Domestic violence is a leading cause of preventable injury and death. Workplace domestic violence is under identified and programs in the workplace are needed to identify and intervene in domestic violence. This proposal will: increase the identification of domestic violence in the workplace (DVWP); increase the capacity of organizations to prevent workplace violence incidents through preventive policies and early intervention practices; and increase the effectiveness of responses to workplace domestic violence through a coordinated community response to improve the quality of business response, victim supports, and law enforcement intervention. The proposed initiative uses employee and management education, business policy development, the creation of incident reporting strategies to increase the identification of DVWP incidents, and a continuing relationship with the intervention team to improve programs over time. A second principal objective of this initiative is to develop the organizational development strategies, management and employee skills, and follow-up strategies to assure that policies result in effective practices in the workplace. In this initiative, we propose a coordinated community response to assess and reduce the emerging threat, protect the individuals at risk, reduce the risk of re-victimization, and reduce the disruption to the mission of the affected business. Key to this coordinated response is the melding of victim support and safety and law enforcement response with businesses' obligations to aid their employees and pursue their mission as organizations. We will conduct a longitudinal, randomized outcomes study of the effectiveness of a DVWP intervention that integrates these educational, organizational development, and crisis response components. ? ?
