Are we creating community-based options for primary, secondary and tertiary prevention directed at the perpetration of battering?
Child protection agencies are not alone in their responsibility to display leadership and innovation in addressing the role batterers have in the lives of children. Other agencies and institutions can join in identifying and engaging men whose violence in the home is harming children. Developing successful and comprehensive prevention methodologies holds special importance for people of color and poor people who are inappropriately over-represented in the criminal justice and child protection systems. Creating resources, like batterer intervention programs, that can be accessed without an arrest or substantiation of child abuse or neglect might help with this imbalance and should be a strong priority. The following is an example of what is possible in this area of prevention. For the last few years, the government in Western Australia has run a social marketing campaign targeted towards current and at-risk male perpetrators of domestic violence. Within two years they had received appro
