Free Domestic Violence Resources

When I was a junior in college, I began volunteering at a shelter for battered women (every Wednesday morning I answered the crisis line and every Saturday night I worked alone as "shelter relief" doing anything that needed to be done). I connected deeply with this work and it was tremendously important to me. I carried my passion for it into graduate school and did my master's "block field placement" at another shelter for battered women. Though it has now been quite a few years since I last set foot in a shelter environment, I will always have a special interest in domestic violence and the needs of battered women. My life's passion has shifted to birthwork and activism for healthy birth options for women, but this passion is firmly rooted in the commitment to women's health and social justice for women that blossomed in me during those many shifts at the shelter in college.

I've written previously about violence against women both medical and domestic and I was excited to learn from a post on the allDoulas forums that there is new FREE Online Training for Health Care Professionals about domestic violence during pregnancy available from Safe Place, a shelter in Austin, TX.

"Domestic Violence & Pregnancy: Effective Screening and Intervention is a 1.5 hour on-line training is intended for staff nurses, advanced practice nurses, physician assistants, social workers, case managers and physicians in the Ob/Gyn and family planning settings. This training will explore the fundamental domestic violence knowledge required to identify, treat, document and, if necessary, report domestic abuse. CNEs (Texas) and CEUs (Texas) are available."

In 2004, I wrote a booklet called Talking to a Battered Woman that I recently decided to make available as a free pdf from my personal site.
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Molly
CfM Blogger