THE GRAFTON COUNTY district court system will be participating in a national study of how the courts and social services organizations deal with co-occurrences of domestic and child abuse.

The county’s district courts, the NH Dept. of Health and Human Services and the statewide Coalition Against Domestic and Sexual Violence applied to participate in the federally-funded "Greenbook Initiative," which will look at the current system of delivering services to abused adults and children and could lead to development of a more comprehensive service delivery model. Grafton County was one of six sites chosen across the country and will receive $1 million over three years to conduct the study.

According to Edwin Kelly, administrative justice of the district courts, statistics show that in up to 60 percent of domestic violence cases, there is also a component of child abuse. Similarly, in 60 percent of child abuse cases, there is also an occurrence of domestic violence, Kelly said. "The bottom line is that there is a high likelihood of coincidence of the two," he said.

Despite this high level of co-occurrence, NH’s domestic violence and child abuse services through the court system and elsewhere are on separate tracks, as is common across the country. Kelly said that to address this disconnection, the National Council of Juvenile and Family Court Judges has established a list of recommendations for developing a more unified response method for the courts and services organizations to address these coincidences of abuse. "The goal is to identify the problem, respond quickly and effectively and make all the resources available to consumers that they need," said Kelly.

The Greenbook Initiative will be looking at potential implementation of this service delivery model in its study, according to Kelly. A program director will be in charge of the project, and locally a research partner and researcher will be working with Kelly and Susan Carbon, justice of the Grafton County Family Division. "This is a pure research project. It actually gives us the luxury we all crave: to just sit back and study before making changes," Kelly said.

The $1 million grant for each local study comes from the federal departments of Justice and Health and Human Services, along with contributions from private foundations. Grafton County is the only rural site in the country that will be participating in the study, and the only site east of the Mississippi River. Grafton County competed with over 200 cities and regions to obtain funding and joins grant winners in Portland, Oregon, San Francisco and St. Louis in conducting the study. The Grafton County program will be based in Plymouth.

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