Social work professor co-authors agency assessment

Social work professor Teresa Crowe, G-’92, is one of three authors of a research report, Strengthening Domestic Violence Services for Deaf Survivors: An Evaluation of Barrier Free Living’s Deaf Services Program. 

The Manhattan (New York) district attorney’s office in 2017 began funding Barrier Free Living (BFL), a provider of services for survivors of domestic violence and their families, to increase access to direct services for deaf survivors and increase local stakeholders’ awareness of deaf survivors’ needs through its Deaf Services program. The report, commissioned in 2019 and released last month, is a “multimethod process evaluation of BFL’s Deaf Services program to document its implementation and assess to what extent it achieved its intended goals.” The authors identified the organization’s strengths and made the following recommendations:

• Hire deaf and ASL-fluent hearing staff and train hearing staff on deaf culture and ASL to increase capacity to provide services to deaf survivors.
• Increase and diversify the types of services and trainings available to deaf clients, including legal and financial workshops, services for children, and tailored services for subpopulations within the deaf community.
• Provide qualified, locally based interpreters at all meetings with both deaf and hearing people and prioritize using the same interpreter throughout a deaf client’s engagement for continuity.
• Identify diverse avenues to inform the deaf community about programs like BFL to raise awareness about its services and build trust within the deaf community.
• Increase the types of trainings available to community members, service providers, and professional organizations, such as law enforcement agencies and medical providers, on deaf culture and domestic violence in the deaf community.