New Orleans Family Justice Center’s Polyvictimization Initiative
In 2017 The New Orleans Family Justice Center (NOFJC) with the Institute of Women & Ethnic Studies as a research partner embarked on a national demonstration initiative sponsored by the Office for Victims of Crime (OVC) titled A Pathway to Justice, Healing, and Hope: Addressing Polyvictimization in a Family Justice Center Setting. The New Orleans Family Justice Center (NOFJC) is a partnership of agencies dedicated to ending family violence, child abuse, sexual assault, and stalking. Five other Family Justice Centers (FJCs) around the country were also selected with the goal of creating an assessment tool to document and discuss trauma throughout one's lifetime, specifically for survivors seeking services due to domestic and/or sexual violence at FJCs. The Polyvictimization Assessment Tool, also referred to as “the tool," helps FJCs understand the depths of trauma that survivors have experienced, including adverse events and emotional and mental health symptoms, to be able to transform the ways in which they provide services based on this new understanding. The IWES R&E team has been NOFJC's Research Partner since this first initiative by providing assistance with tool development, qualitative and quantitative data collection, data analysis, and process evaluation. Our partnership with NOFJC continues as we aim to disseminate findings and lessons learned across participating FJCs to inform other sites and the broader field.
Building on efforts from the first initiative, in 2019 NOFJC was funded again in a second phase of the initiative titled Transforming Family Justice Centers: Creating New Pathways of Hope and Healing for Poly-victims. Along with NOFJC, four other FJCs across the country were selected in: Sonoma, California; Tulsa, Oklahoma; Oklahoma City, Oklahoma; and Chattanooga, Tennessee. The purpose of the second initiative is to continue collecting local and national data for analysis to better understand the population that FJCs serve and to continue refining and developing innovative ways to support survivors who have experienced trauma throughout their lifetime at an FJC setting. Since NOFJC prioritizes emotional and mental health services, as result of the polyvictimization initiative they have been able to build staff capacity and expand the alternative forms of therapies and healing practices they offer their clients.
We have used the terms adverse events and polyvictimization throughout the description of this initiative and want to to include more information on each:
Polyvictimization generally describes one person having experienced many forms of trauma. Adverse Childhood Experiences (ACE) are traumatic events that occur during childhood (0-17). They have lasting, negative effects on health, well-being, and opportunity. The initial CDC study identifies 10 ACEs—physical, emotional, sexual, physical, emotional, mental illness, incarcerated relative, mother treated violently, substance abuse, divorce —There are other types of ACEs that have not been included in the original list, such as racism, discrimination, violence, and bullying. As the ACEs research grows, more are being added to the list to effectively depict the reality of different communities around the world.* Prior to this initiative, NOFJC counselors knew that their clients had ACE scores of at least 4 or more without even administering the ACEs and understood that they were serving survivors of multiple forms of maltreatment and hoped that the demonstration initiative would help confirm the prevalence, the widespread presence, it assumed.
*Information from We Empower ACEs
A few lessons learned thus far:
Many survivors want to talk about their whole experience and are thrilled to have a safe place that honors those experiences to open up.
Centers must have the capacity (e.g well-trained staff or referrals) to support clients as needed before initiating and during use of the tool.
Family Justice Centers must find the balance between data collection and trauma-informed care.
Symptom reduction takes time and healing is not linear.
A few findings from data collected between 2020-2022 with 64 total clients:
All clients, at minimum, have experienced at least 3 adverse events as an adult.
The average number of adverse events experienced as a child/teen is 7 events, with the total number of events experienced as a child ranging from 0 to 17 events.
All clients, at minimum, have experienced at least 3 mental and emotional health symptoms as an adult.