Partnering with #BetterWay to End Relationship Violence
Community Resource Center is a partner of #BetterWay – a state-wide, family violence prevention media campaign. The campaign goal is to strengthen protective factors among youth to prevent family violence and reduce the impact of violence among young people.
The term “family violence” refers to a broad range of violence that can occur in families, including domestic violence or intimate partner violence, child abuse, and elder abuse. These different forms of violence are strongly interconnected and share many of the same risk and protective factors.
The #BetterWay campaign themes focus on promoting protective factors that have been identified by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention as having cross-cutting impact across multiple forms of violence. These protective factors include supportive family environments, positive parenting, and nurturing relationships between youth and their caregivers. The intent of the campaign is to promote these protective factors and increase awareness of healthy relationship behaviors. By encouraging and empowering individuals and communities to foster and maintain healthy relationships, the campaign intends to strengthen the larger social movement to end family violence.
The following are the campaign’s key messages on healthy relationships:
- Trust — Trust looks different in every relationship. Trust is defined as being able to rely on and have confidence in someone. It is important that everyone in a relationship is able to feel safe, emotionally and physically. Trust is a choice and is built together by both partners.
- Setting and Respecting Boundaries — Healthy relationships rely on both partners knowing each other’s wants, goals, fears, and limits. Both parties should feel comfortable honestly communicating their needs and talking about boundaries with their partner. When discussing boundaries, it is important to include emotional, physical, and digital boundaries.
- Fair and Kind Communication — Partners can discuss problems and come to an agreement. It’s important to listen and make the other person feel heard and understood.
- Conflict Resolution Skills — Conflict is a normal part of any healthy relationship. The key is not to avoid conflict but to learn how to resolve it in a healthy way. When conflict is handled in a respectful and positive way, it can provide an opportunity to strengthen the bond between people.
- Mindfulness/Check Your Emotions — Life is filled with different stressors and it is important to take time to check how we are feeling. The last thing we want to do is to take out our frustration or stress on someone we love and care about.
- Self Care — To be in a healthy relationship with another individual, we need to have a healthy relationship with ourselves. Selfcare is doing things that promote our physical, mental, and emotional wellbeing.
To learn more, visit the campaign website at betterwaycampaign.org and take the pledge to do your part to end family violence!
