Intimate Partner Violence (IPV) Prevention Meeting

This statewide panel called DELTA (Don't ask what DELTA stands for; it's the most convoluted acronym ever, but if you insist, go here) is made up of people involved in promoting healthy relationships (the positive way of saying preventing intimate partner violence.) I've posted about previous meetings over the last couple of years. I spent much of today at the statewide steering committee meeting.

I'm the only person who is not actively involved in work that touches on this prevention work and I'm always amazed at how much interesting stuff is being done around the state. There are youth programs where kids get training on this so they can be peer counselors and so they can be leaders of the next generation in this work. The Municipality of Anchorage has been a leader in spearheading the collection of good data in this area and developing resource material for people needing help in this area and other areas. Though budget cuts threaten the work they are doing in this area.

Despite all the work being done, it's still way underfunded considering that Alaska has two of the worst five cities in the nation in terms of incidence of rape and sexual violence. That's one of the reasons the Center for Disease Control in Atlanta is paying for DELTA to develop a more coordinated Statewide plan to combat intimate partner violence. And while the Municipality of Anchorage appears ready to abandon this, there are signs the Governor's office may have an interest.

This is about all I can write tonight - it's either got to be short and vague or much longer and more detailed than I can handle right now. Here's the cover of a report the Muni is getting ready to release. They showed it to us, but it hasn't been approved yet so we didn't get to see more than the cover.