What Do Domestic Violence Counselors Do?
I have been working as a domestic violence counselor educator in Illinois for most of the last 20 years, with court ordered clients, as there are very few volunteers. My work in the field began as counties in Illinois began to implement a State of Illinois protocol which was heavily influenced by the Minnesota Model of prosecution and education of court ordered perpatrators. Perhaps the first thing to know is that domestic violence counselors in Illinois are not doing therapy, they are doing psychoeducation, and that has a tremendous bearing on the tools available to use in work with clients. Psychological testing, diagnosis utilizing the DSM IV, and treatment planning, for example, are not options for domestic violence counselors in Illinois, for example, as a result of the focus on education as opposed to mental illness, which was a compromise made designed to make men accountable for their abuse of women. Over the years, research has brought some of the assumptions of our early mode
