Child Protective Services
Like many other State Coalitions, MCADSV has been working with Montana's Child Protective Service agency to ensure that battered women with chldren are treated fairly by CPS social workers and to encourage CPS social workers to help non-offending parents keep custody of their children. We have been working with CPS in three substantive ways:Training for all new CPS workers: We provide quarterly training to all new CPS workers on the dynamics of domestic violence and the characteristics of batterers.
Legislative Advocacy: We were instrumental in persuading CPS to join us in changing MT's Child Abuse & Neglect Statute during the most recent state legislative session. Key changes to the law: Allowing your child to witness domestic violence against yourself is no longer defined as psychological abuse; CPS shall take appropriate steps in the event of DV to protect the child, which may include preventing the child from being removed from the nonoffending parent, making reasonable efforts to remove offender from the residence, and referring the victim to DV services; CPS may ensure that the offender does not have unsupervised visitation with the child.
DV Protocol Workgroup: We have convened a work group comprised of DV advocates, Coalition staff, CPS social workers and administrators, law enforcement, county prosecutor, etc. to develop new protocols to be followed when DV is present in a family under investigation. The Protocol development will be followed by cross-training.