Building a Community Coordinated Response to the Criminalization of Survivors: A Toolkit
(Fall 2025) This Toolkit provides ideas, strategies, and techniques for addressing the need and challenges related to making survivors charged…
A Domestic Violence-Informed Approach to Child Custody Decision-Making
Published by: Loretta Frederick, Nancy Ver Steegh
Notwithstanding an abundance of social science literature and persistent efforts to raise awareness about the adverse affects of domestic violence on children and parenting, family court systems across the U.S. are often poorly organized to respond to domestic violence.
This webinar introduces participants to a domestic violence-informed approach to child custody decision-making that guides the family court system to produce safer, more workable outcomes for battered parents and their children. The key elements of that approach are to effectively identify if and when domestic violence is an issue in a case; explore the full nature and context of any abuse that is detected; examine the real life implications of the abuse that is or has been occurring; and account for the abuse in all parenting recommendations, decisions and related activities – all in a way that facilitates practitioner’s ability to act in the best interest of children living with domestic violence.