“Turning Points” is a group curriculum for women who have been violent in their intimate partner relationships. The curriculum is designed in such a way as to draw on their strengths, providing education and support and helping them envision a future that is free of both their violence and that of their abusers (if applicable).

This program promotes collaboration between law enforcement agencies, the courts, and community agencies to end family violence.

The “Turning Points” Program consists of :

  • A comprehensive evaluation in which individual appropriateness for the program is determined.
  • A 27 week (length of program is dependent on group size) educational program for women.

FSA NEPA Turning Points Program staff retains sole discretion in determining the appropriateness of an individual for the program beyond the comprehensive evaluation. The participants are asked to name their world as they live it; to reject the notion that they cannot change that world; to look critically at their relation-ship, their own beliefs and values, their aspirations and the connection between what they are doing and who they want to be.

Outreaching Goals:

  • To help women understand the violence in their lives.
  • To help women take concrete steps to end the violence in their lives — both the violence they may be experiencing and the violence that they are using.

Curriculum:

  • Part 1 has nine segments intended to teach the group much of what there is to know about domestic violence; what it is and what it is not; the kinds of violence common in families and the characteristics of the three basic forms of domestic violence — coercive controlling domestic violence (battering), resistive violence and non-battering violence.
  • Part 2 provides a series of vignettes depicting acts of violence commonly used by women and videos of women talking about their lives and describing the violence in them. The group uses the framework of the “log” to discuss its meaning.
  • Part 3 is a series of exercises useful in helping women focus on the goals of the curriculum.