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In 2003, US President George W. Bush launched the President’s Family Justice Center Initiative to dedicate millions of dollars in funding to establish 15 family justice centers (FJCs) across the USA (US Department of Justice, 2007). Since then, the FJC movement has grown extensively, with centers being established in communities across the country and the world (Family Justice Center Alliance, 2019b). By serving as one-stop shops for victims of domestic violence and other forms of violence to seek help, FJCs offer within a single location multiple services from a variety of professional disciplines, including law enforcement, victim advocacy, social services, forensic interviewing, legal consultation, counseling and/or prosecution (Family Justice Center Alliance, 2019a). By fostering interdisciplinary collaboration and bringing much-needed resources under one roof, the FJC model aims to ease the burden of seeking help for victims in crisis and change the way that communities respond to family and interpersonal violence.
Research on the effectiveness of FJCs is limited, but a growing number of researchers are beginning to examine the impact of FJCs. There are many challenges to the evaluation of FJCs, in light of the facts that the clients served are typically in a state of crisis, and that the partner organizations involved use vastly different data tracking procedures. Thus, there is a need for creative, methodologically sound evaluation research to document the impact of FJCs on the clients and communities they serve. The purpose of this article is to describe the ongoing evaluation strategies used to document the impact of an FJC that has been in operation for nearly four years. Initial indicators of the positive impact of the FJC are described, along with implications for future research and practice as the FJC movement continues to evolve.
Review of the literature
Practitioners, stakeholders and researchers continually call for additional contributions on the efficacy of FJCs to guide funding, design and implementation of policies and programs to enhance community responses to domestic and intimate partner violence (IPV) (Abt Associates, 2018; Murray et al., 2014; Shorey et al., 2014). As the research on this topic is in the very early stages, a need remains for research to determine best practices and the overall, evidence-based impact FJCs have on their communities.
The lack of comprehensive...