This summary is based on the Quick Reference Guide (Tolvonen et al., 2022a). The Practice Resource (Tolvonen et al., 2022b), upon which the Quick Reference Guide is based, should be consulted where more detailed information is required, especially if seeking examples of questions to ask. Note that ESTIE is an abbreviation for the Evidence to Support Safe and Together Implementation and Evaluation Project.
Foundations of DFV informed practice at the intersections.
Many victim/survivors of domestic and family violence (DFV) experience higher rates of mental ill-health and/or increased use of alcohol and other drugs. Workers must be mindful of how and when these impacts developed, the connection with the violence and abuse, and how alcohol and other drug use and mental health issues can be exploited by perpetrators to maintain control over a victim/survivor and their children.
Perpetrators often use mental health issues or use of alcohol and other drugs as an excuse for their violence and control in two important ways (that may happen simultaneously):
They blame the victim/survivor’s alcohol or other drug use or mental health concern as the reason for their violence. ‘She was drunk and out of control, so I had to restrain her’.
They minimise their use of violence, referring to their behaviour as a ‘mental health issue’ or as a result of their drug and alcohol use. ‘I only hurt her when I’m drunk’ or ‘I didn’t know what I was doing, I was drunk’ or ‘It’s not my fault, I couldn’t control myself.’ Describing behaviour like this is often used to manipulate and coerce workers into believing the perpetrator is not responsible for the violence.
The Safe & Together Model
The Safe & Together Model provides a useful framework to support a domestic and family violence informed approach. The model aims to keep children ‘safe and together’ with the non-offending parent, partnering with them and being involved with the perpetrator in ways that strengthen the safety and wellbeing of children, whilst holding them to account for their abusive behaviours.
Working at the intersections
DFV informed principles and practices must underpin all aspects of social work.
Principle 1 Partnering with the victim/survivor
Partnering with a victim/survivor and their family is the first step to developing a collaborative relationship built on trust, and will provide the best possible foundation for a safe journey away from a perpetrator’s violence and control. Victim/survivors are the experts on their own situation, including perpetrator and relationship dynamics, and what information or actions will keep them safe or expose them to greater risk.
I. Affirm abuse is the choice of the perpetrator. Ask questions that encourage the victim/survivor to consider their right to be safe. Consider and affirm acts of resistance and how the victim/survivor creates safety on a daily basis. Use affirming statements.
II. Ask questions about the perpetrators’ pattern of abuse. This can help a worker connect the dots between the intersecting issues and the pattern of abuse. Understanding additional barriers and risks for victim/survivors from other priority populations including the LGBTQI+ community, newly arrived migrants and refugees, and victim/survivors with a disability, is also essential, including asking questions which explore how the perpetrator uses elements unique to these backgrounds to further their abuse.
III. Effective assessment is the key to working at intersections. Key to assessment is exploring and documenting three domains:
1. Mapping the perpetrator’s pattern or harm. This is a structured process:
Step 1: Identify the perpetrator’s pattern of coercive control and actions taken to harm the children.
Step 2: Map the perpetrator’s pattern onto the behaviours of the victim/survivor, the children and young people, and family functioning.
Step 3: Map the perpetrator pattern onto victim/survivor’s strengths.
Step 4: Map the perpetrator pattern onto intersectionality, and other contextual factors as well as alcohol and other drug use and mental health issues.
Step 5: Consider the implications for planning and practice.
2. Mapping the victim/survivors’ protective efforts and strengths and assessing for safety. Draw out information about:
· The relationship between alcohol and other drug use, mental health issues and victim/survivor’s protective efforts.
· The full range of protective actions that the victim/survivor is engaging in to protect themselves and their children even when they have alcohol and other drug use or mental health issues.
· Any information that contributes to enhancing victim/survivor’s and their children’s safety, such as safety plans, information from other services involved.
· How the victim/survivor protects their children from the perpetrator’s alcohol and other drug use or mental health issues as they intersect with abusive behaviours.
This is a structured process:
Step 1: Identify the perpetrator’s pattern of coercive control and actions taken to harm the children.
Step 2: Identify the protective factors of the victim/survivor.
Step 3: Identify socio-economic, alcohol and other drug, mental health or other complicating factors.
Step 4: Consider implications for practice.
3. Assessing the impact on children and young people. It is critical to ask about and document the pattern of harm to children and young people. Ask about trauma-related effects, psychological abuse, disruptions to the family’s ecology, impact on parenting, impact on child’s daily life, physical abuse of children, threats to family pets, and neglect concerns.
IV. Provide a validating response which lets the victim/survivor know they are heard, believed, and understood.
I am sorry that this has happened to you. You have a right to live free of violence and abuse.
I know that you’ve struggled with your own drinking but it’s clear from what you shared with me that right now, for you, your drinking makes it easier to deal with hurt and the anger caused by his violence. And you have a plan with your mum to make sure the kids are taken care of when you drink.
It sounds like this has been happening for some time. Are you able to tell me more about how these behaviours have been affecting you and the children over the past months and years?
It’s amazing that given his violence and the chaos caused by his methamphetamine use you have kept the children going to school every day.
I understand that your visa relies on your husband. I am wondering what he says about this to you.
Let me know how we can make sure you feel safe and comfortable here. Would you like me to connect you with an Aboriginal Health Worker? Is there a friend, family member or support person you would like to be here? Or anything else that might make you feel safe?
When survivors’ behaviours don’t make sense, very often the answer is not about better trying to understand them, but trying to understand their context, and the context the violence has created.
V. Build collaborative partnerships with victim/survivors.
The inherent power in the service provider/client relationship may at times mirror the power in the victim/survivor’s relationship with the perpetrator. Therefore, critically reflect on personal use of professional power; bias, racism and common beliefs; and how to build a strong alliance with the survivor. Be guided by the survivor: listen to how they define ‘safer’ or ‘better’; how do they want their children’s relationships with the perpetrator to look? Respect their agency; support their connection to culture.
Practising cultural safety and respect can mean the difference between someone continuing with services or disconnecting, feeling like they aren’t being heard. It is important to remember that family and Kinship bind Aboriginal people together through: providing identity; understanding of spiritual and cultural belonging; and establishing strong links with community.
Principle 2 Increasing the visibility of perpetrators—keeping the perpetrator in view
When you have limited or no contact with the perpetrator: Ensure that the source of risk and harm is always at the centre of the conversation with the victim/survivor when engaging, assessing, planning, intervening and documenting. Explore and document the impacts of the perpetrator’s harmful actions and the impacts on the victim/survivor’s mental health, alcohol and other drug use and broader family functioning (including impacts on children).
When you have direct contact with a perpetrator: Hold them accountable for their use of violence and control, in the context of their alcohol and other drug use or mental health issues and separate from other factors that increase the complexity of their lives. Strategies for engaging with the perpetrator should be consistent with practitioner’s confidence, experience and expertise, and the role and capacity of the service setting.
Engage, but never validate the perpetrator’s statements that blame others or ‘the system’.
Redirect your line of questioning to focus on the perpetrator’s pattern of abusive behaviour instead of colluding with his explanations for violence or labelling victim/survivors as mutually responsible.
How do we hold perpetrators accountable in a way that is culturally safe for Aboriginal people? Non-Aboriginal workers should discuss with cultural brokers (e.g. community elders) how to address individuals, families and community members in a culturally safe way. In particular seek advice on how to ask the following key questions:
Do you feel safe to talk with me about the role of culture and identity in your life? Have you lost aspects of your culture? If so, how is this impacting your life?
How do you see yourself as a partner, and how does this behaviour impact and harm your partner?
How do you see yourself as an Aboriginal father raising Aboriginal children and how does your behaviour impact and harm them?
How do you want your children to see you or remember you?
What would you need to help support you to address your behaviour, the DFV, alcohol and other drug use and mental health issues?
What would recovery and healing mean to you as an Aboriginal man and what cultural considerations need to be factored in?
Principle 3 Keeping children and young people visible, heard and safe
Practitioners must maintain a strong focus on the safety and wellbeing needs of children and young people living in families where there is DFV, whether or not their service engages directly with children. A key focus for practitioners should be:
Connect the dots between the perpetrator’s pattern (including alcohol and other drug use and/or mental health issues) and the impact on children.
Consider how the perpetrator’s actions change the way the family functions day to day, harms the children and impacts normal developmental activities.
Avoid blaming children for the way trauma affects them and impacts their behaviours.
Acknowledge children and young people as active agents.
Validate and support children and young people. Believe what they say.
When working with a child or young person, it is important to talk about what is happening for them. The following areas of discussion may be helpful.
Ask the child or young person how they’re feeling.
Ask the child or young person what is most important to them to talk about. Explore with the child or young person whether there are things they do when things are hard at home.
Talk with them about protective and trusted adults in their lives (e.g. non-offending parent, aunt, teacher, GP).
Tell the child or young person it’s not their fault.
Allow them to be angry, sad, or have any other feelings about perpetrator or their non-offending parent.
Encourage the child or young person to find ways to share their feelings (through play or art).
Ask them how it has been working with services.
Make appropriate referrals to family services or child protection services.
Documenting
Record-keeping is a powerful tool in any service response to domestic and family violence. It can be used to improve responses to families both immediately and in the longer term. Documentation is central to all parts of the work, and can:
identify interventions and treatment options,
act as evidence in family law cases, child protection or criminal matters, and
be used as an advocacy tool to provide an alternative narrative to service systems that do not understand DFV.
Always record:
The pattern of harm caused by the perpetrator through their behaviours.
Evidence of its impact on family functioning, family ecology, the victim/survivor, and the children.
Evidence of the effects of the perpetrator’s actions on the victim/survivor’s parenting.
How the intersections with alcohol and other drug use, mental health issues and intersectionality are part of the multiple pathways to harm.
Examples of effective documentation
1. Partnering with the survivor
Non DFV informed | DFV informed |
Mother did not present to clinic.
| Mother did not present for appointment. Social worker rang mother who reported she wanted to attend but her partner and father of baby refused to provide her with transport. |
Mother returned to DFV relationship.
| Mother reports that she left her partner 6 months ago. She reports he continued to threaten to take the children away from her to force her to return to live with him. |
History of ‘non- compliance’ with medication.
| Patient has disclosed ongoing domestic violence perpetrated by her partner. She reports he often steals and sells her prescribed medications, meaning she has to go for days without it. She identifies that her anxiety gets worse when she can’t access her medications. |
Mother met with social workers on home visits.
| Mother consistently met with social workers and engaged in home visits, despite reporting ongoing violence and threats from her ex-partner. Services observed her ex-partner calling her phone multiple times during appointments and on one occasion he was seen leaving the house when workers arrived. |
2. Holding the perpetrator accountable
Non DFV informed | DFV informed |
Father not included in referral. | Workers made consistent attempts to engage the father over 12 months. He would not answer worker calls although his partner reports he has a working phone.
|
Children from previous relationship, minimal contact. | Kody has four children with his ex-partner and reports he sees them approximately 1-2 times a year on holidays. On their last visit Kody is known to have physically assaulted his ex-partner and threatened to kill her in front of the children. When asked about the incident, Kody confirmed that he had assaulted his ex-partner but minimised his behaviours, reporting the children ‘didn’t see that much of it’. |
3. Partnering with the survivor
Non DFV informed | DFV informed |
Father completed program, recommended long-term counselling when discharged. | Over the 12 weeks of counselling, we discussed his current relationship with his partner and children. When asked how his drug use and violence impacted on them, the father struggled to identify any impacts. We would recommend that services continue to address his use of violence and monitor behaviour change. |
4. Keeping the focus on children and young people
Non DFV informed | DFV informed |
Children witnessed DV incident. | The children have been exposed to domestic violence perpetrated by their mother’s current partner over the past 3 years. Because of his violence they have been homeless, had to change schools, and been isolated from their peers. |
The young personwas referred for counselling for emotion ‘dysregulation, aggression, verbal outbursts and PTSD’. | The young person continues to experience manipulation and verbal abuse from her biological father. Workers observed that her father encourages her to be aggressive, including towards workers. The young person has been diagnosed with PTSD as a result of her biological father’s abuse. |
Service and Systems Considerations
1. Working Safely
Threats to worker safety are serious. They require forward planning and should be written into agency policy and procedures and prioritised by management. Services must take steps to mitigate risks to workers resulting from abuse, threats, harassment, vexatious complaints and intimidation from perpetrators. In particular, Services must consider how they will ensure workers’ emotional and psychological safety and wellbeing.
2. Working collaboratively
Workers are consistently engaging in collaborative partnership approaches with stakeholders: the victim/survivor and their children, other family members, services and service sectors, broader systems, and Aboriginal colleagues, families and communities. A key aspect of working collaboratively is the development of a shared language that resonates across the various sectors and stakeholders. This language can be embedded in documentation highlighting the perpetrator’s pattern of harm as well as the victim/survivor’s strengths and protective efforts.
3. Capacity building and organisational change
Influencing organisational practice change and capacity building is complex work and requires both a ‘top down’ and ‘bottom up’ approach involving individual workers, senior management and governance. Critical to the whole process is an authorising environment that supports not only the change but the workers or champions working towards the change.
Organisations could start with:
Internal systems and processes (including recording systems).
Multi-agency initiatives.
Develop shared language to communicate issues with other services.
Training opportunities.
Supporting strong leaders who will champion change.
References
Toivonen, C., Kertesz, M., Lauw, M., Humphreys, C., Isobe, J., Links, E., & Laing, L. (2022a). ESTIE Quick Reference Guide: A worker’s guide to support practice at the intersections. University of Melbourne, Melbourne and Ministry of Health, NSW. https://vawc.com.au/estie-quick-reference-guide-a-workers-guide-to-support-practice-at-the-intersections/
Toivonen, C., Lauw, M., Isobe, J., Links, E., Kertesz, M., Mandel, D., Laing, L. & Humphreys, C. (2022b) ESTIE Practice Resource: Evidence based guidelines to support the implementation of the Safe & Together approach. Ministry of Health, NSW and University of Melbourne, Melbourne. https://vawc.com.au/estie-practice-resource/
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