Resources around our Guiding Principles

1) Survivor Voices are Valued and Centered

Intimate partner violence causes harm to survivors in many ways: physically, sexually, mentally, emotionally, and economically. Survivors should define safety and healing from IPV. APIPs should collaborate with community-based advocates and survivors to understand and address identified needs. Systems of oppression that perpetuate discrimination and create barriers for marginalized survivors must be consistently and intentionally addressed to be genuinely survivor-centered.

Resources

2) Accountability is Active and Relational

Individuals, communities, and systems all create the environment where IPV occurs and the spaces where those harms can be addressed. People who cause harm are fully responsible for their behaviors and can choose to be accountable and change. Personal change requires an understanding of the root causes of thoughts, beliefs, feelings, and behaviors that harm self and others. Interpersonal, communal, and systemic accountability and support can increase the likelihood of a person’s choice to heal and change. System and community-based agencies should identify the harms they have created through oppressive practices and policies and remedy these barriers to safety, accountability, and healing for people who cause harm, survivors, and their children.

Resources

3) Hope and Dignity are Restored

Intervention and engagement strategies should create spaces for transformation, healing, safety, and well-being for people who cause harm. APIPs should collaborate with other community-based agencies to do the same with adult and child survivors. Programs should treat participants with dignity and respect, valuing their commitment to change and transformation. They should provide skill-building and access to wraparound support to address the harm and violence, and help participants develop goals for healthy, non-abusive relationships. Intervention and engagement strategies should recognize participant experiences while including support to heal past trauma and the harms caused by systems of oppression.

Resources

4) Culture and Community are Reflected and Valued

Intervention and engagement strategies need to meet the needs of the diverse populations within their communities and center culture as a critical component of meaningful intervention. Addressing the harms of IPV requires genuine collaboration between system and community-based actors to develop strategies resulting in safer and healthier intimate partner, family, peer, and community relationships. To do so, these intervention and engagement strategies should center on the communities they serve and engage their members as experts, develop collaborative wraparound supports, reflect the diversity and intersectionality of participants, practice cultural reverence and humility, and when possible, develop community accountability processes outside formal systems.

Resources

5) Interventions and Engagement Strategies Respond to the Needs And Strengths of Abusive Partners

Since people who cause harm through IPV have different needs, strengths, personal goals, and motivations for using abuse, communities should develop multiple pathways to accountability. Practitioners must acknowledge the nuances and complexities of humanity, understanding that many people who cause harm have been impacted by systems of oppression, may have experienced trauma in their own lives, and have varying levels of risks and access to basic needs. Engagement and intervention strategies should be trauma-informed and person-centered, moving away from one-size-fits-all approaches, addressing the unique needs of participants, and leveraging participants’ inherent strengths and goals to effect positive behavior change.

For materials related to trauma, women who use force, working with young people who cause harm, and fatherhood, please see the General Support around Abusive Partner Intervention page on our clearinghouse.

Resources

6) Racial Justice is Centered

A deep analysis of intersectionality and systems of oppression—particularly racism—is needed to create truly holistic interventions. Survivors and people who cause harm are deeply affected not only by sexism but other types of oppression, including structural and systemic racism. In close collaboration with the community, programs should address the impact of all oppressive systems and not only focus on individual change. They should also embark on self-reflection about how their policies, practices, and alliances may contribute to racial and other types of social injustices and make appropriate corrections.

Resources

7) Self-Reflection is Prioritized

Facilitating a healing, growth, and accountability process for others is only possible as an extension of the facilitators’ exploration of those factors in their own lives. Everyone is impacted by systems of oppression—white supremacy, heteropatriarchy, settler colonialism, ableism, and classism—as well as their own personal experiences of trauma, and everyone can cause harm. Facilitators, agency leadership, and system stakeholders must engage in ongoing self-reflection to understand and acknowledge their privilege and power, actively work to dismantle systems of oppression, and take accountability for harm caused in their own lives and within their fields of practice.

Resources