Identifying and Responding to the Complex Needs of Domestic Violence Housing Practitioners at the Onset of the COVID-19 Pandemic
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Nnawulezi, N., Hacskaylo, M. Identifying and Responding to the Complex Needs of Domestic Violence Housing Practitioners at the Onset of the COVID-19 Pandemic. J Fam Viol (2021). https://doi.org/10.1007/s10896-020-00231-8
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The social, financial, and emotional repercussions of the COVID-19 pandemic has left many organizations that support survivors of intimate partner violence questioning how to maintain core services while addressing compounding individual, organizational, and public health issues. Stay-at-home orders and other COVID-19 mitigation strategies have resulted in reduced shelter availability and increased intimate partner violence rates. Coupled with the economic impact of the pandemic, these factors have threatened financial and housing stability. To better understand these challenges and provide immediate support, The National Alliance for Safe Housing (NASH) co-hosted a peer support call to provide a virtual platform for practitioners to ask questions, discuss challenges, and share strategies for quality service provision during the COVID-19 pandemic. Over 800 practitioners from across the United States participated in the NASH call, most of whom were advocates, program directors, and managers. NASH gathered data on practitioners’ needs from a brief survey from the registration form analyzed using conventional inductive content analysis. Practitioners’ primary concerns were situated within eight questions, which we categorized into four meta-categories: (1) managing residential housing programs; (2) getting survivors materials resources; (3) keeping staff safe; and (4) maintaining organizational operations. The paper concludes with community-grounded and empirically supported practice recommendations aligned with practitioners’ expressed needs.
The rapid spread of SARS-CoV-2 (Severe Acute Respiratory Syndrome Coronavirus 2), the etiological agent of the illness known as COVID-19, is one of the most significant public health issues in the twenty-first century (Hartley and Perencevich 2020). Stay-at-home orders and social distancing requirements developed by state and city government officials promote public safety and prevent virus spread by reducing contact among residents. Stay-at-home orders mandate that people across the United States only leave their homes to complete essential activities, such as going to work, receiving crucial medical care, or shopping for food. Social distancing require that citizens stay at least 6 ft away from another person in outdoor and indoor spaces. At the onset of the implementation of these public health mandates, domestic violence practitioners, scholars, and activists expressed concern that stay-at-home policies would further exacerbate harm for survivors, or those living with intimate partners who sought to maintain power and control through the perpetration of violent tactics (Sharma and Borah 2020). Stay-at-home policies requiring survivors to remain confined in a home with their partners increase the risk of multiple types of abuse. Home confinement also compromises survivors’ ability to obtain help from supportive informal social networks, such as family and friends, or formal organizations, such as domestic violence shelters (Hall and Tucker 2020). The policies created to keep the general population safe also exacerbate harm in certain groups, spurring numerous practitioners and researchers to name this interaction between public health mandates and risk for increased violence as a safety paradox (Bradbury-Jones and Isham 2020). Our goals in this paper are to identity the specific needs of domestic violence practitioners negotiating this safety paradox, increasing the understanding of these needs, as well as providing recommendations to help maintain responsive, survivor-centered systems for sheltered and community-based survivor populations.