Facilitators of Help-Seeking for Survivors of Intimate Partner Violence in the U.S.

A survivor’s decision to engage with formal services for experiences of intimate partner violence (IPV) is influenced by factors at the individual, interpersonal, and sociocultural levels. Understanding the factors that facilitate survivors’ choice to seek services could be beneficial to formal service providers including community agencies, health professionals, and the criminal justice system, providing guidance toward the development and implementation of accessible services for survivors of IPV. This presentation reviews seven key factors that facilitate survivors’ formal help-seeking.

This webinar will help participants to:

• Understand the role of formal services in responding to intimate partner violence (IPV).
• Examine the current state of the literature surrounding facilitators of formal IPV help-seeking.
• Explore how to incorporate identified facilitators into IPV service approaches, with implications for researchers and practitioners.

Presenters:

Kristen Ravi, Ph.D. is an assistant professor at the University of Tennessee-Knoxville. Her program of research primarily focuses on children’s exposure to parental intimate partner violence and their social, mental health, and academic outcomes. Her other research interests include IPV help seeking, IPV among immigrants and refugees and survivors’ experiences of transportation coercion.

Sarah Leat, Ph.D. is an assistant professor in the School of Social Work at the University of Memphis. She studies interpersonal violence, specifically focusing on sexual violence and intimate partner violence. Her research interests center on help-seeking behaviors among survivors of intimate partner violence and the impact of the built environment on survivors’ abilities to access services and receive positive outcomes from those services.

Christina Cicconi, M.A., MSW has worked with IPV survivors for the past five years and is currently a case manager at the Johnson County Family Crisis Center which offers services to IPV survivors such as counseling, parenting classes, IPV education, and emergency shelter. She holds a Master of Criminal Justice and Criminology degree and a Master of Social Work degree from the University of Texas at Arlington.

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