System
Ellen Pence
Download Chapters 1 - 4
Download Chapters 5 - conclusion
 Safety and Services: Women of Color Speak About Their Communities
This report discusses the themes and findings from a series of listening sessions (or focus groups) conducted by The Center for Family Policy and Practice (CFFPP) in four states (Minnesota, Missouri, Texas, and Wisconsin) to explore and document domestic violence service priorities as identified by: 1) women of color who are victims/survivors of domestic violence, 2) advocates of color, and 3) a broad range of community service providers. Each group was asked a similar series of questions about the kinds of services that are available to low-income women of color, barriers that get in the way of women utilizing services, unmet and outstanding needs, the kinds of services that are available for men in the community, and perspectives on providing collaborative, community-based services in low-income communities of color. An underlying premise of this report is that differences in race, culture, class, and gender frame people’s experiences and delineate their options. Our goal is to appreciate the context and attend to the impact of race and class in the lives of low-income women of color as we work to develop and improve domestic violence services in traditionally underserved communities.
Safety and Services: Women of Color Speak About Their Communities
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