Evidence-based social work outreach to military leaders to facilitate intimate partner violence and child maltreatment identification and referral: an evaluation

Abstract

The effects of family maltreatment on the military are far-reaching and well documented, with implications that include the deterioration of mission readiness and an increase in distractibility for all involved. Congress has mandated each service agency to take steps in preventing partner and child maltreatment, including outreach – enlisting military leaders to identify, respond to, and mitigate risk factors for maltreatment in their active duty (AD) members – but the success and impact of these efforts have gone mostly unexamined. This article explores the implementation and evaluation of a new Air Force (AF) family maltreatment training based on empirical and military-specific evidence of prevalence, risk and protective factors, and the impact on military families. This project sought to optimize and standardize such trainings across bases in an interactive manner. As expected, the training led to significantly greater knowledge about family maltreatment, significantly lower belief in the justification of both IPV and parent–child aggression, significantly lower belief in the effectiveness of parent–child aggression to solve problems, significantly increased self-efficacy to help prevent and address family maltreatment on the base, and marginally significantly more positive beliefs about Family Advocacy Program (FAP). Additionally, satisfaction with the training was very high.