%0 Journal Article %J International Journal of Comparative and Applied Criminal Justice %D 2008 %T Evaluating the Effectiveness of Women's Refuges: A Multi‐Country Approach to Model Development %A Cris M Sullivan %A Isabel Baptista %A Sharon O'halloran %A Lydia Okroj %A Sarah Morton %A Cheryl Sutherland Stewart %X

http://www.tandfonline.com/doi/abs/10.1080/01924036.2008.9678790

*The full article is available through this link. This article may be available free of charge to those with university credentials.

There is increasing pressure on domestic violence victim service programs worldwide to demonstrate the impact of their work on those using their services. Many workers within such programs are also interested in understanding more about what is and is not working well for service users. The current project was a multi‐country collaboration to design an outcome evaluation model that would be useful to domestic violence programs, easy and inexpensive to implement, and that would reflect the diverse experiences, needs, and concerns of women experiencing domestic abuse. Focusing at this initial stage on evaluating refuges, the project partners incorporated empowerment evaluation methods and feminist principles to create the model. This article presents the five phases of model development and provides preliminary findings from a pilot evaluation to demonstrate its utility. Next steps and recommendations are then discussed.

%B International Journal of Comparative and Applied Criminal Justice %V 32 %P 291-308 %G eng %U http://www.tandfonline.com/doi/abs/10.1080/01924036.2008.9678790 %N 2