Build Healthy Relationships to End Violence

Abstract

The primary goal of Build Healthy Relationships to End Violence, one of the Grand Challenges for Social Work, is to strengthen healthy relationships through universal, targeted interventions that interrupt and ultimately prevent interpersonal violence. Interpersonal violence includes child maltreatment, intimate partner violence, family violence, gender-based violence, physical assault, sexual assault, elder abuse, community violence, and homicide. This chapter examines multifaceted issues associated with child maltreatment and intimate partner violence, systemic challenges, and best practice recommendations. Graduate social work programs provide opportunities to address this Grand Challenge of Social Work through targeted curriculum that presents both research and practice literature, skills training, and ongoing opportunities for experiential learning. Through this intentionally developed curriculum, emerging social workers are uniquely positioned to foster and facilitate partner violence. Social workers are primed for interprofessional implementation of child maltreatment/intimate partner violence screening, prevention, and intervention strategies. Furthermore, social workers are prepared to lead efforts to improve interdisciplinary team responses to child maltreatment/intimate partner violence through more comprehensive training, screening, brief intervention, and service referral. By taking on these critical roles, social workers actively work towards ending interpersonal violence.