MAHONING VALLEY Tri-county coalition raises awareness about violence

By WILLIAM K. ALCORN
VINDICATOR HEALTH WRITER
BOARDMAN -- The Tri-County Family Violence Prevention Coalition is ready to put into practice family violence-prevention strategies developed by the group over the past two years.
"We are focusing on three forms of family violence -- child, intimate partner and elder abuse -- and bringing together three counties -- Trumbull, Mahoning and Columbiana, that historically have not always worked well together," said Don Dickens, director of information and crisis services for Community Solutions Association in Warren.
"We're going to demonstrate that we can work together on this serious issue and be a model for other multicounty collaborative efforts," said Dickens, chairman of the coalition's oversight committee.
The Anthem Foundation of Ohio, which previously gave the coalition a $150,000 planning grant, has verbally committed to providing $250,000 for the implementation phase, Dorothy Miller, project coordinator, said at a coalition meeting Monday.
Miller said the strategic plan's initial focus is to saturate communities in the tri-county area with family violence-prevention information that will help them recognize, respond to and prevent family violence from continuing from generation to generation by not tolerating family violence.
General focus
Dickens said the coalition will distribute the implementation grant money differently than has been past practice.
Usually, grants are doled out to agencies for certain activities. In this case, four teams of coalition members, many of whom are from agencies, will use the money to create activities, Dickens said.
The general focus is to educate service providers, raise community awareness, develop policies that will promote system level changes and lobby legislators to gain support for prevention efforts, Miller said.
Dickens said he hopes that not only agency people will be involved. He invited grassroots level participation on the teams from individuals, churches, civic organizations, governments and schools.
The broad topics of the four implementation teams are education, policy, public awareness and funding. Interested people can contact Miller at (330) 747-5111 for information.
Through awareness, maybe there will be offspring who no longer abuse their elderly parents -- or a kid who hears a presentation in school, and when he is an adult, he doesn't do what he saw happening when he was growing up and stops the violence, Dickens said.
alcorn@vindy.com