Implementing a Community-Wide Violence Prevention Plan

For most of 2017, Buncombe County's Prevention Task Force, led by Our Voice's Rape Prevention Educator Katie May and MAHEC's Health Improvement Specialist Deanna LaMotte, developed a community-wide plan to prevent intimate partner violence, sexual violence, and child maltreatment. As of December 2017, there is a complete, working draft of this plan with over 30 community agencies (and counting) endorsing it! This is a huge accomplishment for our community and a model for the rest of the state. (If you would like to add your logo to the plan document as an endorser of this community-wide effort, please contact leed@ourvoicenc.org)

Now that there is a full working draft, the work of implementation will begin in earnest in January 2018. Helpmate, Mountain Child Advocacy Center and Our VOICE are jointly in the process of seeking and applying for funding, but the Prevention Task Force, led by Lee Doyle of Our VOICE, will be starting in January with those activities that can be initiated without additional funding.

Click on the "Prevention Plan" link to the right to see an overview of the plan and to link to the entire document. 

Developing a Community-Wide Comprehensive Prevention Plan

With the Family Justice Center now open and providing trauma-informed, coordinated services to survivors of intimate partner violence and sexual violence, and the Mountain Child Advocacy Center doing the same for child survivors of violence, community efforts are moving upstream. The end goal is to see a day when the Family Justice Center and Child Advocacy Center close their doors (or at least shift their focus) because our community just doesn't have anyone affected by this kind of violence anymore.

To this end, local Buncombe County partners are taking on an ambitious project: drafting a County-Wide Plan to Prevent Intimate Partner Violence, Sexual Violence, and Child Abuse. Why all three types of violence in one plan? Because we know that many of the risk and protective factors for these 3 types of violence are the same. The CDC has also published a helpful document, Preventing Multiple Forms of Violence outlining the reasoning for and possible approaches to addressing all three types of violence. With this document, along with the NC Plan to Prevent Intimate Partner Violence, NC Plan to Prevent Sexual Violence and the NCIOM's Task Force on Essentials for Childhood, a group of motivated and forward-thinking  professionals and community members affected by violence are working together to envision a community where interpersonal violence is not tolerated, and they are mapping out actions to take to make that vision a reality.

The Prevention Task Force, led by Katie May of Our VOICE, is moving this planning process forward. To learn more or to be part of the prevention planning process,, email katiem@ourvoicenc.org.