Domestic Violence Action Plan

Recommendations

The current strategic plan The Maryland Way, ends in 2017 and has no mention of any sort of domestic violence training or prevention. Therefore, Kevin Anderson should implement this into the future plan in order to uphold its core value of being responsible and doing the right thing at all times (Department of Intercollegiate Athletics, 2012). It is extremely important that student athletes are not only acting appropriately on the field, but also off the field as well.

Since a majority of the time, athletes are not forced to serve the punishment for the crime they commit, our goal, through the training courses on domestic violence, would be to eliminate domestic violence completely by the University of Maryland’s athletes.

This would help to make the University of Maryland an overall safer environment and community. It would be dangerous for the entire campus to have the presence of athletes on campus who have committed these crimes and are not being held accountable.
What Makes A Prevention Program Effective?

In 2003, the American Psychological Association (APA) Task Force Prevention: Promoting Strength, Resilience, and Health in Young People reviewed a number of prevention programs for delinquency, youth violence, substance use, and sexual risk behaviors (Nation et al., 2003). In analyzing these programs, the group identified nine principles that are characteristic of effective programs (Nation et al., 2003). Specifically, they asserted that effective prevention strategies are:

● Comprehensive;

● Have varied teaching methods;

● Provide sufficient dosage (i.e., conduct follow-up sessions after the training ends);

● Theory driven;

● Promote positive relationships (i.e., between the participants and their loved ones);

● Appropriately timed;

● Socioculturally relevant (i.e., respond to cultural norms);

● Use outcome evaluations; and

● Managed by a well-trained staff

These principles are valuable and should be considered in the development of the domestic violence prevention and training program for

student-athletes.
Additionally, programs are effective when they are specific to the audience they are dedicated to serve. We agree with the University of Michigan model that athletes should be engaged in the domestic violence program separately from the rest of the University. Currently, Maryland has the on-campus resource, Campus Advocates Respond and Educate to Stop Violence (CARE). This service offers psychotherapy for survivors of sexual assault, dating violence, domestic violence, stalking and sexual harassment, as well as educates students about these issues (University Health Center, 2009). Though CARE is a useful resource, we feel that it is not necessarily specific to the athletic community. As identified in the Michigan example, student-athletes have different needs and interests from the rest of the campus community (Fields, 2015). By providing an in-depth training and prevention program for student-athletes—a group that is overrepresented in domestic and sexual violence incidents—risks of victimization can hopefully be diminished.

Program Courses
The training courses for our proposed program would be for both male and female athletes, but would be constructed differently. For males, they would be geared more towards what is appropriate vs. inappropriate behavior and anger/violence de-escalation. This would educate males on the what is categorized as domestic violence so that they are well aware of what classifies as inappropriate behavior. Often there is confusion among males for what is considered appropriate and what is not. Therefore, through this training, the confusion among the male athletes would hopefully be eliminated to prevent them from acting inappropriately.
Additionally, in multiple cases, males don’t know how to handle their anger in a way that is not threatening to others. Therefore, through this training, males can be informed on how to handle their anger in a calm and appropriate manner. This will prevent them from taking their anger out on others, and thus preventing cases of domestic violence from occurring. Therefore, males will be trained on how to channel their anger in an appropriate manner that does not put others at risk, and on the important difference between acceptable and unacceptable behavior.
However, for females, the courses would be geared more towards how to act if you or a loved one experiences any form of domestic violence.

Since domestic violence is one of the most underreported crimes in the country, the course would also focus on how to encourage women to speak out if they experience domestic violence (O’Neil, 2010). Females would be trained on what services are available for them to contact if they feel that they have experienced any sort of domestic violence. There are a variety of services available that can be anonymous phone lines to receive advice for these situations. Also, there are programs that can help females in the reporting process and can provide legal advice if they wish to take the issue to court. There is a wide range of services that are available to females who are wishing to report domestic violence, which would make the main point of training to inform females on these different services to help them determine the steps that they wish to take in reporting this

crime.
Also, the training program would inform females on inappropriate and appropriate behavior towards them by males. This is because sometimes women are confused on whether or not they experienced domestic violence by a male. Often times they don’t know what classifies as domestic violence, and are unsure as to whether or not it is something that they should report.

Similar to the Michigan example, the program will be extended to all coaches on the basis that they have a direct and intimate relationship with the athletes. The coaches will receive bystander intervention and empathy building trainings. They will use what they learned from these two trainings and host sessions for the athletes that expand on these teachings. Therefore, coaches and athletes can have a proper dialogue about domestic violence using non-sexist or victim blaming language.

Methods for Evaluation

The checklist below is provided for the Athletics Department at the University of Maryland as well as any stakeholders involved to evaluate the progress of the domestic violence program. The model was taken from Dr. Sarah DeGue of the Division of Violence Prevention of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (DeGue, 2014). Dr. DeGue created the checklist to help colleges and universities maintain the principles of effective programs identified in Nation et al. (2003). A few words have been changed to make the list specific to our proposed domestic violence program (i.e., “sexual violence” was changed to “domestic violence”).

Conclusion

The current strategic plan, The Maryland Way, terminates in 2017. This plan focuses on many important aspects such as: injury prevention, establishing community relations, and much more (Department of Intercollegiate Athletics, 2012). However, there is no mention anywhere in the program of spreading awareness of issues related to domestic violence or a domestic violence training program.

As discussed, domestic violence is such a widespread issue across many Universities, particularly with athletes. Since the current strategic plan ends in 2017, the future strategic plan should incorporate domestic violence training for all athletes. Over the next few years, the Athletics Department should be working towards how they will incorporate this training program into the next strategic plan. This should involve planning out who will be in charge of implementing this training, what exactly the training will entail, when training will occur based on what times are most convenient in accordance with the athlete’s schedules, how long training will occur, and how often.

Whoever is chosen to be held responsible for holding the domestic violence training courses, should be well informed on the issue and be able to effectively communicate this information to the athletes. It would most likely be the most convenient to hold training programs when all teams do not have practices or games, so that they are all receiving the same information at the same time. Additionally, the training should occur for as long as possible until the information is effectively communicated to them and they are well aware of the information concerning this issue.

Due to the planning that should occur over the next few years until the implementation of the next strategic plan, the domestic violence training should be ready to be put in place for the next plan. Therefore, when the new plan is implemented after 2017, the domestic violence training program will be put into place for all athletes. The domestic violence prevention program checklist should be used in order to evaluate the effectiveness of the program.