Dating Violence Prevention Case Study
Organization: Women in Need, Inc.
Overview of Organization’s Function: WIN provides domestic violence services free of charge to victims and/or survivors of domestic, dating, and intimate partner violence. Their focus is to help the victim envision a life free of violence and to gain back control of their lives.
URL: www.wintexas.org
Program Name: Prevention Education
Program Setting: Public and Private School Campuses
Location of Instruction: Hunt and Rockwall Counties, Texas
Length of Instruction (# of Sessions and Hours per Session): 10 sessions, 1 hour duration each.
Class Size: Ranges from 6-50 students
Target Audience: 6th – 12th grade students
Audience Demographics:
- Race/Ethnicity: .8% American Indian; 4.4% Asian; 8.1% African American or Black; 21.9% Hispanic or Latino; .2% Pacific Ethnicity; 3.9% Bi- or multi-racial; 62% White/Caucasian
- Sex: 45% Female; 55% Male
- 24% Economically Disadvantaged
What Problem is Being Solved? Preventing violence through building social/emotional skills and choosing healthy dating relationships
Challenges:
- Keeping curriculum presentations relevant and engaging
- Scheduling with schools that do not respond to repeated invitations
- Navigating COVID-19 restrictions
- Lack of adequate staffing
Funding:
- Private donations
- Thrift store sales proceeds
- Other Victim Assistance Grants (OVAG) from the State of Texas Texas Council on Family Violence
- Swalm Grants
Curricula Used: Love Notes 3.0
Curricula Benefits:
- Understand a process for choosing healthy dating relationships instead of sliding into potentially unhealthy dating relationships.
- Understand the risks of becoming physically affectionate too soon with a potential dating partner.
- Examine the benefits of pacing a relationship more slowly.
- Identify negative communication patterns and contrast them with healthy communication patterns.
- Identify characteristics of a healthy dating relationship.
- Identify characteristics of unhealthy dating relationships.
- Understand that “red flag” behavior in a dating relationship is a warning sign that the relationship might be abusive.
- Help participants understand the impact of technology and social media on relationships and how it can be used to control a partner or disguise an unhealthy relationship.
- Intervention tools when participants see unhealthy behavior exhibited by a friend or in a friend’s relationship.
- Understand the role brain chemistry and hormones.
- Identify and understand the different types of violence .
- Understand the risks involved in sexting.
- Understand what consent for sexual activity means.
- Analyze the impact of emotional abuse.
- Identify the reason for ending a dating relationship with someone as soon as “red flag” behavior is detected.
- Understand healthy principles for breaking up with a dating partner with respect.
- Identify helpful techniques to recover from a breakup.
- Understand the danger of breaking up with a “red flag” dating partner.
- Identify helpful techniques to remain safe when breaking up with a “red flag” dating partner.
- Identify a strategy for remaining as safe as possible when the choice is made not to break up with a “red flag” dating partner.
- Identify the consequences of involvement in unhealthy dating relationships.
- Identify the benefits of involvement in healthy dating relationships.
- Set goals for choosing healthy dating partners and healthy dating relationships.
- Understand one’s rights in a dating relationship.
Instructors: Jeff Landers and Tiffany Storm
Instructor Training Protocol: Training of instructors includes several sessions which focus on the following topics:
- The effectiveness of prevention education
- The prevalence of teen dating violence
- The typical schedule for the four seasons of the year
- Information regarding the schools served
- Curriculum used, how to access it, and how best to teach it in the classroom (including mock presentations for colleagues)
Online resources for additional training (e.g., The Dibble Institute, Texas Council on Family Violence, One Love)
Incentives to Teachers and Students:
- Satisfies the Texas Education Code’s requirement to provide education on teen dating violence.
- Students are offered candy to encourage their participation.
Tips for Others: Observable Outcomes: Most presentations include both a pre-survey and a post-survey. Survey questions include asking about personal experience of abuse, what to do if abuse occurs, what types of violence may occur in dating relationships, what “red flags” indicate an abusive relationship, and characteristics of healthy relationships. Consistently, our organization sees knowledge and obtainment of skills and resources improve from the pre-survey to the post-survey.
- Build rapport with school decision-makers by consistently keeping appointments and delivering helpful, engaging presentations.
- Create PowerPoint presentations that are engaging and keep each presentation on track.
- Make sure that curriculum elements strive to include as much participation as possible.
- Prepare classroom resources as far in advance as possible to prevent last-minute efforts in which some curriculum element may be forgotten or unable to be employed.
- Avail yourself of continual training and tools to maintain effectiveness with student groups.
- Submit documentation for grant-reporting guidelines as soon as possible.
- Send thank-you notes to decision-makers following presentations and introduce new seasons of presentations with encouraging notes/small gifts for decision-makers.
- Communicate, communicate, communicate with school decision-makers.
- Stay current on issues facing students so that curriculum presentations can be modified to meet current needs.