Product Details

Author Information

Corresponding Author
Jean McClelland
The University of Arizona College of Public Health
1295 N Martin Ave
Tucson, AZ 85724
United States
p: 520-626-8228
jmcc@email.arizona.edu

Authors (listed in order of authorship):
D Jean McClelland
The University of Arizona College of Public Health

Maia Ingram
The University of Arizona College of Public Health

Montserrat Caballero

Aster Garcia

Tammy McCarville

Product Description and Application Narrative Submitted by Corresponding Author

What general topics does your product address?

Public Health, Social Work, Victim Services

What specific topics does your product address?

Access to health care, Advocacy, Community coalition , Cultural competency , Domestic violence, Immigrant/refugee health, Injury prevention, Interdisciplinary collaboration, Leadership development , Maternal/child health, Mental health, Minority health, Partnership building , Prevention, Rural health, Social services, Women's health , Community-based participatory research

Does your product focus on a specific population(s)?

Immigrant, Women

What methodological approaches were used in the development of your product, or are discussed in your product?

Community needs assessment, Community-academic partnership, Community-based participatory research , Qualitative research, Survey, Videovoice, Interview

What resource type(s) best describe(s) your product?

Manual/how to guide, Training material

Application Narrative

1. Please provide a 1600 character abstract describing your product, its intended use and the audiences for which it would be appropriate.*

Undocumented immigrant women who are victims of domestic violence face challenges beyond those of other women in the U.S. due to isolation in a foreign country, constant fear of deportation, and the belief that they are at the mercy of their spouse to gain legal status. The Southern Arizona Battered Immigrant Women Project (BIWP) seeks to identify and develop resources and provide outreach and training to organizations that interact with immigrant women who may be victims of domestic or sexual violence. The BIWP Community Toolkit provides guidelines for the development of a protocol for a coordinated community response (CCR) to immigrant women who are victims of partner violence and are eligible for assistance under the Violence Against Women Act (VAWA). The toolkit is designed to guide communities in a step-by-step process to: 1) Help familiarize community agencies with immigrant protections under VAWA; 2) Identify key sectors of the community, including but not limited to victim services, legal services, law enforcement, justice system, social services, faith-based organizations, and immigration law enforcement entities; 3) Detail the roles and responsibilities of individual agencies in facilitating identification and referral of services to immigrant victims of domestic violence; 4) Provide training and resources to support the coordinated community response.

2. What are the goals of the product?

The Battered Immigrant Women Project Toolkit for Creating a Coordinated Community Response for Battered Immigrant Women is designed to serve as a guide for a community to create an effective and safe system to provide continuity and holistic support to victims and their families. The Toolkit provides guidelines for the development of a protocol for a coordinated community response to immigrant women who are victims of partner violence and are eligible for assistance under the Violence Against Women Act (VAWA, 2000; 2005). The toolkit is intended to present the ideal scenario for meeting the various needs of immigrant victims. In creating this tool, we recognize that each community has strengths and weaknesses in terms of coordinated response. In addition, when addressing violence against immigrant women, service providers are faced with a unique set of challenges in dealing with the legal implications of immigration and naturalization. By outlining the potential roles of service providers from diverse sectors (victim services, legal services, law enforcement, and health and human services), it is our hope that communities are able to collaborate to build upon strengths and identify and address gaps.
The protocol constitutes a formal agreement about the roles and responsibilities of individual agencies in order to facilitate identification and referral of and services to immigrant victims of domestic violence. The purpose of the protocol is to:
--Create a well trained, culturally sensitive and adequate system of community, legal, and social support that will ensure the rights of battered immigrant women.
--Increase mutual understanding between different types of service providers about their agency’s roles in effectively serving battered immigrant women.
--Ensure that all women have access to information, legal assistance and other services.
--Establish a framework for a consistent response to protect victims that increases the quality and consistency of services to battered immigrant women.
--Assist immigrant victims in a holistic manner by creating a network based on coordination, uniformity, cooperation and collaboration between all agencies
--Develop a consistent means to communicate with immigration enforcement agencies about victim rights.

3. Who are the intended audiences or expected users of the product?

The intended audiences for this toolkit are people and organizations within communities that interact with immigrants who may be victims of domestic violence or sexual violence. Key sectors of the community include victim and legal services, which may appropriately spearhead the effort to create a coordinated community response. A VAWA-eligible victim who has made contact with either agency has access to the legal aspects of VAWA self petition, as well as to the support system need to address the economic and emotional issues related to surviving domestic violence. Additionally, this tool is designed to provide resources in bringing law enforcement, the justice system, immigration enforcement, health and human services, schools, and even informal networks to the table in this effort.

4. Please provide any special instructions for successful use of the product, if necessary. If your product has been previously published, please provide the appropriate citation below.

The instructions necessary to implementing the BIWP toolkit are included on the website. The collaborative partners in this work developed guiding principles for working with the immigrant population and we recommend that these principles be used of adapted by any community that is initiating this process.
1. Violence against anyone, regardless of immigration status, is a crime and a violation of human rights.
2. Victims of crime have a right to protection under the law regardless of immigration status.
3. Immigrants who are victims of sexual and domestic violence are especially vulnerable and are protected by law.
4. The safety of everyone in our communities is compromised if we fail to provide protection to any one group in our communities.

5. Please describe how your product or the project that resulted in the product builds on a relevant field, discipline or prior work. You may cite the literature and provide a bibliography in the next question if appropriate.

Undocumented immigrant women who are victims of domestic violence face challenges beyond those experienced by other women in the U.S. Immigrant women experience social isolation both from family members in their home country and from mainstream American culture (1,2,3,4). Immigrant women face greater financial insecurity due to limited language and work skills and in many cases lack of a work permit that would gain them economic independence (1,2,4). In rural areas, limited programs and resources exacerbate these challenges. The prospect of deportation severely disempowers immigrant women who feel dependent upon abusive partners for their legal status. Abusers exploit this vulnerability by threatening to call immigration authorities, withdraw their applications or by destroying immigration papers (5). Immigrant women are very likely to have at least one child who is a U.S. born citizen (6), and experience the anxiety that their families will be torn apart because of the mixed status of family members. Losing their children is the overriding fear of immigrant women (7,4).
The current service delivery system is inadequate in its response to the needs of immigrant women. Many organizations providing domestic violence services do not provide outreach to the immigrant community or do not provide accessible or culturally relevant services. In many cases, service providers require proof of citizenship or English language as a prerequisite to receiving services (8,9). Immigrant women may not access services because they are unaware of their right to legal protection or that they are eligible for housing and other benefits (4). For these reasons, immigrant women are at greater risk for victimization compared to their American counterparts (8).
With the passage of the Violence Against Women Act (VAWA) in 1994, lawmakers recognized the need to provide battered immigrant women with the opportunity to escape a violent relationship (10). Even with these protections, an abused immigrant woman may not seek help due to perceived risks to their continued presence in the US (11). Few immigrants are knowledgeable about VAWA protections, and thus believe that calling the police will lead to their own arrest and deportation (4). Communities should develop a coordinated community response to ensure that immigrant victims of partner violence access their rights under VAWA.

6. Please provide a bibliography for work cited above or in other parts of this application. Provide full references, in the order sited in the text (i.e. according to number order). .

1. Salcido O, & Adelam M. He has me tied with the blessed and damned papers: Undocumented-immigrant battered women in Phoenix, Arizona. Human Organization 2004;63(2):162-172.
2. Kasturirangan A, Krishnan S, Riger S. The impact of culture and minority status on women’s experience of domestic violence. Trauma, Violence, and Abuse 2004;5(4):318-332.
3. Bhuyan R, Senturia K. Understanding domestic violence: Resource utilization and survivor solutions among immigrants and refugee women: Introduction to special issue. Journal of Interpersonal Violence 2005;20(3):895-901.
4. Erez E. Hartley C. Battered immigrant Women and the legal system: A therapeutic jurisprudence perspective. Western Criminology Review 2003;4(2):155-169.
5. Orloff L, Kaguyutan, JV. Offering a helping hand: Legal protections for battered immigrant women: A history of legislative responses. Journal of Gender, Social Policy, and the Law 2002;10(1):95-183.
6. Passel, JS. The Size and Characteristics of the Unauthorized Migrant Population in the U.S. The Pew Hispanic Center. Retrieved October 10, 2008, from http://pewhispanic.org/files/reports/61.pdf
7. Wood S. VAWA’s unfinished business: The immigrant women who fall through the cracks. Duke Journal of Gender, Law, and Policy 2004;11:141-156.
8. Raj A, Silverman J. Violence against immigrant women: The roles of culture, context, and legal status on intimate partner violence. Violence Against Women 2002;8(3):367-398.
9. Liang BL, Goodman P, Tummala-Narra P, Weintraub S. A theoretical framework for understanding help-seeking processes among survivors of intimate partner violence. American Journal of Community Psychology 2005; 36(1&2):71-84.
10. Violence Against Women Act of 1994 (VAWA), (1994) Pub. L. No. 103-322, Title IV, 108 Sat. 1902.
11. Shetty S, Kaguyutan, J. Immigrant Victims of Domestic Violence: Cultural Challenges and Available Legal Protections. 2002. Retrieved May 12, 2008 from: http://new.vawnet.org/category/Main_Doc.php?docid=384.
12. Ingram M, McClelland DJ, Martin J, Caballero MF, Mayorga MT, Gillespie K. Experiences of immigrant women who self-petition under the Violence Against Women Act. Violence Against Women 2010;16:858-880.
13. Shepard MF, Pence EL. (Eds) Coordinating community responses to domestic violence: Lessons from Duluth and beyond. 1999. Sage Publications.

7. Please describe the project or body of work from which the submitted product developed. Describe the ways that community and academic/institutional expertise contributed to the project. Pay particular attention to demonstrating the quality or rigor of the work:

• For research-related work, describe (if relevant) study aims, design, sample, measurement instruments, and analysis and interpretation. Discuss how you verified the accuracy of your data.
• For education-related work, describe (if relevant) any needs assessment conducted, learning objectives, educational strategies incorporated, and evaluation of learning.
• For other types of work, discuss how the project was developed and reasons for the methodological choices made.

The Southern Arizona Battered Immigrant Women Project (BIWP) seeks to improve access to culturally appropriate services for battered immigrant women, thereby ensuring their rights under VAWA and its mission of safety and empowerment for immigrant and children victims of sexual and domestic violence. Funded by the Department of Justice Violence Against Women Office, BIWP is comprised of victim services agencies from Arizona's seven southern counties. Montserrat Caballero, Aster Garcia, Tammy Carville and Dora Taddey coordinate BIWP task forces in their counties that bring together key individuals from multiple sectors to provide support for immigrant victims of violence, as well as to conduct provider training and build awareness regarding immigrant rights. Jean McClelland and Maia Ingram at the University of Arizona College of Public Health provide ongoing assistance in community assessment, task force development, and resource identification.
Since 2002, the task forces have trained thousands of community service providers regarding rights and proper response to victims and survivors. Their efforts have culminated in the development of a coordinated community response (CCR) protocol addressing the unique needs of immigrant women. The BIWP used the protocol to create an online Community Toolkit to make the resources available to other communities addressing the needs of this population. In 2006, a client of one of the task force members asked to share her story for the benefit of other women in her situation. Task force members saw this as an opportunity to learn what role local agencies play in either facilitating or hindering the VAWA process. The task force members worked collaboratively to develop an interview guide and protocol. Interview questions explored how women found out about the VAWA self-petition process, what motivated them to self-petition under VAWA, barriers to the process, what helped them complete the process, and how it might be improved. A convenience sample was used of agency clients who were in some stage of the VAWA self-petitioning process and currently receiving services at the community agencies. BIWP coordinators invited women to participate and arranged a time for the interview at the agency. Participant consent was obtained using protocol approved by the UofA Human Subjects Internal Review Board. Victim advocates were available after each interview to provide emotional support. Due to concern that taped recordings might increase fears related to confidentiality, the interviewers recorded the information by hand and transcribed. The data were collected and transcribed in Spanish.
Three task force members representing victims’ services and legal aid services joined the BIWP analysis team to analyze and interpret the data. Each team member conducted content analysis to identify the patterns and themes. The team convened a process by which we discussed different interpretations of the data. We recoded the data based on themes reached through consensus. Based on the findings, we developed a report and with recommendations for both service providers and policy makers to improve the VAWA application process (12).
Immigrant women are most likely to hear about VAWA through informal networks, highlighting the importance of building community awareness as an outreach strategy. We found that strong collaboration between victim advocates and legal services was essential because they provide the core services for eligible woman to initiate the VAWA self-petition process as well as to begin to meet emotional, legal, and financial needs. Training of all service providers in contact with immigrant women is vital to ensure that women are treated in a culturally competent and therapeutic manner. We used these findings to develop a graphic depiction of a coordinated community response showing how various agencies ideally should interact. This protocol model became the cornerstone of our community toolkit.

8. Please describe the process of developing the product, including the ways that community and academic/institutional expertise were integrated in the development of this product.

The process of creating the Community Toolkit was multi-faceted and progressed through various stages, the first being the interviews with VAWA self-petitioners. The BIWP disseminated recommendations based on the interviews nationally through publications and discussions with policy makers. Within our own communities, each task force worked to make the protocol a reality. This was a difficult process, because the model is based on an ideal situation in which all sectors of the response system are at the table and adequate resources exist to conduct community outreach and training. We found that although there was no ideal situation, each task force had a component from which we could learn. In one county, the Border Patrol came to task force meetings and volunteered at community events. BP members discussed creating a protocol with the County Sheriff’s Office to refer victims apprehended in their line of duty. In another, the City Police Department staffed a domestic violence investigator, who as an experienced police officer commanded great respect in training law enforcement and could encourage systems changes. In one county the relationship between victim services and legal aid and their level of expertise and perseverance facilitated collaborative training of all sectors of the justice and law enforcement system. In another county, the close-knit nature of the community and the intensity of victim needs compelled BP to call upon victim advocates directly.
Through these conversations we realized that the task forces had the expertise necessary to move the protocol forward. The BIWP project members developed a survey asking task force members to describe their actual and potential role in conducting community awareness, assisting with client identification, and providing client assistance and referral. We also asked how their organization would benefit from the establishment of a protocol. The academic partners compiled responses, categorized by type of agency, in order to identify their role in the protocol and the specific services that they ideally would provide. In the protocol document we included the background of the project, the protocol model, the roles of each component of the model, and quotes from women that illustrated how the service had been essential to their experience.
Meanwhile, BIWP continued to work on task force priorities, which included developing resources for public awareness and training- PowerPoint presentations and fact sheets that included basic information about domestic violence, issues facing immigrant women, and the protections available to them under VAWA. They also identified the need for an updated training video that accurately defined the rights of immigrant women under the most recent VAWA authorization, including U-Visas. They partnered with a local film group, Pan Left, to develop the video. Task force members are featured and the women who share their stories were clients of the task force coordinators who successfully completed the VAWA self-petition process. The video provides credibility to BIWP training efforts, but also allows task forces to disseminate their trainings more widely, given that the video is a training in itself. The video includes a public awareness section in which issues faced by immigrant women are personally and dramatically presented in the women’s own words, and with their own creative input. The video, entitled “Liberty and Justice for All” is a professional training and public awareness tool and is an important component of the toolkit.
In their efforts to implement the protocol in their communities, the BIWP task forces continued to make discoveries. The Mexican Consulate in one county played an increasingly large role in the one county’s task force as the consulate representative struggled with the challenges of providing assistance to Mexican nationals residing in the U.S. The consulate representative emphasized the unique role his office could provide in aiding victims, such as providing consular protection to victims when they are detained, requesting temporary custody of victims undergoing investigation agreements, and transporting victims to services. The task force developed a memorandum of agreement that served as a template for how consulates can play a central role in responding to victims. The potential realized through this interaction led the BIWP to incorporate consular services in a central role in the protocol as an agency that can provide a gateway to victim and legal services. After many years of perseverance, another task force was invited to provide training to border patrol agents through which they learned specific ways of working with the system to benefit their clients.
BIWP partners discussed how the protocol model could be shared with other communities serving immigrant victims. The academic team suggested a web-based community toolkit that would make project resources available and be widely accessible. The College provided technical expertise in developing the web-based tool and the partners provided ongoing guidance on how it should look and what other information should be added. The home page briefly describes BIWP, lists the guiding principles for working with immigrant victims, and invites users to engage in the process of developing a CCR. After watching the video, the website helps users identify CCR partners, who are then invited to use the protocol model in an interactive process to clarify partner roles, create MOAs and access training and public awareness resources

9. Please discuss the significance and impact of your product. In your response, discuss ways your product has added to existing knowledge and benefited the community; ways others may have utilized your product; and any relevant evaluation data about impact, if available. If the impact of the product is not yet known, discuss its potential significance.

BIWP efforts to develop a CCR are based upon an evidence-based domestic violence intervention developed in Minnesota in which key agencies in a community agree on a common set of principles, processes and agreements in an effort to protect victims of domestic violence (13). The central approach of the model is to prioritize victim safety, develop best practices and protocols, reduce fragmentation and monitor impact. The Community Toolkit builds upon this process to incorporate the complexities of immigration law and the obstacles facing immigrant women.

Consider the context in which a battered immigrant woman seeks help. She is faced with the fear not only of retaliation from her abuser, but from the legal system in which she is identified as a law breaker and deported from the country. Abuser threats to separate her from her children, a fear of all victims, are more acute for an immigrant woman contemplating deportation and never seeing her children again. An immigrant victim also faces the anti-immigrant sentiment pervasive among law enforcement, the courts, and the general public. Furthermore, she has an additional layer of authority to contend with- she must convince skeptical immigration authorities of her situation.

The Community Toolkit makes a significant contribution to the effort to protect women from violence through the culmination of lessons learned from community organizations who are already employing this tool in working with immigrant victims. BIWP partners embody a CCR in a militarized environment characterized by the heightened presence of the BP in the most legislatively anti-immigrant state in the nation. BIWP partners have documented numerous examples of the toolkits’ impact. In one sector, task force members gained access to the BP and engaged in discussions about how to identify and assist victims. The Mexican Consulate in one county developed a formal protocol for victim referral and assistance with task force members. Law enforcement agencies in several counties agreed to designate a person in their department to sign U-Visas for victims of crime. All of these achievements have a tangible impact on the system that battered immigrant women must negotiate in order to find help. Achievements in this high pressure environment can hopefully be replicated with more ease in other parts of the country.

It is difficult to monitor the impact of a CCR on domestic violence, largely because evaluation involves collecting data from a fragmented system of service, law enforcement and justice system agencies, each with different priorities and reporting requirements. When CCR organizations are committed to the process, cooperation in monitoring is more achievable. Potential process indicators to evaluate the impact of a CCR include increased coordination and collaboration between CCR member organizations, increased interagency victim referral, increased access to resources by victims, and increased community capacity to meet victim needs. In the case of immigrants, key outcome indicators are the number of women identified as eligible for VAWA protections, the proportion of self petitions that are approved and the extent to which women are accessing specific services.

BIWP has conducted ongoing evaluation in terms of collaboration and coordination of the task forces, the number and short term effectiveness of training, and the scope and reach of outreach and awareness activities. County task forces have recorded the number of women who enter the VAWA process and the status of their applications. BIWP partners have expressed interest in developing a monitoring system by which they can hold member agencies responsible for following protocol agreements in order to further identify strengths and gaps in the community infrastructure. More challenging is determining how many eligible women do not access the system and why

10. Please describe why you chose the presentation format you did.

The graphic of the CCR model initially developed in the formulation of the manuscript submitted to Violence Against Women, was the first step towards the actual toolkit. We used the model, actually blowing it up to a poster size, to discuss each component of model and its role in the CCR. In developing the protocol, it made sense to us to then base it on the model, with a separate page for each sector of the community and their specific role. When we debated sharing it with the broader community, the online format was a natural fit; in this way we could include all of our training and public awareness materials and we could also highlight and share our video.

11. Please reflect on the strengths and limitations of your product. In what ways did community and academic/institutional collaborators provide feedback and how was such feedback used? Include relevant evaluation data about strengths and limitations if available.

A major strength of the BIWP Community Toolkit is that it is responds to a major gap between immigration policy and the very people that the policy is meant to benefit, battered immigrant women. The toolkit is grounded in the evidence-based CCR approach enhanced by community based participatory research to make it relevant to a specific population. The toolkit was developed through a collaborative academic-community partnership in which the role of the academic partner was to document community expertise, and then to repackage it in a way that could be shared with other communities. The toolkit contains resources such as the video, handouts and training Power Points that can be immediately utilized in another community. A community can benefit from the toolkit regardless of their stage in the CCR process, beginning to identify partners or training needs.

A CCR is limited by the engagement and commitment of the various sectors of the community. The Community Toolkit demonstrates the central importance of the relationship between victim services and legal aid; if victim services are not in place, eligible women will not be identified, and if there is no legal assistance, identified victims will not be served. Law enforcement and the justice system also play key roles in ensuring that women who are VAWA-eligible or even already in the process of being approved are not deported. The response of basic services is essential to ensure that women are able to gain economic independence and get the services they need for their children without being re-traumatized by the system. In the case of immigrant women, public awareness is also crucial, because in many cases, immigrant women are not seen as victims because of their undocumented status.

It is difficult to adequately describe the enormity of the task of developing a CCR for battered immigrant women. The rift in our nation regarding immigrants and implementing a humane and functional immigration policy is played out in the lives of these victims. Consider, for example, the mission of the BP to apprehend and deport undocumented immigrants, and our ideal role for them as a partner to screen and refer VAWA-eligible clients. Thus the main limitation of our product is that the model we present as an ideal situation for battered immigrant women is virtually impossible in the current environment.

A second drawback of our toolkit is that it is focused on women who are eligible for VAWA self-petition, and does not fully deal with victims of crime or immigrants who are eligible for a U-Visa, also legislated under VAWA. Immigrant women who are not married to their abuser are candidates for the U-Visa, with the provision that they are cooperating or have cooperated with law enforcement in investigating or prosecuting the crime. U-Visas cannot be attained without certification from law enforcement. BIWP partners have found that law enforcement officials are reluctant to sign certifications, in large part because they confuse certification with immigration, not understanding that this is just the first step in the process of applying for immigration relief. Staff turnover can also send the process back to square one in terms of educating law enforcement on their role in the process. The BIWP has considerable experience in conducting public awareness and training and helping U-Visa recipients, but this is not yet fully covered in our toolkit. We would like to conduct a similar assessment of the experience of U-Visa applicants, but this is a resource-heavy venture.

Finally, evaluation of the toolkit needs to be refined and indicators tested in the field. BIWP partners are able to monitor and evaluate their own efforts, but evaluating the impact of the system is more challenging. We are currently in the process of identifying which indicators to pursue and plan to update the model with the lessons learned in this process.

12. Please describe ways that the project resulting in the product involved collaboration that embodied principles of mutual respect, shared work and shared credit. If different, describe ways that the product itself involved collaboration that embodied principles of mutual respect, shared work and shared credit. Have all collaborators on the product been notified of and approved submission of the product to CES4Health.info? If not, why not? Please indicate whether the project resulting in the product was approved by an Institutional Review Board (IRB) and/or community-based review mechanism, if applicable, and provide the name(s) of the IRB/mechanism.

The overriding concern for BIWP partners has always been the welfare of immigrant victims of violence. The quarterly BIWP meetings not infrequently take the form of a support group for victim advocates who are on the frontline in the face of brutal crimes against their clients and a system that often thwarts their efforts to help them. In this forum, the advocates are able to share their experiences and ideas. This product was possible because the partners felt that we were engaged in this venture together, sharing our expertise and our commitment, as well as our dismay at the upsurge of anti-immigrant legislation and sentiment in our state. Demonstrations of our partnership are evident in the following ways:

• Engagement of a community-based participatory research project in which victim advocates and legal aid lawyers participated in participant recruitment, data analysis, data interpretation and development of a published manuscript.
• Regular consultation at BIWP regional meetings in which iterations of the protocol/toolkit were presented, discussed and fine-tuned.
• Collaborative facilitation of a series of county task force meetings at which the victim advocate and academic partner requested input from the various sectors of a coordinated community response at different stages of the toolkit’s development.
• Numerous collaborative presentations between the victim advocate and academic partner at public health and domestic violence conferences that mirror the development of the toolkit.

As with every other aspect of this product, the CES4Health.info has been discussed and agreed upon at task force meetings, with the academic partner taking the lead in preparing the text and receiving feedback from community partners. The University of Arizona Office for the Responsible Conduct of Research, Human Subjects Research and Institutional Review Board provided oversight for all data collection involving victims of violence.