Engaging Residents in Domestic Violence Shelter Redesign Boosts Well-Being
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January 2025
NORC used personal experience and trauma-informed research skills to encourage resident participation in evaluating New York City’s EmPWR program.
A NORC-led evaluation found that re-imagining communal spaces within domestic violence shelters improved the well-being of both residents and staff.
The evaluation, conducted in partnership with the New York Academy of Medicine and Evaluation+Learning Consulting, relied on our research team’s experience and skill to give voice to residents’ feelings about the redesigned spaces. The team used the evaluation findings to create an implementation guide that other shelters can use to inform similar efforts.
This New York City program rethinks shelter design with well-being in mind.
In 2019, the New York City Department of Health and Mental Hygiene and the New York City Human Resources Administration collaborated on the Environments Promoting Wellness & Resilience (EmPWR) initiative, an effort to redesign the communal spaces at nine of the city’s domestic violence shelters based on resident and staff feedback.
The EmPWR program aimed to redesign the shelters’ communal spaces to promote resident healing and well-being. By engaging residents and shelter staff in a five-step redesign process, the project gained valuable insights into the residents’ needs and how to reconfigure the spaces to best meet them.
Instead of focusing solely on aesthetics, the redesign emphasized creating functional spaces that catered to the needs of residents. For example, kitchens were redesigned to support residents’ desire to cook and enjoy communal meals. Communal work and gathering spaces were redesigned to create areas where children could play nearby, allowing the residents to focus on meeting their own needs while feeling their children were safe. Stationary furniture was replaced with modular furniture that could be reconfigured for different purposes. Outdoor play spaces were recreated to be welcoming and engaging to children and their parents.
“The participatory nature of EmPWR and the evaluation process gave residents an opportunity to use their voice and speak up for what they want and need.”
NORC leveraged personal experience and trauma-informed research skills to encourage resident participation.
NORC’s researchers relied on their professional expertise and personal experience to shape the evaluation design. They also tapped the resources and expertise of NORC’s Center on Equity Research. The team focused on using a trauma-informed lens to ensure that data collection uplifted resident voices and focused on ensuring safety, trust, collaboration, and empowerment.
For the safety and security of residents and their children, the locations of the shelters had to be kept strictly confidential, and evaluators’ onsite visits were limited. Instructions for participating in the evaluation were translated into several languages to ensure all could participate.
“Our goal was to invite residents to share their reflections on the redesign in an unobtrusive, noninvasive way to protect their privacy,” explained Alexis Marbach, project director and senior research scientist in NORC’s Public Health department.
They used focus groups and interactive poster displays to allow residents to express their feelings. When the evaluation was over, the team shared their data and conclusions with the residents, staff, and shelter leadership to ensure the evaluation results were consistent with their feelings.
Our evaluation found that empowering residents pays dividends.
The evaluation showed that the changes to communal spaces increased residents’ and staff members’ sense of well-being, mental health, and safety. Residents also reported feeling empowered by the experience of participating in the redesign and evaluation.
“The experience of domestic violence can take away a resident’s voice,” Marbach, a DV survivor herself, said. “But the participatory nature of EmPWR and the evaluation process gave residents an opportunity to use their voice and speak up for what they want and need.”
NORC also created an implementation guide to help staff at other community-based residential social service settings pursue a similar redesign process. Marbach noted that shelter staff and leadership are often overloaded in resource-constrained environments, so the NORC team made the implementation guide practical and easy to use with available resources.
She also noted the engagement process itself is beneficial and can be deployed even during small projects with limited budgets. “Small changes can lead to big improvements,” she said.
This article is from our flagship newsletter, NORC Now. NORC Now keeps you informed of the full breadth of NORC’s work, the questions we help our clients answer, and the issues we help them address.
