Family and Community Approaches to Intimate Partner Violence: Restorative Programs in the United States.

Now is the time to rethink reliance on legal intervention to end intimate partner violence (IPV). Arrest, incarceration, and family separation have fallen disproportionately on people who are Black or Brown, impoverished, or immigrant, lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender and queer (LGBTQ). Restorative approaches bring together the persons harmed, persons causing harm, their family or community networks, or combinations of these stakeholders.

Advancing social workers' responsiveness to health disparities: the case of breast cancer screening.

This study provides the basis for customizing culturally responsive social work health promotion programs aimed at eliminating breast cancer screening and mortality disparities between white and African American women. Survey data collected from a random sample of 853 women in rural North Carolina were used to explore the impact of psychosocial factors, including cultural beliefs, on differences by race and age in behavioral intentions if a breast lump was found. Multivariate logistic regression analysis revealed that age and past mammography screening predicted the intention to get a mammogram, whereas physician communication about breast cancer risk, never having a mammogram, breast cancer worry, and religious beliefs about God's role in curing cancer influenced women's intentions to watch the lump for changes.

Safety conferencing: toward a coordinated and inclusive response to safeguard women and children.

To reach out to women from different backgrounds, the battered women's movement needs to place women and their informal supports at the center of a coordinated response. This article shares the views of domestic violence survivors, staff, and supporters on how to create such a coordinated and inclusive response, lays a conceptual foundation for a decision-making forum called safety conferencing, and sets forth guidance for its practice. Safety conferencing is proposed as one means of building the individual and collective strength to reshape connections, make sound choices, and promote the safety of women and children from diverse cultures.

Increasing the cultural responsiveness of family group conferencing.

Child welfare struggles to manage child abuse and neglect and to seek permanency for children, while being culturally responsive to the communities it serves. Family group conferencing, piloted in New Zealand and now used in the United States and other countries, is a strengths-based model that brings together families and their support systems to develop and carry out a plan that protects, nurtures, and safeguards children and other family members. This article describes the model and a culturally competent method for assessing and adapting the model for the African American, Cherokee, and Latino/Hispanic communities in North Carolina.