By: Rachel L. MSW, LMSW
VAWA Passes US Senate
On Tuesday, the Senate passed a bill to re-authorize the Violence Against Women Act (VAWA) of 1994 along with all the bills amendments by a vote of 78-22, and it is now up to the House of Representatives to pass a matching bill. Violence Against Women Act expired last spring after the House GOP blocked the bill from passing.
First passed in 1994, the 2012 and 2013 version of the law sought to extend protections and services to members of the LGBT community, immigrant women and women living on reservations. It is these amendments that the GOP members of the house objected to. You can read the bill in its entirety here.
House Speaker John Boehner (R-Ohio) gave a vague response on whether or not the House will push the bill forward:
“Our leadership [is] continuing to work with the committee of jurisdiction, looking at finding ways to deal with this legislation. We’re fully committed to doing everything we can to protect women in our society, and I expect that the House will act in a timely fashion in some way,”
“No decision has been made about … whether we take up the Senate bill or our own version of the bill.” Read Full Article
Mental Health in Schools
On January 31st Senator Al Franken (D-MI) introduced his bill to expand mental health services to children in schools. The Mental Health in Schools Act of 2013 (S.195) would:
To amend the Public Health Service Act to revise and extend projects relating to children and violence to provide access to school-based comprehensive mental health programs.
It is the purpose of this Act to–
(1) revise, increase funding for, and expand the scope of the Safe Schools-Healthy Students program in order to provide access to more comprehensive school-based mental health services and supports;
(2) provide for comprehensive staff development for school and community service personnel working in the school; and
(3) provide for comprehensive training for children with mental health disorders, for parents, siblings, and other family members of such children, and for concerned members of the community.
You can read the entire text of the bill here. So far the bill has eleven cosponsors.
The Sequester
According to Jon Ward at the Huffington Post the Sequester will happen. Congress has until March 1st to fix the budget at which point automatic cuts will take effect; such cuts will have disastrous effects.
Yesterday Senator Babara Mikulski (D-MD) released a letter she received from the Secretary of the US Department of Housing and Urban Development (HUD), Shaun Donovan. In that letter Donovan list the impact the sequester would have on housing programs; stating that such cuts “would be deeply destructive and would affect numerous families, individual and communities across the nation that rely on HUD programs.” You can read the entire letter below:
[gview file=”https://swhelper.org/wp-content/uploads/2013/02/HUD-Letter-February-Sequester-Hearing.pdf”].
In terms of accountability: Oversight of VAWA is carried out by the Office of Violence Against Women which is part of the Department of Justice. If you wish you can go to their site and read through the reports they have on the effectiveness of programs funded through VAWA http://www.ovw.usdoj.gov/.
In terms of accountability: Oversight of VAWA is carried out by the Office of Violence Against Women which is part of the Department of Justice. If you wish you can go to their site and read through the reports they have on the effectiveness of programs funded through VAWA http://www.ovw.usdoj.gov/.
VAWA has actually made a difference but there is still more that needs to be done. This article will also give you some insight as to why this issue could not be left at the local level http://www.huffingtonpost.com/kim-gandy/violence-against-women-act_b_2237264.html.
Some highlights of VAWA:
-It provides funding that has trains some 500,000 law enforcement officers, judges, prosecutors and other personal every year.
-It established the National Domestic Violence Hotline which receives 22,000 calls a month.
-We have also seen a 67% decrease in intimate partner violence since VAWA passed and the rate of female homicides by intimate partners has decreased by 35%. For males it dropped by 46%.
You can read more about this here http://www.whitehouse.gov/sites/default/files/docs/vawa_factsheet.pdf and here http://www.bjs.gov/index.cfm?ty=pbdetail&iid=4536.
I am sorry you did not feel this post was detailed enough, but it was an update not a policy analysis or a position paper. By the way, VAWA does help fund programs at the local level and that support has made a huge difference.
The article was written well however, the information is simply a rehash from any other news report. In other words, nothing new or unique. I would have liked to see a more critical look at the proposed bill. The bills are mostly “feel” good legislation that really does nothing. Violence against women is just as bad as violence against men, children, animals, etc. Any violent crime should be considered a hate crime, you don’t need special “clarification” or legislation. Overall the only thing the legislation has done in the past is bring more attention to violence against women among those that supported the legislation (in other words; preaching to the choir). Very little has prevented any crime. It is difficult to vote against these kind of bills because it makes you look bad, however, everyone agrees to reduce violence against any group, everyone agrees mental health programs in schools would be good. The problem is these bills don’t help or solve anything in real life on the community level. There is also the problem of added funding and accountability of which the bill fails in specifics of how this would happen. If someone was serious about this issue they would start a movement on the local level, it is only through the local level that anything will be effective.
Thank you.
This was a great post!