Specialists in Welfare Offices: Do Family Violence Experts Matter?

In many welfare offices, a key component of the Family Violence Option (FVO) of the 1996 Personal Responsibility and Work Opportunity Reconciliation Act was the establishment of experts trained in domestic violence and the new policy. This study analyzes the effect an FVO expert has on three outcomes: domestic violence disclosures; administrative documentation of disclosures; and FVO waiver use. Findings show that the presence of an expert is not related to disclosures or documentation, but does have a statistically significant, negative effect on the likelihood of waiver use. These mixed results indicate that the presence or absence of an expert is not necessarily indicative of an agency’s commitment to the FVO. [Article copies available for a fee from The Haworth Document Delivery Service: 1-800-HAWORTH. E-mail address: Website: © 2005 by The Haworth Press, Inc. All rights reserved.] This electronic prepublication version may contain typographical errors and may be missing artwork such as charts, photographs, etc. Pagination in later versions may differ from this copy; citation references to this material may be incorrect when this prepublication edition is replaced at a later date with the finalized version. Andrea Hetling is an Assistant Professor, Department of Public Policy, University of Connecticut, 1800 Asylum Avenue, West Hartford, CT 06117. Catherine E. Born is Principal Investigator, Family Welfare Research and Training Group, and Research Associate Professor, University of Maryland, School of Social Work, 525 West Redwood Street, Baltimore, MD 21201. A previous version of this paper was presented at the 4th Bi-annual Trapped by Poverty/Trapped by Abuse Conference on October 17, 2003. Some of the findings are taken from a larger study presented to the Faculty of the Graduate School of the University of Maryland, College Park in July 2002 in partial fulfillment of the requirements for the degree of Doctor of Philosophy. The dissertation was completed by Andrea Hetling under the direction of William A. Galston, School of Public Affairs, University of Maryland, College Park. The research was supported by funding from the Maryland Department of Human Resources. Administration in Social Work, Vol. 30(4) 2006 Available online at http://www.haworthpress.com/web/ASW  2006 by The Haworth Press, Inc. All rights reserved. Digital Object Identifier: 10.1300/J147v30n04_03 19