Advancing a Coordinated Response to Intimate Partner Violence: A Systemwide Assessment of Allegheny County, Pennsylvania

• In Event: Advancing Jurisdictions’ Responses to IPV: Findings from Allegheny County, PA., Tulsa, OK., & New York, NY

Abstract

Objective: To better understand the system as a whole, the Urban Institute was funded by the Hillman Family Foundations and the FISA Foundation to conduct an assessment of Allegheny County’s response to intimate partner violence (IPV). The goals of the project were 1) to better understand the system as a whole and operations of the key agencies, 2) to look at how cases operate at a system level and at the key agencies involved, and 3) to document and publicize Allegheny County’s system response. Data/Methods: From June 2018 to December 2020 - the Urban Institute examined different areas of Allegheny’s system response to IPV. We conducted interviews with system stakeholders, focus groups with agency personnel, DV survivors, and people charged with IPV, and participant observations of courtrooms, office procedures, and batterers intervention program (BIP) classes/intake. We also analyzed administrative records of case-level data in Allegheny County.
Results: We will share findings on who is reached by the system, including a breakdown of how of cases have moved through the Allegheny response system, how individuals are reached and what the system’s response is to them.
Conclusion: Findings from this study will help build the knowledgebase around the challenges of IPV responses as well as what works well, and provide examples of common outcomes of IPV cases, in addition to providing context for where cases may lose touch with the system.

Author

• Susan Nembhard, Urban Institute