The agencies in the four focal sites have taken important steps toward supporting women in the disclosure of domestic violence. In recognition of the growing body of research that suggests the need for a supportive, nonjudgmental, and confidential environment in which to voluntarily disclose the presence of domestic violence in victims’ lives, these sites have provided training, developed assessment tools, and added staff expertise to improve the identification and assessment processes. Chapter IV discusses the use of specialized staff to conduct in-depth client assessments to address issues related to domestic violence. Here we focus on what agencies are doing, once domestic violence is disclosed, to alert all relevant staff—across agencies—of these cases in order to ensure that they are handled with appropriate sensitivity.

Alerting staff across agencies entails the exchange of important pieces of information. This information can include, in addition to the fact that domestic violence has been disclosed, confidential address information, the case’s exemption status, documentation of referrals, and notes that discuss special concerns or handling procedures. Whether this information is maintained on paper or electronically, both formats present pitfalls that can undermine the reliability of agencies’ use of information on victims of domestic violence. For records maintained in paper form, there is some risk that important information gets lost in the sheer volume of agency documents; files tend to look alike and, as a consequence, victims and non-victims of domestic violence are treated similarly; and critical status information can get buried several layers down in a file. Electronic systems can cause automatic enforcement of certain collection procedures, such as revocation of a hunting license, that could perpetuate more violence.

Another risk arises from differences in agency terminology. Whether they use paper or computerized records, agencies sometimes have unique terminology to describe a client’s status or situation, and in some cases, the same term can have one meaning to a public assistance caseworker and another to a child support caseworker. For example, income exceeding the resource limit can lead to TANF "case closure" at a public assistance agency, but "case closure" at a child support agency might apply to action taken as the result of failure to establish paternity, termination of a child support order, or inability to locate a noncustodial parent. The result in this example might be that a client who has just found employment and left TANF loses the income from child support.

Agencies are instituting new systems and procedures for using paper and electronic media so that domestic violence cases are effectively passed from worker to worker, with clearer directives to take special precautions. Strategies in the four focal sites include the following:

While these approaches are designed to address particular challenges and promote effective flow of client information, there are several important implementation issues that have arisen and that agencies interested in adopting these approaches ought to consider. Effective exchange of information requires that one party convey information in a timely way and that another party read it promptly. Even with a shared computer system, public assistance caseworkers must enter important child support information without delay to make it useful to child support workers (and vice versa). In addition, immediate messaging is effective only if a caseworker on the receiving end activates the alert option so messages will automatically appear on his or her computer screen. Agencies that use electronic messaging must train staff to read messages right away and provide the appropriate response. Otherwise, those sending messages start to doubt that their communications are being read and may become lax in their use of the system.

To some extent, of course, interagency communication can be expected to improve as a culture of collaboration takes deeper root. As the exchange of written, electronic, and verbal information between agencies becomes routine, staff are likely to gain understanding of the relevance and importance of information to partner agencies and, hence, greater respect for the process. Some collaborative efforts in improving staff understanding of other agencies are discussed in Chapter V.

Collecting child support for victims of domestic violence requires that agencies share victims’ personal information with other agencies while concealing it from abusers. Child support, public assistance, and outside service providers often can better help victims pursue child support by exchanging information on client status, receipt of services, and program participation. All agencies, however, risk confidentiality (and thus safety) breaches when case information is transmitted from one agency to another for any victim of domestic violence. Special precautions are needed, therefore, in the interagency handling of personal information to protect clients from their batterers.

Multiple agencies exchange information on victims of domestic violence during the child support process. In some study states, public assistance caseworkers conduct child support intake and forward information from the interview to a child support agency. Child support agencies directly and indirectly collect information on clients and many send cases to legal staff, who initiate court actions (for example, establishing child support orders). During the child support collection process, both public assistance and child support agencies may need to contact shelters where domestic violence victims are staying to inform them of case action or collect further information.

The interagency exchange of client information presents three main confidentiality and safety concerns. First, agencies may not have clients’ consent to share information with community providers. Second, personal information about clients could be divulged during legal proceedings and then obtained by batterers. Third, if court personnel are not aware that a case involves domestic violence, they may inadvertently fail to protect domestic violence victims from their batterers during court appearances.

To address these issues, agencies in the study sites are adopting collaborative approaches to protecting client confidentiality and safety during child support enforcement:

There are several important implementation issues that agencies interested in adopting these approaches ought to consider. Agencies need to agree on the specific conditions for and limits on release of confidential client information, even when client consent is provided, because one agency’s release form may stipulate sharing confidential information more widely than another agency feels is appropriate. In addition, the confidentiality of home addresses needs to be guaranteed, since many different parties’ access to the child support computer system increases the potential for a security breach. In some cases, it may not be appropriate to share client information beyond the staff of a single agency, and this should be acknowledged and understood. Despite general guidelines about how to share and protect information, local circumstances may make it unwise to share more than the most essential information. For example, sharing information in a small community, where personal connections are more common, poses a greater risk of access by an abuser than in a larger community. Finally, as in all approaches, special supplemental or precautionary steps require additional time, staff awareness, and staff commitment to the cause at hand. Where the sharing of information is appropriate and would benefit the client, staff training and administrative support for the special handling of domestic violence cases can help to reduce these risks.