Evaluation of Victim Advocacy Services Funded by the Violence Against Women Act in Urban Ohio, 1999

The focus of this research and evaluation endeavor was on
direct service programs in Ohio, particularly advocacy services for
female victims of violence, receiving funding through the Services,
Training, Officers, Prosecutors (STOP) formula grants under the
Violence Against Women Act (VAWA) of 1994. The objectives of this
project were (1) to describe and compare existing advocacy services in
Ohio, (2) to compare victim advocacy typologies and identify key
variables in the delivery of services, (3) to develop a better
understanding of how victim advocacy services are defined and
delivered, and (4) to assess the effectiveness of those services. For
Part 1, Service Agencies Data, comprehensive information about 13
VAWA-funded programs providing direct services in urban Ohio was
gathered through a mailback questionnaire and phone interviews.
Detailed information was collected on organizational structure,
clients served, and agency services. Focus groups were also used to
collect data from clients (Parts 3-11) and staff (Parts 12-23) about
their definitions of advocacy, types of services needed by victims,
services provided to victims, and important outcomes for service
providers. Part 2, Police Officer Data, focused on police officers'
attitudes toward domestic violence and on evaluating service outcomes
in one particular agency. The agency selected was a prosecutor's
office that planned to improve services to victims by changing how the
police and prosecutors responded to domestic violence cases. The
prosecutor's office selected one police district as the site for
implementing the new program, which included training police officers
and placing a prosecutor in the district office to work directly with
the police on domestic violence cases. The evaluation of this program
was designed to assess the effectiveness of the police officers'
training and officers' increased access to information from the
prosecutor on the outcome of the case. Police officers from the
selected district were administered surveys. Also surveyed were
officers from another district that handled a similar number of
domestic violence cases and had a comparable number of officers
employed in the district. Variables in Part 1 include number of staff,
budget, funding sources, number and type of victims served, target
population, number of victims served speaking languages other than
English, number of juveniles and adults served, number of victims with
special needs served, collaboration with other organizations, benefits
of VAWA funding, and direct and referral services provided by the
agency. Variables in Part 2 cover police officers' views on whether it
was a waste of time to prosecute domestic violence cases, if these
cases were likely to result in a conviction, whether they felt
sympathetic toward the victim or blamed the victim, how the
prosecution should proceed with domestic violence cases, how the
prosecution and police worked together on such cases, whether domestic
violence was a private matter, and how they felt about the new program
implemented under VAWA.