DELTA FOCUS Stories

Overarching Lessons Learned

In addition to the key lessons shared in each story theme, coalitions reflected on their larger points of learning from the DELTA FOCUS experience.

• Prevention work is broad and expansive.

We must invest in efforts to engage in community-level work to build community cohesion as part of our prevention strategy. – Lucy Rios, RICADV

The DELTA FOCUS project has influenced the way we understand prevention needs to happen across the continuum, including economic justice work as a prevention approach in the broader community. We now understand workforce development as an important component of our prevention efforts. – Lauren Camphausen, DCADV

Throughout the process, we noticed that work started looking less and less like what we would traditionally define as domestic violence prevention. Work shifted into “how can we engage with other existing systems to make sure that people have access to the resources they need and want?” It was about broadening the settings and systems we were working within. – Dena Fulton, NCCADV

• Prevention work must be integrated into all that we do.

Primary prevention work can’t exist in an agency silo – it works best when it’s integrated and institutionalized across the organization. Each department has a critical role to play in prevention! – Lucy Rios, RICADV

• Community partnerships are critical to reaching our prevention goals.

Partnering across human service sectors (addiction, mental health, etc.) and with local businesses adds value to all of our work. – Rebecca Cline, ODVN (For tips on engaging new partners, see our Engagement section.)

Our prevention work is an effort to change the structures in society that a) make life really hard for survivors or b) make domestic violence possible in the first place. We need to look beyond our domestic violence service system to accomplish this. – Dena Fulton, NCCADV

To create sustainable and meaningful partnerships, we must prioritize organizational relationships over individual relationships. – Emil Rudicell, FCADV

One of the unique aspects of this work was the purposeful inclusion of marginalized voices at all levels of the project. By being persistent in incorporating as many different voices as possible, we were left with rich, thorough, messages, policies, practices, and procedures. Part of this meant that we had to be comfortable with the fact that including as many people as possible takes time. Maintaining and building relationships was essential to this project. Giving time to build new relationships and foster existing relationships before major deliverables were due was key. – MCEDSV

• Prevention can and must be trauma-informed.

We have come to learn the importance of trauma-informed prevention, which represents a shift towards acknowledging community and historical trauma. For example, in our bystander engagement work, we must understand how the history of trauma in communities impacts their bystanding behavior. – Lauren Camphausen, DCADV

• Effective changes to policy and practice must include voices at all levels.

We were able to see changes happen when the communications flowed in both directions – from the state level, to the district, to the classroom, and back from the classroom, to the district, to the state. – Emil Rudicell, FCADV

• Prevention work is both challenging and fundamentally just.

It requires intentional leadership to center those who are most impacted in this work. It can feel overwhelming, but can also fuel your passion for change.

Prevention requires us to shift from a movement based on sharing information to one that shifts power. Building a strategy around social change – to make safety the default for all communities, and to help people understand how systems perpetuate oppression and violence – is very challenging work. – Colleen Yeakle, ICADV