HSP 495 Culminating Assignment

1. HSP 495 Culminating Assignment An In-depth look at a social service collaboration Karissa Marrs Spring Qtr 2013

2. A look at my internship agency This quarter I continued to volunteer at my internship site Lifewire. Lifewire is a domestic violence agency that serves north and east King county with comprehensive support services for survivors. Our mission is to “end domestic violence by changing individual, institutional, and societal beliefs, attitudes and behaviors that perpetuate it” (Lifewire, 2013).

3. Some system barriers and failures we face in our agency Increasing budget cuts which prevent us from doing all of the community outreach and education work we hope to do. Working with marginalized populations who fall through the cracks of the system (this is particularly true of domestic violence emergency and transitional housing which barely exists as a resource in King county). This means that more women and children are finding themselves homeless, and because for many this is not seen as a viable option, they are more likely to return to their abusive partner. A lack of communication and collaboration between all support service agencies and us, including police officers, victim’s advocates, hospitals, and other agencies. Our agency’s inability to focus on preventative measures because our main objective is too immediately help survivors in direct services.

4. How I was able to collaborate twolocal agencies During my time interning with Lifewire, I have been exploring other avenues of social work, particularly medical social work. I have a close friend who’s mother is one of the head nurses for S.A.N.E. (Sexual Assault Nurse Examiner’s) unit in Evergreen hospital and her and I were able to meet up to discuss the medical field on a few occasions. When she found out I was interning for Lifewire she told me that her department manager had been looking to get connected with our program manager for some time and she wondered if I could let the agency know. I informed my supervisor about the hospital department and asked her if it would be possible for our agency to present to the sexual assault nurse examiner’s staff and discuss ways we can stay connected. After navigating a few barriers of approval and getting the managing parties connected, a meeting took place between both agencies and a decision was made to collaborate as community partners.

5. My role in the collaboration Fortunately, I was given total permission by my supervisor and program manager to play an active role in this collaboration. I helped present in our first collaboration meeting alongside my program manager. The presentation was unlike any presentation I’ve done in school or for domestic violence survivors in my agency. It was designed around human justice issues and how those issues are an integral part of our work as professionals in the field. It addressed some of the larger systems that affect domestic violence. When it came time to have a group discussion, I was able to answer many of the nurse’s questions about direct services with clients, our protocols and procedures for support services, and the community resources that do and don’t exist for survivors in King county.

6. The Sexual Assault Nurse Examiner’s Perspective This hospital unit deals with intensive social issues on a day-to-day basis and feels larger unsupported in this role because of budget cuts and cuts to medical social work staff. Therefore, nurses are finding themselves in the unique position of having to navigate as both a nurse practitioner and a social worker, in a web of complex systems and community resources. The nurses stated that it is often challenging for them to know how to approach a domestic violence survivor to even begin talking about community resources. And the few survivor’s they are able to discuss community resources with, they are unsure of how best to connect them to those resources. The nurses are interested in case consulting with advocates from our agency to know both before and after how to handle certain ethical dilemmas and scenarios. All client information would remain confidential, but our advocates at Lifewire would be open to discussing strategies and techniques for handling certain situations and would provide community resources to the nurses.

7. S.A.N.E. and Body Mapping S.A.N.E. hopes that a collaboration with Lifewire could also mean educating the community on the hospital’s service of “body mapping”-in-depth collection of medical evidence (typically in the form of detailed photographs and written evidence) that can be used in a legal proceeding as evidence against the perpetrator. There are many factors that prevent domestic violence survivors from seeking such resources, and S.A.N.E. is hoping that a collaboration with Lifewire could help educate domestic violence survivors and the community on the importance of documenting abuse.

8. The next steps… Lifewire and Evergreen’s S.A.N.E. unit are officially collaborated and plan on supporting each other in future fundraising events, meeting on at least a quarterly basis to discuss how they can work as partners, and possibly developing a mutually beneficial program in the near future. I plan on remaining an integral part of that collaboration as long as they allow me to do so 

9. Reference: Lifewire (2013). Mission, About Lifewire. Retrieved from: http://www.edvp.org/ aboutlifewire/missionvision.aspx