Advocacy & Support
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Advocacy & Support

Advocates for Family Peace (AFFP) serves victims of intimate partner domestic violence. In particular, AFFP is organized to serve people experiencing an on-going pattern of coercion, intimidation, and emotional abuse, reinforced by the use and threat of physical and/or sexual violence.

The primary goal of advocacy is to increase safety for victims of domestic violence. We do this by listening closely to individuals and connecting them with the information, resources, and support they may need to make their own informed decisions.

Advocacy involves working with a victim of domestic violence to identify their individual needs as they strive to live a life free from violence and then developing a course of action to meet those needs. This can range from supportive listening and evaluating risks to providing assistance when a victim’s intimate partner has been arrested and/or assistance in filing a restraining order when needed.

Advocacy also involves working to make the legal and social systems effective, fair and accessible to victims of domestic violence.All advocacy services are free and confidential.

Intervention

What is the Intervention Program for Men and Fathers?

Objectives

The groups are designed to help men stop their violence by achieving these objectives:

• To help the group member understand how his abuse stems from belief systems that support his control of hispartner’s actions, thoughts, and feelings.
• To increase the group member’s willingness to change his actions by examining the negative effects of hisbehavior on his relationship, his partner, his children, his friends, and himself.
• To encourage the group member to become accountable to those he has hurt through his use of violence by helping him to acknowledge his abuse, accept responsibility for its impact on his partner and others, and take specific steps to change.

What is the Intervention Program for Women?

The Intervention Program for Women is a community based program created to help women understand the violence in their lives – both the violence they are experiencing and the violence they are using and informed actions they can take to end both. The group process provides structured ways to examine and come to terms with the context, scope, and meaning of violence in each group member’s daily life.

• To help women step back from the immediacy of their situations to see the bigger picture. When women understand all the forces operating in their lives (e.g., economic, emotional, age, religious, cultural, peer pressure), they can chart a plan of action to reduce their use of violence and the violence being used against them.
• To challenge mystical thinking- thinking based on ideas we believe are true but in fact are someone else’s concept of reality.
• To facilitate dialogue leading participants to seek an explanation of what it is they are going through and what they might do to shape a future free of abuse, coercion, and violence- both their own violence and the violence being used against them.

Community Outreach

Advocates for Family Peace raises public awareness by responding to requests for speakers and informational materials from civic groups, community organizations, businesses, schools, and colleges. You can request someone from AFFP to present on any of the following topics:

• Understanding Domestic Violence
• Men’s Use of Violence in Intimate Partner Relationships
• Women’s Use of Violence in Intimate Partner Relationships
• Teen Dating Violence
• The Impact of Domestic Violence on Children
• How to Actively Address Domestic Violence
• Community Involvement in Ending Domestic Violence

Domestic Violence

Support program focusing on domestic abuse of individuals by their spouses or partners

This program provides support to people in abusive situations and works to reduce spousal abuse and family violence.

Programs may include crisis intervention for battered women, and domestic violence education and prevention.

Serves victims of intimate partner domestic violence:

Advocates work with victims of domestic violence to identify their needs and then develop a course of action to meet those needs. This can include:

• Supportive listening
• Evaluating risks
• Providing assistance when a victim's intimate partner has been arrested
• Providing assistance in filing a restraining order
• Intervention Program for Women
• Intervention Program for Men and Fathers

Eligibility

Serving men and women who are caught in a cycle of domestic abuse in Itasca and northeastern St. Louis counties.

Fee

Sliding-fee scale