Introduction to Policy Advocacy and Analysis

Introduction to Policy Advocacy and Analysis: Improving How Systems Respond to Battered Women is one of three training curricula designed and tested with advocates and grassroots organizations working to end domestic violence. This curriculum has an introduction, three training modules, and appendix with handouts for participants, and an appendix with overheads for trainers. It is structured as a two day training but can be adapted for shorter time spans. It is designed to enhance public policy skills and knowledge of advocates and others working to end domestic violence via case studies and exercises in which participants are invited to rethink long-held positions and identify and prepare to implement new comprehensive solutions.

The curriculum presents three principal themes: it challenges advocates and organizations to truly integrate battered woman's needs and perspectives into policy analysis in order to ensure woman-defined policy advocacy, it underscores that comprehensive systemic solutions to domestic violence must respond to the diverse needs of battered women, and, it demonstrates why effective policy advocacy requires thorough preparation and a collaborative approach. Case-examples are used to assess who is effected by certain policies and to what degree, to illustrate why policy advocacy cannot be done well without the voices and direction of those who have experienced abuse, and to distinguish between batterer-generated risks and life-generated risks.

Building Comprehensive Solutions to Domestic Violence (BCSDV) started its national training initiative in an effort to enable domestic violence organizations to play a broader collaborative role in the community. The three interrelated training curricula were developed to build on each other, although each can stand alone as a teaching unit. Each curriculum contains an introductory discussion of the materal, a suggested schedule, material to be copied as transparencies for overhead projectors, handouts to be duplicated for participants, and substantive discussion of each section for the trainer.

Building Comprehensive Solutions to Domestic Violence (BCSDV) is an initiative of the National Resource Center on Domestic Violence (NRC).