Service Contact and Delivery of a Shelter Outreach Project.

An experimental outreach program offered shelter-based support groups or phone counseling to battered women in the criminal and civil courts. The outreach project attempted to contact 1,895 eligible women drawn from the court dockets. Nearly 50% of these women could not be reached, another third refused services, and about a fifth of the women accepted either the shelter-based counseling or phone counseling. However, only 19% ( n = 71) of those who accepted service (or less than 4% of the total eligible women) actually participated in the service. The women refused services primarily because they did not feel they needed them; they accepted service mainly to get help with their emotions. The women who participated in the shelter-based counseling tended to be of a higher social economic status than women who generally contacted the courts. The main problems for the women in phone counseling was recurring abuse from their partners and getting help for their children. The findings may suggest different types of battered women that warrant different strategies to reach them. The outreach efforts might be further developed, as well, to more actively recruit and engage women in general. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]