ABSTRACT
The Culturally Integrative Family Safety Response (CIFSR) model coordinates supports around families and service agencies to increase safety and decrease risk on all levels of a violence and conflict continuum (see Figure 3.1). This holistic approach reflects a corresponding continuum of responses that include prevention, early identification and early intervention, and critical intervention approaches. Prevention strategies, described in this chapter, aim to stop family violence before it occurs. CIFSR-guided collaborative efforts are directed at shifting attitudes, perceptions, and behaviours of families, communities, and existing services, as well as building capacity and creating strategies to end family violence. Further along the response continuum, early identification and interventions, discussed in more detail in Chapter 4, respond to family situations before they escalate and require mandated service involvement (e.g., child protection). At the far end of the violence and response continuums, critical interventions, as described in Chapter 5, refer to more complex situations with high risk to family members’ safety. In this chapter, we describe CIFSR prevention efforts at the level of com-
munities and organizations, as well as with individual families. We present the early and ongoing steps of building relationships and connections between established service providers in the broader community and the local collectivist community identified by ethno-cultural or religious roots. This early work sets the stage for culturally integrative interventions through preparing both communities to work together. It includes community outreach, developing capacity for attending to family safety with community leaders and local champions for family safety, and capacity for working within a collectivist context with service providers in the broader community. We discuss some of the challenges that can attend training and capacity building across these distinct organizational and social cultures. Further, we present the earliest of interventions with individual families, primarily preventative responses.
