Call for Standards and Criteria

Caged Birds Sing, Inc Proposes the Formation of a
National Household Harm Standards Committee

The Mission of the Committee:

To produce a unified set of standardized policies, procedures, standards, criteria, controls, specifications, terminology, definitions, and qualifications in the furtherance of best practices that will better organize, coordinate, and track participants dedicated to the fight against all forms of domestic mistreatment, including coercion, abuse, and violence, and adapt them to changes in our social and cultural environment.

Comparable and Initiatives:

The committee would act in a manner similar to well-established predecessors in areas of scientific research, mil specs that coordinate and govern military branches, stakeholders, and defense industry suppliers, industrial groups, open source software organizations, quality assurance certification organizations, etc.

the Planto develop a framework for a more unified and structured approach for each type of harmful domestic problem and solution. This committee would keep up with the changing landscape in:

a) research, data collection, and information interpretation,

b) effective and unified verbal and written terminology and definitions for inter-organizational, professional, and personal communications, as well as public consumption, and

c) audit and controls.

We applaud the Joint Commissions’ thoroughness. meticulous, and highly-structured work and ongoing support for mental health professionals and their organizations, and interfacing with law enforcement agencies and personnel with respect to domestic abuse and violence victims and perpetrators. They produce and update policies, procedures, standards, criteria, manuals, guidelines, scripts, etc.

CBSI deems the adequacy and effectiveness of these controls to be of the highest order and exceptionally thorough.

But we propose a committee to investigate the inclusion and expansion of the Joint Commission’s scope to include the involvement of other necessary non-healthcare-related, but equally involved semi-professionals and non-professionals alike. As a society, we must reduce our dependence on overworked mental health hospitals and professionals, psychological and medical practitioners, victim shelters, and others currently carrying the load. Meanwhile, when victims step forward, especially those with non-criminal but dangerous complaints, their communities are underequipped to provide any services at all. Therefore armies of dedicated volunteers and paid workers with:

are all needed as our societal needs grow and change in the aftermath of Covid-19 lockdowns, social unrest, political polarization, rampant criminality, economic and financial uncertainty, generational attitude and behavior shifts, etc.

We need new policies, standards, criteria, and procedures to train and govern multi-talented, specialized groups of promoters, agents, patrons, sponsors, advertisers, secular and faith-based non-profit organizations, local social clubs, and community-level supporters, etc.

as an example of the shift into a larger infrastructure to be well equipped to support the newly advocated needs to focus on providing for victims of Gaslighting, Gangstalking, and Coercive Control victims who have little or no support or recourse, to bring this industry in a whole new, more efficient, and meaningful direction.

Detractors of the state-by-state advocacy efforts on behalf of proposed Coercive Control legislation and bills drafted point to conflict and confusion with family courts, interference with current TRO protocols, and especially the lack of support services for victims and perpetrators alike, that healthcare professionals and law enforcement officers cannot and should not get involved.

Our goal now is to get ordinary and extraordinary people and socially responsible community organizations to team with mental health professionals and expand victims’ options.

It will be the standards committee’s job to detail the communication and coordination protocols for those who get deeply involved, so we may become trade with slightly simplified, but well-organized, step-by-step guidance manuals, containing Policies, Procedures, Standards, and Criteria, that they may elect to follow, or not, at their own peril.

The main purpose of this proposed Committee is to investigate whether it is worth the effort to increase the adequacy and effectiveness of the required controls. No one will argue that something is urgently needed to reduce the current Household Harm crisis: a state of affairs that is fraught with understaffed facilities, overworked employees, miscommunications, negligent conduct, and professional liability.

Do we need a set of audits and controls fitted to these proposed semi-professional healthcare rolls? Yes. CBSI suggests standards for effective preventions, interventions, and treatments, as well as damage control, disaster recovery, and contingency planning are the only prudent way forward. Also, an audit trail is impossible to find without the ability to monitor the adequacy and effectiveness of the proposed new controls for any organization, program, campaign, and/or project. And until standards are in place, nothing can be uniformly and fairly discussed and assessed.

Note that our current messaging and results can be quite confusing and even counterproductive.

How to Begin:

The most viable venue to establish and maintain a national standards committee is within a major, recognized organization, such as the National Conference on Health and Domestic Violence. They state: “The goal of the National Conference on Health and Domestic Violence is to advance the field of healthcare’s response to domestic violence. This goal is achieved through:

1. Impact and Partnership in the Field of Health and DV – Creating opportunities to foster relationships, engage in reflection, and advance collective strategies. Offering programming that leaves participants feeling inspired, connected, challenged, renewed, and activated.

2. Latest Health Findings and Promising Practices – Highlighting the most recent promising practices and innovative partnership approaches that address or examine:

• The ways in which domestic/sexual violence impacts individual and community health and well-being.
• Connections between domestic/sexual violence, other forms of violence, and systems that perpetuate harm and oppression.
• Shared community-based, social justice, and public health solutions and prevention approaches.

3. Innovative Research – Featuring new research about risk and protective factors, physical/mental health effects of violence, health, and advocacy-based innovations, and prevention; and partnerships between health management systems, providers, public health and Medicaid programs, legal systems, social service agencies, and domestic violence advocates.

4. Prevention and Intervention are domestic policy strategies that support improved responses to violence and prevention. Emphasizing prevention and intervention strategies is relevant to diverse cultures, races, classes, ethnicities, religions, physical disabilities, ages, genders, sexual identities, geographic settings, and communities.

CBSI Note: If the work presented at the conference, to advance the field of healthcare’s response to domestic violence, as detailed in the above four-point description, added a foundation and unifying platform of structure, organization, and audit, a committee for that would be a necessary and welcome addition and limit the liability of all organizations, professionals, and volunteers. Note that most standards committees in every field, are incorporated into combined privately sponsored, government-participating symposia like the NCHDV. So, they are a natural choice to give birth to the proposed standards committee and they will be approached by Caged Birds Sing. Until this happens, well-meaning and capable DV organizations will have multiple names and definitions for the same terms, and vice versa.

Final Considerations

Domestic Harm in the Current Environment – Situational Background: Afraid of leaving or of being kicked out during these frightening times, DV victims are physically trapped at home with their abusers. Lockdowns and quarantines have already caused so much unreported, undiagnosed, and untreated pain and they can be reimposed at any moment. Experts say financial insecurity (from unemployment, inflation, sinking investments, etc.) and stress associated with 24/7 childcare are the most prominent factors in the increase of lockdown-related domestic abuse and violence. The damage from frustration and hostility is of a lasting nature, and mostly occurs between intimate partners, but is also directed towards, or psychologically impacts children and elders. Therefore, our timely mandate continues long after the lockdowns that triggered the harm are ended.

The following CBSI Non-Profit Corporate Plan Outline dovetails with the above proposal for a National Household Harm Committee. We are uniquely positioned with a new narrative and paradigm to launch a multimedia PR campaign with engaging live interviews, podcasts, and social media coverage to spread the message: the rise in ‘Household Harm’ that began during the lockdown, happened in ordinarily harmonious homes under duress from that disastrous event and should be managed in an intelligent, effective, and controlled manner.  Not only do the victims of domestic violence suffer and need encouragement, but non-criminal offenses between intimate partners, negatively affect elders, children, and even pets, who can all be severely traumatized by toxic behavior, gaslighting, coercive control, and domestic abuse, and that psychological damage can last a lifetime.

Therefore. our organization, Caged Birds Sing Inc is dedicated to:

1. Raising public awareness via media campaigns about this underreported and overlooked topic.
2. Collecting and compiling data and summarizing the latest scholarly research on causes, effects, and treatments of isolation-related household mistreatment.
3. Disseminating more accurate statistics and innovative, pragmatic, and relevant methodologies for use by various organizations and individual professionals to proactively help millions of us who find ourselves in recently elevated, intolerable household situations.
4. Establishing policies, procedures, standards, and criteria to organize and enhance community support structures for victims of domestic abuse, violence, and exploitation.
5. Promoting the need for local support for the physical, emotional, and financial needs of victims.
6. Assisting communities who seek to form and operate local Victims of Domestic Harm Services groups: with the help of civic organizations, dedicated professionals, corporate sponsors, and a host of trained volunteers, to use the Caged Bird Society model, methods, and technology to fill this pressing need.