Alfred University Rural Justice Institute advisory committee to hold first meeting 9/24/02
An advisory committee for the Alfred University Rural Justice Institute will meet for the first time at 1:30 p.m.
Thursday (Sept. 26) in the conference room at the Powell Institute for Children and Families on the AU campus.The Institute, along with the Lea Powell Institute for Children and Families at Alfred University, and the Allegany County Sheriff's Department, has launched a project aimed at more effectively delivering services to troubled youths who are still in school and who are victims of domestic violence.Invited to join the advisory committee are representatives of various Allegany County departments and agencies, including the courts, district attorney's office, youth bureau, social services, health department, probation and the office for the aging; health care providers, including those from the county mental health department and Jones Memorial Hospital; representatives from ACCORD, the community action agency that provides services to domestic violence victims; school counselors from Alfred-Almond and Wellsville central schools; and school psychologists from Andover and Wellsville central schools.Dr. Robert K. Bitting, associate vice president for research and sponsored programs, who was instrumental in securing initial grants of $350,000 from the Office of Juvenile Justice and Delinquency Programs, part of the federal Department of Justice, said the members of the advisory group are being drawn from a wide range of service providers, all of whom have a role in dealing with domestic violence, particularly as it affects children who are still in school. Alfred University obtained the federal funds through the efforts of Senators Charles Schumer and Hilary Clinton and Congressman Amo Houghton.The grants will allow Allegany County to develop a model program for delivery services to victims of domestic violence in a rural area. "We want to develop what I like to think of as a demonstration project for interagency cooperation in rural areas," said Dr. William Hall, professor of sociology and dean of the College of Liberal Arts and Sciences at Alfred University. Hall serves as director of the institute.Through earlier research, Hall, who headed AU's Criminal Justice Studies program prior to becoming dean of the College, learned there was a "need to develop better protocols"
for the agencies involved in responding to domestic violence. "We realized that all the agencies involved, from law enforcement to the schools to mental health professionals, needed to develop a better network to respond when we had an incident involving domestic violence," said Hall."This funding gives us a really unique opportunity to bring
agencies together in a collaborative effort," said Hall. "It's unusual to find so many diverse agencies working together"
to provide better services to victims.The first phase of the project involved collecting information from various sources
"to create an information inventory that will facilitate a collaborative effort to identify at-risk youth," said Hall, who plans to share preliminary results of the focus group sessions and surveys with advisory committee members at the first meeting.Hall commended Dr. Karen Porter, professor of sociology, who has done "considerable data analysis and survey work" through the initial phase.The second phase, which is scheduled to start in October, will include
development of training programs for agencies, to increase their effectiveness in dealing with the "forgotten" victims of domestic abuse: the children who are living in the abusive situation. "When one domestic partner abuses the other, either physically or mentally, the criminal justice system and the support agencies focus most of their attention on getting help for the abused partner," said Dr. Jay Cerio, professor of school psychology and chairman of the
Department of School Psychology. "The children, who are either victims themselves or have witnessed physical or psychological attacks within their families, often exhibit psychological and/or behavioral difficulties as a result."What the Rural Justice Institute hopes to do during phase II is develop appropriate ways to identify those "at-risk youth before they begin a spiral of delinquent conduct" that oftentimes results from being either a victim of abuse or a witness to it, said Hall. "We will also be working with the various agencies and departments to develop the most appropriate and well coordinated intervention methods and models" to ensure that the children receive the assistance they need to deal with the abusive situations in which they find themselves.##
