Resource Centers

Domestic Violence Resource Network

The Domestic Violence Resource Network (DVRN) is funded by the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services to inform and strengthen domestic violence intervention and prevention efforts at the individual, community, and societal levels.

The DVRN works collaboratively to promote practices and strategies to improve our nation’s response to domestic violence and make safety and justice not just a priority, but also a reality. DVRN member organizations ensure that victims of domestic violence, advocates, community‐based programs, educators, legal assistance providers, law enforcement and court personnel, health care providers, policy makers, and government leaders at the local, state, tribal and federal levels have access to up‐to-date information on best practices, policies, research and victim resources.

The DVRN includes two national resource centers, four special issue resource centers, three culturally-specific resource centers, the National Domestic Violence Hotline, and the National LGBTQ DV Capacity Building Learning Center.  

Member organizations are:

Please read below to learn more about each organization and its work.

National Resource Centers

National Resource Center on Domestic Violence
800-537-2238
www.nrcdv.org  and www.vawnet.org

The National Resource Center on Domestic Violence (NRCDV) provides a wide range of free, comprehensive and individualized technical assistance, training and resource materials. The scope of NRCDV’s technical assistance is broad and includes domestic violence intervention and prevention, community education and organizing, public policy and systems advocacy, and funding. The NRCDV develops special collections, fact sheets, applied research papers, funding alerts, and training curricula, and supports several special projects designed to explore issues more deeply or develop more comprehensive assistance to a particular constituent group. These special projects include the Domestic Violence Awareness Project, VAWnet — the National Online Resource Center on Violence Against Women (funded by CDC), Building Comprehensive Solutions to Domestic Violence, and the DV Evidence Project and related research initiatives. 

National Indigenous Women’s Resource Center
1-855-NIWRC-99/406-477-3896
www.niwrc.org

The National Indigenous Women’s Resource Center, Inc. (NIWRC) is a Native nonprofit organization created to serve as the National Indian Resource Center (NIRC) Addressing Domestic Violence and Safety for Indian Women. As the National Indian Resource Center, NIWRC offers interwoven specialized expertise across domestic violence, sexual violence and healthy relationships through various disciplines and culturally specific resources across and for the movement.  NIWRC is a national technical assistance provider to Alaska Village programs and Tribal Coalitions across Indian Country. NIWRC offers free trainings, networking, NIWRC Toolkits, resources and culturally relevant responses to intimate partner and gender violence and promotes the leadership of Indigenous programs serving their communities. With additional circles of the anti-violence movement, NIWRC is dedicated to grassroots and policy advocacy, prevention, education, research activities, program development, raising public awareness, events sharing, offender accountability and traditional interventions of healthy relationships, justice on and off-tribal lands designed by and for Native Women base on their trial beliefs and practices.

State Resource Center to Reduce Tribal Disparities

Alaska Native Women’s Resource Center
907-328-3990
www.aknwrc.org

The Alaska Native Women’s Resource Center (AKNWRC) is dedicated to strengthening local, tribal governments’ responses through community organizing efforts advocating for the safety of women and children in their communities and homes, especially against domestic and sexual abuse and violence. Through the voices, languages, and teachings of tribes, survivors, and advocates, and in partnership with allies and other stakeholders, AKNWRC provides a voice at the local, statewide, national, and international levels for life-saving changes needed in laws, policies, and social norms. AKNWRC envisions Tribal women, communities, and families free from violence, healing the trauma and utilizing the wisdom of our ancestors to create effective community/Tribal responses to domestic violence, dating violence, stalking, trafficking, sexual assault, and related injustices.

Special Issues Resource Centers

Battered Women's Justice Project Criminal and Civil Justice Center
800-903-0111, ext. 1
www.bwjp.org

The Battered Women’s Justice Project (BWJP) promotes change within the civil and criminal justice systems that enhances their effectiveness in providing safety, security and justice for battered women and their families. BWJP provides technical assistance to advocates, civil attorneys, judges and court personnel, law enforcement officers, prosecutors, probation officers, batterers intervention program staff, and policymakers; and to victims of domestic violence and their families and friends.  Through trainings, consultations, and publications, we disseminate up-to-date information on recent research findings and promote the implementation of best practices and policies that emerge from the work of pioneering communities around the country. BWJP also manages the National Center on Protection Orders and Full Faith and Credit, which handles technical assistance on all issues related to the issuance and enforcement of protection orders. To address issues related to the defense of domestic violence victims charged with crimes, BWJP partners with a separate organization, the National Clearinghouse for the Defense of Battered Women.

National Clearinghouse for the Defense of Battered Women
1-800-903-0111, ext. 3
www.ncdbw.org

The National Clearinghouse for the Defense of Battered Women, located in Philadelphia, PA, addresses the unique needs of victims of battering who, as a result of the abuse they have experienced at the hands of their intimate partner, end up charged with a crime.  The National Clearinghouse strives to prevent the revictimization of battered defendants by providing specialized technical assistance, resources, and support to battered women charged with crimes and to members of their defense teams.

National Health Resource Center on Domestic Violence
1-888-792-2873
www.futureswithoutviolence.org/health

For almost two decades, the National Health Resource Center on Domestic Violence (HRC) has supported health care professionals, domestic violence experts, survivors, and policy makers at all levels as they improve health care’s response to domestic violence. The HRC offers personalized, expert technical assistance, an online toolkit for health care providers and DV advocates to prepare a clinical practice to address domestic and sexual violence, a free E-Bulletin and webinar series. The HRC also holds the biennial National Conference on Health and Domestic Violence—a scientific meeting at which health, medical and domestic violence experts and leaders explore the latest health research and programmatic responses to domestic violence.

National Center on Domestic Violence, Trauma & Mental Health
1-312-726-7020, ext. 2011
www.nationalcenterdvtraumamh.org

The mission of the National Center on Domestic Violence, Trauma & Mental Health is to develop and promote accessible, culturally relevant, and trauma-informed responses to domestic violence and other lifetime trauma so that survivors and their children can access the resources that are essential to their safety, resilience, and well-being. We provide training and support to advocates, mental health and substance providers, legal professionals, policymakers, and government officials as they work to improve the ways that their agencies and systems respond to survivors of domestic and their children. Specially, our work includes (1) raising public awareness about the intersection of domestic violence, trauma, mental health, and substance abuse; (2) providing training and technical assistance to build the capacities of agencies and systems to address the traumatic effects of abuse; (3) developing and promoting policies that improve agency and system responses to domestic violence and other lifetime trauma; and (4) analyzing and promoting research that advances knowledge and builds the evidence base for responding to trauma in the lives of domestic violence survivors and their children.

Culturally Specific Institutes

Asian Pacific Institute on Gender-Based Violence
415-568-3315
www.api-gbv.org

The Asian Islander Institute on Gender-Based Violence is a national resource center on domestic violence, sexual violence, trafficking, and other forms of gender-based violence in Asian and Pacific Islander communities.  It serves a national network of advocates; community-based service programs; national, federal and state organizations; legal, health, and mental health professionals; researchers; policy advocates; and activists from social justice organizations.  It analyzes critical issues; promotes culturally relevant intervention and prevention; provides consultation, technical assistance and training; conducts and disseminates research; and informs public policy.  The API Institute’s vision of gender democracy drives its mission to strengthen advocacy, change systems, and prevent gender violence through movement-building and community transformation.

National Latin@ Network for Healthy Families and Communities
1-651-646-5553
www.nationallatinonetwork.org

The National Latin@ Network for Healthy Families and Communities, a project of Casa de Esperanza, is the national institute on domestic violence focusing on Latin@ communities. Working both domestically and internationally, we address four primary issues: increasing access to resources for Latin@s experiencing domestic violence; providing training and tools for professionals and community advocates; conducting culturally relevant research; and advocating for public policy based on the lived realities of Latin@s.

Ujima, Inc.: The National Center on Violence Against Women in the Black Community
1-844-77-UJIMA (778-5462)
www.ujimacommunity.org

Ujima is a national resource center that addresses domestic, sexual and community violence. It responds to and develops an active approach to ending violence against women in the Black community. The name Ujima, Inc., was derived from the Kwanzaa Principle of “Ujima,” which means Collective Work and Responsibility. Ujima, Inc. provides education and outreach, training and technical assistance, resource development, research, and public policy efforts. It works to mobilize the black community and its allies to strengthen our families, recognizing that the safety and viability of our families is connected to the health and well-being of our individual neighborhoods and communities at large. Ujima, Inc. defines the black community as the African Diaspora in its broadest sense, e.g., African-Americans (descendants of slaves in the U.S.), African immigrants, Afro-Caribbeans, and Afro-Latinos/as.

Capacity Building Centers

National LGBTQ Institute on Intimate Partner Violence
1-206-568-7777
www.nwnetwork.org

The National LGBTQ Institute on Intimate Partner Violence increases our communities’ ability to support the self-determination and safety of bisexual, trans, lesbian, and gay survivors of domestic and dating violence through advocacy, organizing, and education. We work within a broad liberation movement dedicated to social and economic justice, equality and respect for all people, and the creation of loving, inclusive, and accountable communities.

Promising Futures Without Violence
617-294-6526
promising.futureswithoutviolence.org

Promising Futures Capacity Building Center (the Center), a project of Futures Without Violence (FUTURES), provides support on enhancing services for children, youth and their abused parents impacted by domestic violence. The Center provides support to build organizational structures and services that prioritize child well-being, opportunities for healing, building resilience, and breaking the intergenerational cycle of violence all within the context of the parent-child relationship. The Center is an expansion of FUTURES’ Clearinghouse of information on the Promising Futures Website. The Center supports the Specialized Services for Abused Parents and their Children (SSAPC) grantees as well as the field through facilitating a learning community, offering technical assistance and training, developing new resources and tools, and growing the research within evidence-based, trauma-informed, culturally relevant practices for children, youth and their parents.

National Network to End Domestic Violence
202-543-5566
nnedv.org

The National Network to End Domestic Violence (NNEDV) Capacity Technical Assistance project provides comprehensive, specialized technical assistance and training to FVPSA formula grantees including state and territory domestic violence coalitions and advocacy organizations, FVPSA state administrators, and tribal programs. In addition, NNEDV has developed resources on building organizational capacity, spanning issues such as best practices, standards, certification, quality assurance, trauma-informed approaches, diversity and inclusion, and role clarity. NNEDV helps build strong organizations by coaching them through leadership transitions, implementation of evidence-based practice models, infrastructure development to effectively manage financial and reporting requirements, and improving the inclusion of historically marginalized communities.

Safe Housing Partnerships
800-537-2238
www.safehousingpartnerships.org

NRCDV also operates the FVPSA-funded national capacity building center on safe and supportive housing for survivors as members of the Domestic Violence Housing Technical Assistance Consortium (DVHTAC). The DVHTAC is a federal technical assistance consortium that leverages federal resources for housing, homelessness, and domestic and sexual violence service providers and advocates. This initiative strives to improve coordination across service systems; integrate trauma-informed assessments for violence into a coordinated response; help continuums of care (CoCs) develop partnerships with victim services providers; and identify policies and practices that promote positive outcomes, resilience, and stability for survivors and their children.

National Hotlines/Helplines

National Domestic Violence Hotline
1-800-799-7233
1-800-787-3224 (TTY)
www.thehotline.org

The National Domestic Violence Hotline is the vital link to safety and support for anyone affected by domestic violence. Highly-trained advocates can provide information, crisis intervention, help develop a safety plan, discuss options, and directly connect callers with sources of help in communities across the U.S. The Hotline is also an excellent resource for concerned friends, family members, co-workers and others seeking information and guidance on how to help someone they know. The Hotline provides support in more than 170 languages and is available 24/7 by calling 1-800-799-7233. Services are also offered via online chat at www.thehotline.org Monday through Friday, 9am-7pm CT.

StrongHearts Native Helpline
1-844-7NATIVE (1-844-762-8483)
www.strongheartshelpline.org  

The StrongHearts Native Helpline is a culturally appropriate, anonymous, confidential service dedicated to serving Native American survivors of domestic violence and dating violence and concerned family members and friends. StrongHearts connects callers at no cost one-on-one with knowledgeable advocates who can provide lifesaving tools and immediate support to enable Native survivors to find safety and live lives free of abuse. StrongHearts is a Native-centered hotline staffed by advocates with a strong understanding of Native cultures, as well as issues of tribal sovereignty and law. StrongHearts is a partnered effort, combining the technology and infrastructure of the National Domestic Violence Hotline with the National Indigenous Women’s Resource Center’s expertise and community connections, as well as the trust of Native advocacy groups. 

Download more information on FVPSA-funded national technical assistance and training resource centers and culturally specific institutes. You may also download Domestic Violence Resource Network Organization Descriptions and the Domestic Violence Services Network Infographic.