Summary and Conclusions

Initially, this study indicated that DAIP staff could work with other professionals in the community to develop and implement an assessment protocol that would enable these professionals to identify a higher percentage of women who were experiencing domestic violence. The results reported in Section A indicated that EAP counselors significantly increased the percentage of women clients identified as experiencing domestic violence, increasing from 7% during the 1994 baseline year to 15-20% during 1997-98 when an assessment protocol was used. Results also indicated that public health nurses identified domestic violence at a rate 50% higher when an assessment protocol was regularly used than when it was not, but this difference was slightly below the level of significance adopted for this study. Comparison to criminal justice records indicated that some public health patients who were documented in the records as being victims of domestic violence were not identified during public health visits when the protocol was used. Both the public health nurses and EAP counselors reported that learning the protocol, using specific questions to screen for domestic violence, and training provided by DAIP were helpful.