Accountability to the Battered Womens Movement

(This can serve as a sample of an organizations statement of accountability)

The VCS Community Change Project takes leadership from the local, state and national battered
womens movement. Special attention is paid to our local domestic violence service provider,
the Center for Safety and Change in Rockland County, NY, the NYS Coalition Against Domestic
Violence and the National Coalition Against Domestic Violence, along with many others.
Project staff also keeps current with newsletters, journals, news clippings, and domestic violence
research.

Our domestic violence analysis is viewed through an anti-racist lens to incorporate the realities
of women of color in this country. VCS Community Change Project staff attends conferences
offered across the United States to stay updated as to the best thinking emerging from both the
battered women's and anti-racism movements. All this is done to assure that we remain mindful
of the social and political realities of all women as we do our part in helping to eliminate and
prevent domestic violence in the community.

VCS Community Change Project accountability requires our participation in the local domestic
violence coordination coalition. It is our responsibility there to articulate a realistic, achievable
role for batterer programs. This includes being clear and direct about understandable, albeit
inappropriate, expectations of batterer programs. The NY Model for Batterer Programs provides
a service to the court, to be used as a mechanism of accountability and judicial monitoring. We
do not support batterer programs as a form of treatment, as domestic violence is a social justice
and human rights issue, not a mental health issue.

To uphold accountability on a programmatic level, the VCS Community Change Project

interacts with local representatives of the battered womens movement. Importantly, VCS
Community Change Project pays the local program to send an advocate to attend our weekly one
and one half hour training sessions required for all batterer program staff.

The advocate role in the weekly staff training is twofold:

1. To participate in any way she chooses, including to question, to inform, to affirm and to
otherwise comment on our consistency with the battered womens movement perspectives.

2. To bring back to her own agency the role of the batterer program in our communitys
criminal justice response to end domestic violence. Consistent attendance in this training
provides her with fluency on what the batterer program is and what it is not, what it can do,
and what it cannot. Having a batterer program expert on staff of local battered womens
services results in more effective training for all their advocates. In this way, all of the
battered womens advocates will be better able to answer questions, refute myths and discuss
the realities about the batterer program with battered women who have questions and (often)
misinformation.

Accountability to the collective wisdom of the anti-racist and battered womens movements is
fundamental to operating a NY Model batterer program.

VCS Community Change Project

845 634-5729 ~ info@nymbp.org ~ www.nymbp.org