The Illinois Family Violence Coordinating Councils (IFVCC) was convened by the Chief Justice of the Supreme Court of Illinois in 1993 and transferred to the Illinois Violence Prevention Authority in 2000 to enhance the management of IFVCC’s financial resources and operations. The IFVCC’s funding comes through the IVPA from an annual appropriation of the State General Assembly. The IFVCC is a non-mandated, informal organization composed of a state-level Steering Committee; 28 local family violence coordinating councils, with jurisdictions covering the entire state; and statewide projects that address systems improvements through collaborations of partners, professional education, and integrated-systems protocols.

Since 1990, twenty-eight (28) local coordinating councils have been formed in 22 judicial circuits, covering 102 counties. Cook County has 6 councils formed on the basis of its judicial municipal districts. Each local council is typically staffed by a part-time coordinator, hired by the chief judge, and funded through IFVCC allocations, which are managed through IVPA’s grant program.

Since 1997, the IFVCC has received funding from the Illinois state legislature initially through the Illinois Supreme Court, and since 2000 through the Illinois Violence Prevention Authority. This funding provides for the grants, staffing and operations of the IFVCC. The councils are funded equally through an allocation of $19,500, which typically provides for a part-time local council coordinator and partially pays for the expenses of the local council.

Local family violence coordinating councils are formed using a judicial model. The judicial circuit's chief judge convenes and chairs the council, using that position's charge to develop programs that improve the court's ability to serve the community and dispose of cases. Local councils emphasize prevention through strengthened services, comprehensive systems, coordination, protocol development, public education, professional training, data analysis, and information exchange.

Local council membership is comprised of policy level and practitioner decision makers, representing the many systems that interact with family violence victims and perpetrators. Professions involved include judges, defense attorneys, prosecutors, law enforcement, probation, circuit clerks, victim advocates, nurses, doctors, social services professionals, coroners, animal control officers, clergy, school personnel, businesses, and housing authorities.

Each council is launched with a family violence symposium hosted by the chief judge, where typically over 700 professionals have attended the one-day program presented on two consecutive days. National and state experts address topics such as the dynamics of domestic violence, effects on children, elder abuse, and effective responses by the criminal justice system, schools, health systems, court system, and faith community.

IFVCC recognizes that each jurisdiction has unique resources and practices that must be honored for local leadership to be receptive to implementing a council. Because local jurisdictions are in different developmental stages based on the extent of previous local collaboration experience, technical support must recognize the need for individualized approaches and strategies. The IFVCC’s continued and growing local acceptance has been based on the principle of individualized technical support that is respectful, resourceful, and empowering.

The Illinois Family Violence Coordinating Councils (IFVCC) is the only judicially led family violence organization in the country that operates statewide at both the local and state levels. IFVCC was intiated under the auspices of the Illinois Supreme Court in 1990. Judges convene and chair the local councils and the state council, which accounts for the organization’s ability to bring leaders of all professions to the table, provide greater access to services, and to inspire others with the possibility for improvements and changes.

The breadth of leadership from the various professions and agencies involved fosters greater organizational learning and creative approaches previously impossible when professionals in one discipline and one agency worked in isolation of each other. We have found that the initial conversations across boundaries are a powerful force for continuing dialogue, because envisioning and acting together is so meaningful and generates the trust needed to work and create together.

The physical design of the IFVCC is an infrastructure that operates in all of Illinois’ judicial circuits and at the state level to empower people to work with systems to better fashion, more useful approaches to domestic violence, child abuse, elder abuse and the nexus between these forms of violence. The strategy is to bring together the policy and practitioner levels, to create cooperation across systems with all the involved players.

The methods we use are reflective interviewing, dialogue, facilitated exploration–all of which provide experiences of remembering the values and meaning that drive the work; reflecting on what has worked and why; gaining an overview of a system; and envisioning and creating desired outcomes. Utilizing collaboration of small numbers of people–10 to 20, county by county, 100 to 200 circuit by circuit, many are mobilized through cooperating and coordinating their efforts to build relationships across boundaries, honoring both their uniqueness and their interdependence. Watching this happen, one realizes again the simple truth that quality relationships between even a few committed people has great possibility.

A comprehensive, coordinated approach to preventing family violence, since the 1970's, has been promoted as the most efficient and effective way to penetrate systems and mobilize them for the greatest change. Illinois is one of the few states that has systematically organized a statewide infrastructure based on a comprehensive approach.

We have shown through the IFVCC, this is a way that works to bring professionals together through time to work cooperatively and, then, collaboratively. It lays the groundwork for ultimately manifesting our best hopes and greatest possibilities to prevent further family violence, to prevent homicides, and to eliminate secondary damage caused by systems that operate in isolation and without access to the necessary training, relationships, data, ideas, and collaborative models.

The story of the IFVCC is one of evolution, fueled by the growing involvement of local participants beginning in the fall of 1990 with the formation of the first local council. The chief judge of the 9th Judicial Circuit planned a kick off family violence symposium for 40 professionals from 6 rural counties, and an astounding 140 participants came. Two years later at the kick off in the 17th Circuit, we expected 250 from two counties and over 320 attended; and the next year in the 10th, we expected 350 and nearly 500 attended. Another 10 years later, in the 19th Circuit’s kick off symposium in 2003, we planned for 500 from its two counties and over 700 attended.

Since our beginning over 30,000 professionals across the state have participated in trainings and councils’ projects from 102 Illinois counties. Judge Bruce Black, the IFVCC Chair during 13 years, speaking at the January, 2003, IFVCC Semi-Annual Meeting in Chicago, said: “The ability to pursue justice depends on the partnerships that we cultivate.” It would seem that a similar perspective is shared by many and fires the energy of professionals statewide who have continued to pursue relationships with their partners from other disciplines through the IFVCC.

As the IFVCC has evolved and grown in many full-time collaborative efforts, the IFVCC Steering Committee and staff have been guided by the principle of co-creation in their relationship with the local councils. As co-creators, the state level organization’s approach to assisting councils is through a developmental process where the uniqueness of the emerging local participants’ visions, concerns, decisions, and actions are supported.

During the development of a council’s function and process, a structure is constructed that has as its goal to foster forums where relationships evolve, systems develop, visions emerge, and broad based changes occur for the prevention of family violence. When councils evolve from the most basic kinds of interactions, such as putting together a resource manual, to comprehensive projects such as on going data collection in the context of a domestic violence court system, capacity is enhanced, policies and practices changed, resources and potentials engaged.

Because we have found that even greater levels of involvement, confidence, resilience, and motivation for achieving their individual local goals are generated through local councils interacting and networking with each other, the IFVCC leadership and staff have nurtured the desire of the councils themselves to come together through regional combinations and state level projects. The state council’s technical support fosters opportunities for local councils’ utilizing each other as resources for exchanges of experience, expertise, and know how. In addition, the state council hosts quarterly networking and training meetings, one of which is a retreat, for the local councils coordinators. Interaction among the councils is also hosted through the state council’s semi-annual meetings.

With the completion of the final judicial circuit’s coordinating council in FY 2004, a milestone was reached: completion of the infrastructure of local family violence coordinating councils spanning the entire state. In 1989, we were led by questions, such as, What should we do that includes all the stakeholders and doesn’t violate any mandates or ethics? Who are our partners? What is possible? How do we proceed? What works best? What’s replicable? What needs to rely on local spirit and uniqueness? The questions have changed to: What ways work best to deepen collaboration? What ways do each of the councils vary from each other? Is time still the major ingredient to building trust? Are there methods we might open ourselves to that readily bring trust to forming relationships and cohesion to the process of collaboration? What approaches serve best to capture learning? What’s the best evidence of our efficacy? What processes work best to foster collaborative documentation?

We are dedicated to finding ways to assist local councils in their efforts to take the next steps to higher development. IFVCC’s greatest resource continues to be our relationships with our partners and stakeholders, the value we place on our interdependence, the meaning we gain from deep connections through our work together, and our mutual commitment to a world free of family violence.

Copyright © 2006 Illinois Family Violence Coordinating Councils Illinois Family Violence Coordinating Councils 528 South 5th Street, Suite 200 Springfield, IL. 62701 217/524-4962