Building Healthy Relationships to End Violence: Introduction to the Special Issue

Violence among people with intimate and family relationships continues to be a pervasive and costly social problem in the United States. Our response, here, and in many other countries, is largely reactive and oriented toward criminal justice for those who engage in violence with little or no attention to the breakdown in social and intimate relationships that often underlie violence. A renewed attention to the importance of social relationships—captured by the Grand Challenges for Social Work language that the “social is fundamental” (Lubben et al., 2018)—the foundation for designing innovative, effective, and culturally relevant solutions. Social work has long recognized that social relationships are fundamental to growth, problem-solving, well-being, and the cultivation of human potential (Sherraden et al., 2014). As a field concerned with social relationships and dedicated to science, social work is poised to lead, develop, and implement solutions that prevent and reduce violence. Our Grand Challenge to Build Healthy Relationships to End Violence broadly embraces scholarship relating to violence, oppression, prevention, intervention, relationships, and health, which is inclusive of nuanced treatment of gender and reduced stigma through a strength-based focus of building healthy relationship. In this special issue, we elevate promising social work-led or informed research that centers healthy relationships as a key element in reducing or preventing violence in ways that are fair, respectful, and culturally responsive (Barth et al., 2022).

The Grand Challenge to Build Healthy Relationships to End Violence adopts a strength-based approach to preventing and eradicating violence that centers on an anti-oppressive, life course framework in which interconnected influences of poverty, patriarchy, marginalization, and trauma are identified and addressed by deepening knowledge and advancing programs and services for victims and perpetrators that are nonstigmatizing (Kulkarni et al., 2020). This special issue contributes a body of knowledge that centers relationships through examining language, theory, and interventions. In this issue, Graham et al. (2024) analyzed the evolution, complexities, and tensions of language concerning people who experience intimate partner violence (IPV) and people who use violent behavior in intimate relationships. This analysis was conducted utilizing the lens of healing-centered engagement and provides touchpoints for ongoing conversations that recognizes the experiences of diverse individuals, families, and communities impacted by IPV. Similarly to the importance of language, equally vital are the development of fresh approaches to relationship strengthening and violence prevention theories and conceptual models of relational health. Miller et al. (2024) conducted a scoping review of theories of relational health used in interpersonal violence research and contributes to our understand of the theoretical foundations that inform intervention strategies at mitigating adverse effects. Reed (2024) proffered a new conceptual model of healthy relationships among colleges students, the Tri-Thrive model, along with preliminary evidence from a pilot feasibility study.

Consistent with the CDC’s Connecting-the-Dots Framework, our Grand Challenge adopts a holistic and developmental perspective that acknowledges the importance of developing, implementing, and scaling prevention and intervention programs that address micro, meso, and macro risk and protective factors comprehensively, while also appreciating that efforts to address root causes of violence have been located primarily at the individual and interpersonal levels. Six papers within this special issue focused on interventions that centered relationships. Bocanegra and Aguilar (2024) provided a detailed look at urban violence interrupters and their participation in stopping violence in Chicago, Illinois. They discuss how violence interventions that recognize and address the significant connection between jealousy, rivalry, and embittered relationships must be addressed. Balser and colleagues (2024) provide a state-of-the-art review of qualitative studies on restorative justice (RJ) applied to IPV cases. RJ has been controversial in the IPV field because of the long-avowed risk of power dynamics favoring violent men (especially) that would not allow for accountability and justice to be served. Balser et al (2024) provide a nuanced discussion of the opposing sides of using RJ in IPV cases and evidence from the current body of knowledge. Davis et al. (2024) explored abusive partner intervention programs and coordinated community responses by discussing the implementation of a citywide approach to people who cause harm. This article tackles the challenge of ensuring accountability within a relationship strengthening framework that also involves multiple pathways to healing and safety within and outside of the criminal legal system. Pennell and colleagues (2024) have added to their innovative study of family group conferencing/mediation in the United States (Pennell et al., 2021) with insights from leading international interventionists also exploring ways to involve children in family group approaches.

Innovations in workforce education, training, and development of clinical approaches are critical to increase the number of social workers, and other professionals and para-professionals with skills of how to respond to those who experience interpersonal violence. Tarshis’ (2024) paper on advances in simulation training for practitioners working with clients who are female, immigrant, and experiencing IPV. This bi-national study offers important guidance for helping social work to achieve the benefits of simulation-based research training. Friend and Robbins (2024) outline a five-step clinical approach to working with child sexual survivors, now as adults. Approaches such as this may be a key tool that clinicians can use to providing the survivor healing.

An essential step in leading to healthy relationship intervention is identifying and better understanding integral relationships of those who experience violence. Mora et al. (2024) provide insight into protective effects of mother- and father-adolescent communication in weakening the relation between violence exposure and adolescent depressive and posttraumatic stress disorder (PTSD) symptoms. Bender et al. (2024) elevate sibling relationships as a potential protective relationship among IPV-exposed children. This innovative work offers previously uncovered observations and suggestions for practice and research development.

While this special issue has contributed to the knowledge based on health relationship, we hope the research in this issue will spark further inquiry into healthy relationships as a key element in reducing or preventing violence, expanded conceptual models that call out adverse structural factors contributing to violence, identification of more relational risk and protective factors that help explain violence, and the development and further refinement of interventions that build healthy relationships. We thank our authors and reviewers and the leadership of the Building Healthy Relationships to End Violence for their support of this special issue.