This final evaluation report on the implementation of the Greenbook Initiative (GI) - which consists of guidelines proposed by the National Council of Juvenile and Family Court Judges for intervening effectively in cases of domestic violence and child maltreatment - assesses the extent to which GI implementation activities facilitated cross-system and within-system change and practice in child welfare agencies, dependency courts, and domestic-violence service providers.
In responding to the GI's commitment to collaborative efforts to change systems in order to improve practices, services, and outcomes for children and families experiencing the co-occurrence of intimate partner violence and child abuse, the evaluation found that the GI sites undertook major collaborative efforts intended to improve practices, services, and outcomes for children and families. Although conflicts were experienced, sites reported that the success of their collaborations was one of the lasting achievements of the GI. Although the collaboratives used a variety of early structures, all evolved to include an executive committee, a larger advisory board, and workgroups on specific issues. Among the GI partners, child welfare and the dependency courts represented major formal systems with well-defined roles and considerable power; whereas, the response to domestic violence, by contrast, was more typically composed of grassroots organizations that did not represent a single system. Among the lessons learned are that achieving change requires significant resources and persistent effort; shared focus and cooperation in addressing problems requiring collaboration fueled the motivation to achieve change; and different partners, structures, and activities had to be involved at different times, both in the larger cross-system collaborative and within systems. The national evaluation team collected data through site visit interviews, surveys, and case file reviews. Extensive references and appended evaluation instruments and supplementary data