Missouri’s Domestic Violence Coalition Makes the Case for Safe & Together

When Missouri’s Children’s Services Commission wanted a research-backed roadmap for protecting children exposed to domestic violence, the state’s domestic violence coalition didn’t write it alone. MCADSV—the Missouri Coalition Against Domestic and Sexual Violence—assembled shelter directors, a family violence prosecutor, and a court-appointed guardian ad litem to produce this January 2011 report, built around a review of existing research and seven recommendations for state policy.

The research review lays out what’s at stake: domestic violence and child maltreatment co-occur in an estimated 30 to 60% of affected families, and 30 to 50% of families already involved with child welfare are experiencing domestic violence. The report argues that Missouri’s child protection system, like many others, tends to hold mothers to a higher parenting standard than fathers who batter—leaving the person actually creating the danger largely unaddressed.

Among its recommendations, the report specifically highlights Connecticut’s statewide rollout of the Safe & Together™ Model and notes that Jackson County, Missouri had already begun training child welfare workers, domestic violence advocates, and court personnel in the Model through a local collaborative effort. The coalition recommends expanding that kind of cross-system training and collaboration statewide.

The report also calls for prioritising evidence-based recovery services for children, judicial training on domestic violence dynamics, and legislative reform around joint custody in cases involving documented abuse.