DVAP Standards

In 1996, the Vermont Department of Corrections issued the “Statewide Standards for Domestic Abuse Intervention.” These standards were developed by a core committee of corrections staff, domestic violence victim advocates and batterer intervention providers. They were the first effort in Vermont to create a consistent set of expectations for programs that provided services to men who batter and reflected a national trend in this regard. The work of the core committee drew from efforts to develop standards in many other states and from the experience of providing batterer intervention services in Vermont.
In 2001, the Vermont Coalition of Batterer Intervention Services initiated a process of updating the 1996 Standards. The process was a collaboration involving staff of the Department of Corrections, the Vermont Network Against Domestic Violence and Sexual Assault, the Department of Social and Rehabilitation Services (now known as the Department of Children and Families), batterer intervention providers, and members of the Vermont Council on Domestic Violence. This effort resulted in revised Standards adopted in 2005. These revised Standards included for the first time a requirement for programs to be certified for their compliance.
In 2008, the Vermont Council on Domestic Violence was established in statute. Amongst other duties, the Council was tasked with developing and maintaining Standards for programs that work with domestic violence offenders. In 2009 and 2015, the Council initiated process of revising the Statewide Standards. Once again, stakeholders throughout the state participated in the review process.
In 2020, the Vermont Council initiated a new review process with assistance from the Center for Court Innovation (the Center). To support this review process, the Center held a series of listening sessions to identify beliefs and values that inform Vermont’s programs for people who cause harm through intimate partner violence, reviewed the existing Standards and other relevant documents, drew on national thought leaders and practitioners, and made recommendations for revisions. Stakeholders from a variety of profession-based groups including providers, advocates, defense bar, state’s attorneys, child welfare, community justice center staff, Vermont Network staff, judges, and court staff, probation, and civil legal attorneys provided meaningful feedback through focus groups and surveys about the current state of programming and their thoughts on enhancements for the future. Survivors as well as people who have caused harm through intimate partner violence also lent their wisdom and thoughts to this process.
What follows is the result of this process.
The purpose of the Statewide Standards for Domestic Violence Accountability Programs is to provide values-based guidelines for programs serving persons who cause harm through IPV and a process by which to certify, re-certify, and de-certify programs.
Understanding that domestic violence can cause significant harm to survivors, including physical, mental, emotional, and economic, and their communities, Vermont stakeholders recognize the importance of holding people who cause harm accountable for their behavior and supporting their change process. The Vermont anti-domestic violence community’s collective beliefs and values about working with people who cause harm through intimate partner violence can be found HERE.

Vermont Values-Based Standards for Domestic Violence Accountability Programs

From our beliefs stem important values that guide the work of individuals working to end domestic violence in Vermont. The state’s work around abusive partner intervention and engagement should be rooted in the following principles, which constitute the new statewide standards for programming.

Download Standards

Survivor voices and experiences must be at the center of domestic violence accountability programming because survivor safety is tied to accountability for persons who cause harm through intimate partner violence. In seeking safety for survivors, they should be listened to, believed, and supported in determining what is best for them and their family. Mechanisms must be developed to ensure that programs collaborate with victim advocates, inform survivors about programming in their communities, allow space for survivors to be involved in the process and provide feedback and insight on their needs, if desired, and develop opportunities for survivors to be leaders in the community.
Ending domestic violence requires accountability and support on the individual, community, and system level. DVAPs should encourage people who cause harm through intimate partner
violence to acknowledge and take active responsibility for the harm they inflicted upon survivors and their children and ultimately change their behavior. DVAPs should also acknowledge that having one’s basic needs met and addressing one’s own trauma is necessary for change. Communities and systems must create opportunities for domestic violence awareness, education around healthy relationships, and voluntary intervention programming unconnected to the legal system. This requires adequate funding and evaluation of programs; effective communication between programs, community members, and multidisciplinary teams of practitioners to support survivors, children, and people who cause harm through intimate partner violence; and efforts to collaboratively create the community conditions needed to prevent violence and remedy barriers to safety, wellbeing, and behavior change.
Though intimate partner violence can impact anyone, women, and particularly, people of color, LGBTQ+ individuals and other underserved groups, experience intimate partner violence in specific ways and face unique challenges and barriers to resources. Vermonters in need of domestic violence accountability programming should be able to access services that are culturally responsive, inclusive, affirming, anti-oppressive, and rooted in their community and cultural values. Programs should work with participants to explore and address the barriers (e.g., transportation, education, finances, technology, implicit bias, lack of basic needs being met) that make it difficult to access or complete programming. Programs must work to promote and partner with services in the community to meet those needs.
There should be multiple pathways to accountability, given that people who cause harm through intimate partner violence have different needs, strengths, motivations for the use of violence, and personal goals. Programs are encouraged to move away from a one-size-fits-all approach and can incorporate an array of not only evidence-based practices, but also evidence-informed and practice-based evidence approaches. These strategies can include trauma-informed, healing-centered, and restorative approaches, incorporate peer support, aftercare, or differential length based on risks and needs, and address co-occurring issues like mental health, unemployment, economic instability, and substance use, among other things.
Engagement and intervention strategies should be strengths-based, seeing participants as whole people and affirming their capacity to change. Participants should be treated with dignity and respect, informed of expectations for the program, particularly around accountability, and encouraged to share their insight and experiences.
Engagement and intervention strategies should help participants develop their own goals around safety, well-being, and healthy relationships and support them in achieving those goals. Programs, in partnership with the broader coordinated community response, must think about the conditions that must exist within communities to prevent violence and support change and advocate for those things.