Linkage of Domestic Violence and Substance Abuse Services, Research in Brief, Executive Summary

• NCJ Number: 194122
• Author(s): James J. Collins; Donna L. Spencer
• Date Published: 1999
• Length: 25 pages
• Publication Series: NIJ Research Report
• Grant Number(s): 97-IJ-CX-0009
• Agencies: NIJ-Sponsored
• Publication Type: Research (Applied/Empirical)

Annotation

This report summarizes the findings of telephone surveys of national samples of directors of programs that offer domestic-violence and substance-abuse services, so as to identify how often and in what ways these two program types provide complementary services.

Abstract

Different questionnaires were used for domestic-violence program directors and substance-abuse program directors. The questionnaires focused on information about program directors, the programs and services provided, whether complementary substance-abuse or domestic-violence services were provided, barriers to the provision of complementary services, program director's attitudes about providing complementary services, and their beliefs about the substance abuse and domestic violence relationship. The interviews were conducted in August 1997. An unstratified simple random sample of 800 domestic-violence programs was selected for the survey, and a stratified random sample of 1,100 substance-abuse programs was selected. Findings showed that the directors of both types of programs agreed that their clients often had the complementary problem of substance abuse and domestic violence; domestic-violence program directors thought that 36 percent of their victim clients had substance-abuse problems, and 61 percent of their offender clients had substance-abuse problems. Substance-abuse program directors believed that 33 percent of their clients were domestic-violence victims, and 26 percent were domestic-violence offenders. A substantial percentage of programs provided some complementary services. There was a fairly consistent direct relationship between program directors' perceptions of the prevalence of the complementary problem among their clients and their provision of complementary services, particularly for domestic-violence victims. Study limitations are noted, and some suggestions are offered for linkage demonstration and evaluation. 4 tables and 7 references