Capacity of State and Local Actors to Respond to Violence Against Women: Impact Evaluation of Training Civil Servants on Violence Against Women in Medellín (Colombia), Component of the Program "Seguridad Pública"

The Secretary of Women of Medellin, through the ICONTEC, intends to conduct training to officials of the 22 family commissioners in Medellin. The objective of these trainings is to standardize procedures in order that women do not feel re-victimized and can forward complaints. Since the training will be done in phases in 2014 and there is willingness of relevant stakeholders to generate a random order on which commissioners the training is first performed, it can be done a cluster randomized trial.

We will require all 22 commissioners to be randomly assigned into two groups, one treatment and one control. To implement it is intended to:

• Conduct a baseline survey amongst women who used the services of the commissionaires between June and Septmber 2013, completed the process of care and signed informed consent.
• Training of a randomly chosen set of 11 commissioners will take place between June and September 2014.
• Conduct an endline survey amongst women who used the services of any of the 22 commissionaires between June and September 2014, completed the process of care and signed informed consent.

Women will be contacted through the commissioners. Women who have completed the process of care will be ask whether they want to participate in the study. If they agree, their contact details will transfer to the investigators for the survey to be conducted. This process would be conducted twice for baseline information before beginning the training, and for endline, once half of the first 11 commissioners have been trained.