Comprehensive Review of Interventions for Children Exposed to Domestic Violence

s that were submitted and accepted as innovative/promising practice program reports at the 2009 National Conference on Health and Domestic Violence were also reviewed. Three abstracts were identified as potential interventions for CEDV and follow-up was attempted with the authors of the abstracts. The author of one of the abstracts did not have current contact information and could not be located. Another author did not respond to repeated e-mail inquiries with delivery confirmations to determine if the program met inclusion criteria. One program developer was contacted, information was provided, and it was determined that the intervention did not meet the inclusion criteria. Intervention Template Development The next step was to abstract, synthesize, and organize information about each intervention into a user-friendly format for a website where the primary audience would be domestic violence advocates. Several web-based, evidence-based national registries were reviewed to evaluate formats and identify essential fields of information that should be included. A key resource that informed the standardized intervention template for this project was the National Child Traumatic Stress Network (NCTSN) website on empirically supported and promising practices (http://www.nctsn.org/resources/topics/treatments-that-work/promising-practices) and their publication, Trauma-Informed Interventions: Clinical and Research Evidence and Culture-Specific Information. The NCTSN collaborated with the National Crime Victims Research and Treatment Center at the Medical University of South Carolina to compile a list of empirically supported treatments and promising practices for traumatized children and their families, including interventions being implemented by sites within the NCTSN. The NCTSN developed an intervention template that was then sent to program developers to solicit additional information about their interventions. The intervention templates were reviewed, revised, and then evaluated and categorized by an expert panel. The template used in the NCTSN publication placed special emphasis on including information that would help users to consider the appropriateness of any given intervention for their communities and target populations. The development of the intervention template for the national scan followed a process similar to the procedure employed by the NCTSN. A prototype of the intervention template was reviewed and refined by Futures Without Violence Children’s Program staff. A primary objective for the national scan was to ensure that we included and presented information in a format that would be useful to domestic violence advocates and other community-based service providers. Another key consideration was to organize the information into an appropriate format for a web-based database that could be easily updated. Data fields included whom to contact for more information, a basic description of the intervention which included the program setting, types of service providers used to deliver the intervention, and the length of program. Information in the template on the population served included the ages of children eligible for services,