Safe and Together

Shifting the paradigm where domestic violence, child maltreatment and child welfare meet

Posts Tagged child welfare

Stories from the 2010 Florida Dependency Summit

Aug 31

Posted by David Mandel in Safe and Together Florida, Safe and Together Model

By Kristen Selleck, MSW

National Training and Consultation Director

I attended the 2010 Florida Dependency Summit and, along with David Mandel and Bridget Reilly, met with various leadership staff from DCF and other agencies that’ve been trained in the Safe and Together model. There were excellent stories from these sites about their implementation, the changes in practice and case outcomes.

Workers and managers alike shared stories about the success for families of the implementation of the Safe and Together model. There were stories about how workers had begun intervening with domestic violence perpetrators to reduce the risk to children. There were stories about children who did not have to be removed from their mothers’ care because of assessing survivors’ strengths. In addition, managers talked about how their workers trained in Safe and Together advocated for maintaining children in the care of domestic violence survivors when other staff (not trained in the model) suggested removal. There were stories about how the assessment skills learned in the Safe and Together training helped DCF maintain the safety of children in cases that had the potential to end tragically.

Here are some of those stories:

  • Several managers discussed their strategies for implementing the Safe and Together model. In Jacksonville, FL, they’ve brought in David Mandel &Associates for additional training for their staff and they do monthly meetings of staff trained in the Safe and Together model to discuss cases and the adherence to the model.
  • In Monroe County, the community based care providers began reviewing all case plans and safety plans to ensure that the language of these documents was in line with the principles of the Safe and Together model. They found that many case plans asked domestic violence survivors to end their partner’s abuse (over which survivors have no control) and made changes to how staff writes these plans to avoid putting the responsibility on survivors to end their partner’s abusive behaviors.
  • One attorney discussed a situation in which they reopened a case that was about to end in the termination of parental rights of a mother. When examining the case it was clear that the mother was a survivor of domestic violence and she’d been alienated from the children by her batterer’s family. By reexamining the case through the Safe and Together lens, DCF was able to reopen the case and establish visitation between the children and their mother to support the healing nature of that relationship and their bond for the sake of the children.
  • One manager discussed a tragic case in which historically DCF would have been very “hard” on the domestic violence survivor. Instead, however, a supervisor trained in Safe and Together partnered with the client and was able to learn important assessment information, safety planning information and information that will shape the case plan to protect the child in the future.
  • And finally, a manager and an attorney discussed a case in which the Safe and Together training and the direct case consultation by Bridget Reilly led to the attorney returning to court and amending the case plan to put in interventions for the batterer who was not biologically related to the child in the home. These interventions were a unique approach that can work to protect the child in the future and to support the domestic violence survivor in caring for her child.

There were many success stories that we heard while at the Summit. The entire experience was, honestly, inspiring for me. To hear the stories of good practice and to think how many children have already been kept safe and their well-being accounted for is more than exciting, it’s heartwarming. It was encouraging and informative for me to also hear the creative and innovative ways in which Safe and Together Florida sites have strategized to maintain the momentum of the Safe and Together training as well as find ways to monitor the implementation and ongoing practice.  It supports my confidence that our collective work is really benefiting families and maintaining the safety and well-being of children every day.

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Creativity Aids in the Application of the Safe and Together Model

Aug 4

Posted by David Mandel in Safe and Together Model

By Kristen Selleck, MSW

National Training and Consultation Director

In order to maintain the safety and well-being of children with limited resources and  following policies and statutes which weren’t necessarily developed with domestic violence cases in mind, child welfare workers need to be creative or think outside the box.   This skill can assist child welfare workers in their application of the Safe and Together model . Workers committed to intervening with perpetrators and partnering with survivors can develop innovative strategies to achieve child safety.  In recent months, I’ve seen this creativity in action in several states currently using the Safe and Together model.

In Florida, attorneys recommended keeping domestic violence survivors’ safety planning information and confidential disclosures separate from the rest of the case record. This is a creative solution to an issue of survivors’ disclosures being provided to batterers in case plans. Because of the work of this group of attorneys, their colleagues along with case managers and supervisors now have better resources for maintaining the confidentiality of survivors which can directly enhance the safety of children.

In Ohio, a child welfare manager discussed ways to create separate case plans for domestic violence survivors and perpetrators. Currently, families receive one case plan which creates expectations of survivors to end the domestic violence. Because domestic violence survivors do not have the power to change the perpetrators’ behaviors, these plans are inaccurate and set up survivors to fail if their partners choose to continue behaving in an abusive manner. The proposed changes are a creative way to ensure that domestic violence perpetrators are clear on the expectations set for them as well as ensuring survivors are not given the responsibility for ending his abuse. Beyond that, this change can be a creative way of enhancing the children’s safety by ensuring that perpetrators don’t have access to interfering with survivors’ case plans.

In Connecticut, the Department of Children and Families (DCF) has found ways to use the criminal justice system to intervene with perpetrators or find other ways (including subpoenaing perpetrators who are not biologically related to children to juvenile court proceedings or testifying in family court on behalf of the safety needs of the children). These interventions allows DCF to connect perpetrators to services or have court orders in place that assisted in protecting children. In addition, there have been numerous examples of how DCF has partnered with survivors to find creative ways to get children into treatment, to use resources and kin networks to maintain safety for children in the care of the domestic violence survivor.

In each of the above cases, child welfare professionals made significant advances in the practice of partnering with survivors or intervening with perpetrators without having to resort to changes in policy or statute.    So I pose the following questions to the child welfare professions reading this blog: What kind of changes can you make in your practice or the practice of your staff today that will lead to stronger partnerships with domestic violence survivors and/or stronger interventions with perpetrators?  What out-of-the-box actions can you take today that will enhance child safety and well being in cases where domestic violence is a factor?  You don’t need to wait for policy or statues to change in order to make real changes that lead to real improvements in safety and well being.

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The language of child safety

Mar 10

Posted by David Mandel in Children Exposed to Batterer Behavior, Safe and Together Model

By Kristen Selleck, MSW

National Training and Consultation Director

Professionals who work in the domestic violence and child welfare fields use language that others outside these fields may find unusual. Terms such as fatality, safety planning, imminency, order of protection, and many others are common in our conversations but are not always common for others outside our professions. Although professionals in both fields use the same terms, the words may have slightly different meanings whether you’re working in child welfare or if you’re working in the domestic violence field.   This was apparent to me during a recent training I facilitated that was attended by domestic violence advocates and child welfare staff.

Safety planning, for example, in the domestic violence field is about planning with a battered woman based on her experience and needs with her input. Within a framework of “woman defined advocacy,” domestic violence advocates work with their clients to strengthen plans the client has already enacted and provide her with information to broaden her options. Domestic violence advocates safety plan with clients who choose to stay with the batterer and those who choose to leave. Its hallmark is the collaboration between the advocate and the survivor that prioritizes the adult survivor’s right to make her decisions and the centrality of the wisdom gleaned from her experience of the batterer and her situation.

For child welfare workers, safety planning means something significantly different. Child welfare workers regularly use the term “safety planning” to mean the process for developing a plan for keeping children safe from the risk factors in the home. A safety plan for child welfare often involves a parent agreeing to engage in steps to ensure child safety. These steps could involve attending substance abuse treatment, leaving the home, or to ensuring a child is safely sleeping without hazards. Child welfare safety plans may include language about domestic violence but this will rarely be the only item written down as a task or goal for a parent.   Even when domestic violence is included in a child welfare safety plan, it is singularly focused on creating conditions related to the safety of the child.

Because of this difference, along with the many other terms that both professional fields use with slightly different meaning, domestic violence advocates and child welfare workers can believe they’re on the same page when they are not. This can lead to confusion and tensions between the fields. In the training I recently facilitated, advocates and child welfare staff had an open discussion about the barriers to their communication, including differences in the meaning of terms. It was a frank and important discussion to address and move past these barriers to improve communication. Throughout the training, the participants worked at defining their terms and using the Safe and Together model as  a framework and common language for collaborative conversations focused on the safety and well-being of children and their mothers. It is useful for domestic violence advocates to articulate the importance of child safety to working towards safety and empowerment for domestic violence survivors. It would also be helpful for child welfare to work towards the safety of adults as part of their safety planning for children.

With such alignment around ending violence and keeping children safe, domestic violence advocates and child welfare workers should be natural allies. There are, however, tensions at times between the fields. By talking openly about these tensions and finding common ground and common purpose (at times through a mutually understood language), I believe that domestic violence and child welfare fields working together will only improve the outcomes for families. In areas where there is good partnership between advocates and child welfare, I have seen extraordinary collaborative efforts that have led to safe outcomes for children while they can remain in the care of the non-offending parent.  I am also excited to see efforts to improve collaboration in various locations throughout the country as I believe it will only lead to improved outcomes for battered women and their children. This can be accomplished in various ways, but it is an important step for advocates and child welfare alike to learn about each other’s positions, missions and the language each field uses to discuss the safety of children and their mothers.

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10 item checklist about the intersection of domestic violence, substance abuse and mental health issues

Mar 9

Posted by David Mandel in Children Exposed to Batterer Behavior, Safe and Together Model, Trauma Exposure Reaction

by David Mandel, MA, LPC

Domestic violence frequently co-occurs with mental health and substance abuse issues.   A batterer may be diagnosed correctly or inappropriately with mental health issues.  A domestic violence survivor may also have a substance abuse problem.  A child who has been exposed to batterer’s behaviors may have mental or behavioral health issues. Frequently our response to these issues are “siloed,” meaning we prioritize one over the other or even completely ignore one issue to focus on another.  For instance substance abuse and mental health counselors may not screen for domestic violence or if domestic violence perpetration  is identified as an issue it may seen as a symptom of the substance abuse.  A survivor’s recovery plan may be developed without consideration of how the perpetrator might try to sabotage her recovery.   Or a child’s behavioral health issues are not evaluated in the context of historic and current domestic violence.

The following is a 1o item checklist to help begin the conversation about the intersection of domestic violence, substance abuse and mental health issues.  I share this list with the idea that raising our awareness by asking questions about the connection between different issues can be huge step forward in our ability to help families.

  1. What is the relationship between domestic violence, substance abuse, mental health issues?
  2. How have the batterer’s behavior created or exacerbated mental health/behavioral health and/or substance abuse issues for the adult survivor and/or child?
  3. What is the relationship between the batterer’s abusive behavior and any of his mental health and/or substance abuse issues?
  4. How is the batterer interfering with/supporting the treatment and recovery of family members?
  5. How are family members more vulnerable to the batterer because of their mental health and/or substance abuse issues?
  6. How is child welfare and others assessing for domestic violence when the presenting issue is adult or child behavioral/mental health/ substance abuse?
  7. What are important case or treatment plan steps when domestic violence is co-occurring with substance abuse and/or mental health issues?
  8. What are skill level/policy/practices of substance abuse and mental service providers regarding assessing for domestic violence, safety planning and the integration of co-occurring issues into their treatment plan?
  9. What information do mental health and substance treatment providers have access to regarding the domestic violence?
  10. What is the training and skill level of mental health or substance abuse evaluators/assessors regarding domestic violence in general and more specifically regarding the co-occurrence of domestic violence with substance abuse and/or mental health issues?

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Paying attention to worker safety in domestic violence cases

Jan 11

Posted by David Mandel in Safe and Together Model

by Kristen Selleck, MSW, National Training and Consultation Director

Successful child welfare interventions with families experiencing domestic violence depends on child welfare staff feeling confident, competent, and comfortable in working with situations where violence is a possibility. As part of our Safe and Together model we discuss safety concerns and safety measures taken by child welfare workers during the course of their daily tasks.

For example, worker safety needs to be considered when engaging and interviewing a perpetrator. The assessment of worker’s safety begins with seeking all available knowledge about the batterer’s specific tactics (his use of violence, threats and his potential actions towards escalation) and risk factors (possession of weapon, criminal record, past attempts or acts of aggression towards police or child welfare among others) prior to interviewing domestic violence perpetrators. While we know that the vast majority of domestic violence perpetrators will pose no physical harm towards child welfare workers, it is important to recognize that, despite this low occurrence of incidents, many workers have fear and worry at times when interviewing perpetrators of domestic violence. These fears can be about their own safety or fears that the intervention will trigger harm to the family members.

When I was a domestic violence victim advocate, clients spoke about their instinctive awareness of a batterer’s escalation. Numerous clients could identify key signals that their abuser was working himself up towards choosing to be violent. Battered women’s instincts were important to their ability to safety plan.  This is true for child welfare workers whose instincts are shaped and enhanced by their training, their supervision and their use of consultation.

I recently sat in on an interview of a domestic violence perpetrator by a child protective investigator in which the client was visibly agitated and fixated on the investigator’s ability (or lack thereof) to allow him to see his children despite the presence of a court order barring him from seeing his children. When the investigator appropriately explained her inability to change a judge’s order, the client became increasingly agitated and aggressive before finally stating that he wanted to harm someone. My instincts told me that the investigator and I were in physical danger and I repeatedly motioned to the investigator that we needed to end the interview. The investigator continued her interview until I stated that we had to leave. After we safely were out of the situation, I asked this investigator, for whom I have utmost respect, why she did not end the interview. She stated that she did not want her supervisor to be angry that she had not collected all of the information she was required to obtain.

Child welfare workers have incredibly difficult jobs with high levels of potential risk; much like firefighters walking into a burning building, child welfare workers walk into homes and situations that most people would turn away from. It is the job of a child welfare worker to go into volatile homes without armor, weaponry, badges or even hazardous duty pay. They face strict time frames and expectations of their duties and at times what falls by the wayside is their ability to take the time to trust their own instincts and walk away from a potentially dangerous situation.  While workers understand this risk and do their jobs despite it, it is important to recognize the tension between meeting the needs of a job and maintaining one’s safety.

It is important for child welfare supervisors, managers and consultants to allow for ongoing conversations about their workers’ anxieties and worries. These conversations will increase the likelihood that workers will use their instincts and make decisions based on those instincts rather than on a blanket anxiety that doesn’t account for the specific risk posed by any particular domestic violence perpetrator.

Here are some tips for workers and their supervisors to think about related to assessing worker safety related to going into homes with domestic violence:

  1. Worker should seek out information on related to the perpetrator’s dangerousness from multiple sources including criminal record, child welfare case records, and interviews with family members and collaterals.
  2. It is especially useful for workers to ask the domestic violence survivor how she believes the perpetrator will respond to the presence of child welfare.
  3. It is helpful for workers to understand the warning signs of high-risk or dangerous situations including perpetrators who have a history of assaultive and/or threatening behaviors to non-family members.  Especial attention should be paid to perpetrators who have history of assaultive and/or threatening behavior to law enforcement, child welfare and/or other authority figures.
  4. To actively seek out information regarding perpetrator access to or a history of weapon possession.
  5. Workers who are aware of potentially dangerous clients may feel more comfortable interviewing perpetrators in safe locations, such as courts, police departments or in the child welfare office.
  6. Child welfare staff should also have the opportunity to process their fears and concerns with their supervisors and learn about de-escalation tactics to assist them in their interviews with potentially dangerous domestic violence perpetrators.
  7. Cases involving high risk perpetrators can often benefit from being teamed with in a multi-disciplinary setting that includes law enforcement, child welfare and others.

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Domestic violence training for supervisors produces some positive results

Sep 29

Posted by David Mandel in Safe and Together Model

by David Mandel

“In child welfare cases involving domestic violence, supervision plays a critical role in determining the quality and consistency of case practice.   The expectations of supervisors and managers, as expressed through their questions and directives, determine workers’ priorities and areas of focus. Supervisors and managers make the critical decisions regarding case substantiation, transfer and removal.   In domestic violence cases,  it is the supervisor who decides whether a worker’s assessment of the domestic violence perpetrator’s threat to a child safety is complete. It is the supervisor who reviews the worker’s discussion with the survivor regarding safety planning and the children’s well-being.  It is the supervisor who often decides whether a case will be opened and transferred. And managers are frequently involved in cases, providing feedback and direction.” (excerpted from Supervising Domestic Violence Cases: A Training for Child Welfare Supervisors and Managers by David Mandel)

Starting in June 2008, I’ve been delivering targeted day long trainings for CT’s Department of Children and Families’ supervisors and managers entitled “Supervising Domestic Violence Cases.”   And as a follow up to the training,  I surveyed the participants regarding changes in their supervisory practice and their perception of the training is changing outcomes for families. The results are promising.

  • 66% of the respondents identified specific positive changes in their supervisory practice including (1) improved and increased utilization of the Domestic Violence Consultants; (2) greater understanding of the dynamics of coercive control and its impact on the family; (3) increased understanding of survivors’ strengths and safety planning; and (4) more specific questions and directives to workers.
  • 62% indicated positive change in their workers’ practice as a result of their training in the Safe and Together model including 1) workers were more empathetic and supportive to domestic violence survivors; 2) improved assessment and information gathering and 3) improved utilization of the Domestic Violence Consultants.
  • 50% of the respondents indicated positive changes in outcomes for families as a result of the training including 1) increased ability to maintain children safely in the home resulting in fewer out of home placements 2) referrals better tailored to the needs of the family 3) more support for domestic violence survivors and 4) greater accountability for the domestic violence perpetrator.
  • 69% of the respondents indicated continued positive or improved utilization of the Domestic Violence Consultants. For example, one supervisor reported an 80% increase in referrals to their Area Office Domestic Violence Consultant and other supervisors indicated workers were better prepared for the consultation process.

To read the full report on the training and the survey click here.


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Short and long term PTSD symptoms documented in child welfare workers

Jun 2

Posted by David Mandel in Trauma Exposure Reaction

by David Mandel

The March/April 2009 Child Welfare League of America publication Children’s Voices cited a recent study conducted by the New York Administration for Children Services in conjunction with the Mount Sinai School of Medicine which found significant evidence of short and long post traumatic stress symptoms in child welfare workers in New York City. The study which asked workers workers to identify their most distressing work related event found that one week later 60% reported “clinically significant post traumatic stress disorder symptoms.” The study also found that half of that group “continued to experience clinically significant PTSD symptoms an average of 2.15 years later.”

This number doesn’t surprise me. I’ve seen the impact of trauma in close colleagues and friends working in child protection and I know the effect first hand.  I’ve been part of many conversations about sleepless nights, weekends lost to fear and anxiety about cases and nightmares filled with violence.  I’ve seen individual workers and entire systems traumatized by the death of  a child.   Child welfare workers have shared with me how their work has intruded into their most private thoughts and relationships.

Given these numbers and experiences, we need to be thinking about how we can shift the child welfare culture to be more responsive to the needs of workers.  The CWLA newsletter described two models of how to respond to trauma exposure reaction and worker stress in a child welfare agency. The Administration for Children Services in New York developed the Resilience Alliance Project which provides 12 sessions of prevention intervention focused on building skills associated with optimism, mastery over negative emotion and in the area of self-care, and collaboration. Importantly the effort has targeted supervisors as well as workers, including a component to help supervisors integrate these skills into their supervisory practice.

Closer to home, Dr. Michael Schultz, a colleague of mine at Connecticut’s Department of Children and Families has been coordinating a series of efforts to support workers with , what he refers to as, worker related stress. Mike, along with others, recognizes that any effective effort to address the impact of the work needs to be broached in a sensitive manner. Workers are often resistant to discussing worker related stress or trauma exposure reaction for fear of being perceived as weak and unable to accomplish their work.  These attitudes are often embedded in the child welfare culture and internalized by workers. (Laura van Dernoot Lipsky directly addresses this issue in her book Trauma Stewardship—see April 14 blog entry) The Department’s efforts to sensitively address this issue have included peer led Worker Support Teams, which reach out to workers who are involved in critical incidents, and day long training for workers in worker related stress. The Department’s commitment to child safety, organizational development and worker well-being come together in staff debriefings after critical incidents. These debriefings blend attentiveness to the impact of the traumatic event on staff,  mutual support, organizational dynamics and the importance of learning lessons that may prevent future critical incidents.

If you want to read entire Children’s Voices article click here.

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Batterer Intervention Programs–not yet the resource child welfare needs

May 11

Posted by David Mandel in Safe and Together Model

by David Mandel

On the eve of the national batterer intervention conference in Minneapolis this week, I’ve been thinking about the relationship between batterer intervention programs and the child welfare system. One of my serious fears as I began working with child welfare systems was that batterer accountability and intervention would be approached exclusively from a simplistic service oriented perspective. So one of the main focuses of the Safe and Together work has been on how child welfare thinks about, talks to, and develops plans to intervene with domestic violence perpetrators. I’ve focused on how perpetrator’s behavior is documented, and how their influence in the family is integrated into safety plans, our assessment of the survivor’s strengths and the treatment plans for children. The last thing I wanted was child welfare agencies assuming that if they added batterer intervention programs to their menu of services they were doing everything possible to hold batterers accountable.

That said I do think batterer intervention programs have a critical role to play in any child welfare system’s response to domestic violence. The following is an informal checklist for batterer intervention programs who might be interested in becoming more of a resource for their local child welfare agency:

  • What is your familiarity with mission, policy, practice of your local child welfare agency? Most professionals outside child welfare have very little understanding of what shapes child welfare processes and decision making. Learning about those factors will help a batterer intervention program become a better collaborative partners with children welfare.

  • How much does child welfare refer to your program? What does child welfare know about your program and what do you have to offer them to support their mission of child safety, permanency and well-being? It can helpful to review of your intake process, curriculum, and communication about progress and completion from the perspective of serving clients referred because of safety and risk concerns for children. This may point out places where you can enhance your program to address the ways batterer’s harm children directly and through their impact on the survivor.

  • What do you know about how child welfare agencies in your area do or do not address batterers? Most professionals outside the child welfare system have limited knowledge about how that systems works. Taking the time to understand how your local child welfare system does or doesn’t intervene with batterers will help you help them with their mission. One of the best things you can do is set a meeting with your local child welfare administrators to find out about their current case practice relative to batterers. (You may find it useful to ask about their practices with fathers as well.)

  • What do you know about how child welfare holds batterers accountable in other ways in addition to referring them to a BIP? Batterer intervention programs are first and foremost advocates for stopping batterers’ violence, not advocates for their own programs. Learning the child welfare system will help you recommend child welfare actions that hold batterers accountable but do not necessary involve a referral for treatment. Examples of other steps child welfare may take include recommending that he return the family car to the children’s mother or having him support his child’s mental health counseling.

  • Does your program address how a batterer’s pattern of coercive control towards his partner impacts the children in the home? For a long time, batterer intervention programs have had education sessions on how children are impacted by domestic violence.* This needs to be expanded to address how children are used as weapons, how batterers undermine their partners’ parenting and how coercive control tactics focused on the survivor impact the children. For example, we need to be talking about how isolating and controlling a partner may impact children’s access to extended family and participation in activities in the community.

  • How well prepared is your program to assess batterers as parents? What questions do you ask in your program assessment to determine a batterer’s parenting role and skills, co-parenting practices and his ability to support his children’s relationship with their mother? Batterer assessments for child welfare need a strong component regarding these and related areas.

  • Is your referral/intake process set up to gather specific information from child welfare about a batterer’s pattern of coercive control and actions taken to harm the children? Since batterers thrive in an environment where there is limited information about their behavior patterns, a batterer intervention program needs to develop protocols for getting specific information from child welfare about a batterer’s pattern of coercive control and actions taken to harm the children. Child welfare often invests a lot of time and energy compiling this data from various sources. Batterer accountability, in form of more informed evaluations and feedback, will benefit when this information is shared with batterer intervention programs.

  • Do your progress reports communicate specifics about a batterer’s participation including how much he acknowledges his behavior, how well he understands the impact on his family and steps he indicates he is taking to change? Effective batterer intervention programs seek to pro-actively share meaningful information with referral sources. A simple letter indicating completion can be a batterer’s ticket back into the home or unsupervised visits with his children. Progress and completion reports must provide more individualized, detailed information about a batterer’s involvement with their program particularly as it relates to children safety and well-being. (As always, batterer intervention reports should be understood as a small piece of any assessment of the batterer. They need to combined with information from survivors and their advocates, interviews with children and other collateral sources of information.)

  • Is your program prepared to highlight the limitations of your work and encourage child welfare to partner with the survivor and continue their own assessment of the batterer’s change (or lack of change)? This point is so important it is worth making twice. Batterer intervention programs have a responsibility to educate child welfare about how to most effectively utilize their program to promote the safety and well-being of children. This means clearly identifying that a batterer’s participation in a program does not guarantee behavior change. The importance of understanding this is one of the reasons why the Safe and Together model places such a strong emphasis on the skills and competencies of child welfare workers. As a consumer of the batterer intervention service (because the service is something that feeds into the child welfare decision making process), child welfare workers need 1) accurate, meaningful and timely information about a batterer’s participation in a program and 2) the skills to evaluate potential change. These skills include developing meaningful behavior change goals as part of case plan and interviewing the batterer, family members and others about batterer behavior change.

* For early article about potential curriculum modules on a program for batterers as fathers, click here. For examples of how some batterer intervention programs have been beefing up their educational components on fatherhood go to Family Violence Prevention Fund, Emerge, or Caring Dads.

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Empathy for victims isn’t the answer (but it’s important)

Apr 21

Posted by David Mandel in Safe and Together Model

by David Mandel

During Safe and Together trainings,  I often hear some version of the following statement from child welfare workers:  “I can be empathetic to a victim to a point, and I don’t want to revictimize her but my bottom line is the safety of the children.”   The main implication is that empathy towards victims  is inherently in opposition to child safety.  Victim advocates often also focus on the importance of greater empathy on the part of child welfare, believing that greater empathy will lead to less punitive decisions.

I’ve found that the empathy framework is not the most useful construct when it comes to the intersection of child maltreatment, domestic violence and child welfare decision making. The most useful framework is how a comprehensive assessment of survivor’s strengths is essential to good child welfare decision making. It is an assessment of a survivor’s strengths based on the full spectrum of a survivor’s efforts to promote the safety and well-being of her children (the 3rd critical component in the Safe and Together model) that creates a foundation that leads to positive outcomes.   Social workers who can see a survivor’s efforts to buffer the children from the worst emotional impact of the violence, redirect a batterer away from children, placate a batterer, keep the children’s routine as normal as possible or calm him down all as part of her active efforts to protect the children are more likely to be successful in keeping children safe and in their own home than social workers who limit their assessment of protective capacity to “Did she call the police? Will she get a protection order? Is she going to end the relationship/leave?”

Why?  A social worker who has a more comprehensive view (the third critical component in the Safe and Together model) can:

  • Validate the survivor’s strengths.Validating her efforts can provide tremendous relief from the guilt, shame and blame she’s likely to be feeling.   This identifies the social worker as someone who understands the survivor’s efforts, won’t blame her for the batterer’s behaviors, and doesn’t believe she is a bad mother.
  • Gather more comprehensive information about child safety.  Validating survivor’s strengths is more likely to lead to disclosures and collaboration.
  • More efficiently develop more effective safety plans based on better information and an understanding of what a survivor has already tried.
  • Maintain more children in their homes based on more comprehensive assessment of protective factors.

One of the core principles in the Safe and Together model is that partnering with domestic violence survivors is the main way to keep children safe.   And this partnership starts with a social worker’s attitudes.  I tell social workers to always assume the survivor has been safety planning for themselves and their children before we show up to investigate.  This attitude helps them identify the ways she is actively engaged in trying to protect her children which is the foundation of that collaborative partnership.  Where social workers often trip themselves is when they start believing that seeing her strengths is the same as 1) saying that the batterer isn’t harming the children and 2) saying that we don’t have to communicate to the survivor our concerns about the children, work collaboratively with her to increase the safety of the children and in some extreme cases remove children.   And it is the erroneous belief that their choice is between victim empathy or child safety that leads to this lapse in thinking.

When it comes to child welfare agencies, victims don’t first and foremost need our empathy.  They need our educated assessment of their strengths, grounded in a recognition that actively working to keep children safe looks different in different households and communities.  Using a framework based on a comprehensive assessment of strengths versus greater empathy allows child welfare to remain compassionate even when the batterer’s behavior requires extreme emergeny actions.  For instance, even when the survivor has done as much as is possible for her to protect her children, the children may be at such risk for physical harm that a child welfare worker will need to say—”I see how hard you’ve worked to protect your children, and we’ve tried everything we can to intervene with him and we remain very concerned that your partner will hurt them.”  Skillful assessment of strengths leads to empathy for the victim and good decision-making related to child safety. The two are not in opposition.  In reality they flow from the same source.

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Partnering with Survivors at the Core of Keeping Children Safe

Apr 11

Posted by David Mandel in Safe and Together Model

by David Mandel

A meaningful child welfare response to domestic violence needs to be articulated from the perspective of the safety and well-being of  children.  I’ve heard many child welfare workers say “I am empathetic to the survivor* and I don’t want to re-victimize her but…my bottom line is the safety and well-being of those children.”  Any training or initiative that hopes to influence the practice of child welfare in domestic violence cases needs to accept and even embrace this reality.   Statute, policy and culture all point in the same direction.  Our communities and legislatures have made it clear that child welfare agencies have been given a trust—intervene in families to protect children from their abusive or neglectful parents.

Acknowledging the legitimacy and importance of child welfare’s role in protecting our children forms a critical starting point of the Safe and Together model.   So when the question arises about how to relate to the adult survivor of domestic violence, the Safe and Together model starts with the principle:

#1: Keeping children safe and together with the survivor ( non-offending parent) is ideal from the perspective of the children.

Given the active role that most survivor’s play in promoting the physical safety and well being of their children, the stabilizing and healing role that non-offending parents play in regards to the trauma caused by the perpetrator and the traumatic impact of removal, any child centered intervention needs to have as this principle as a value guiding decision making. Following this, the next two principles provide further direction:

#2: A successful partnership with the non-offending parents is one of the best ways to keep the children safe.


#3: How we define how domestic violence survivors are “active” in protecting their children is directly related to child welfare’s willingness and ability to development meaningful partnerships with the survivors. A broader definition of “active” promotes collaborative safety planning that is based on the specific experience of the survivor.

The development of meaningful partnerships between child welfare and domestic violence survivors around the safety and well-being strongly hinge on child welfare’s ability to expand the yardstick it uses to measure the protective capacity of the domestic violence survivor (or non-offending parent).    We’ve defined protective survivors as the ones who either 1) leave/end the relationship 2) pursue a civil stay away order and/or 3) call law enforcement. Survivors who aren’t willing or able to pursue these options are assessed as:

  • Making bad choices
  • Having poor judgment
  • Not understanding the impact of the domestic violence on their children
  • Picking the perpetrator over the children

All of which boil down to, in child welfare parlance, as “failing to protect.”
So what’s wrong with this yardstick to measure the protective capacity of the non-offending parent (domestic violence survivor)?

#1: It wrongly focuses on living arrangements and relationship status versus the domestic violence perpetrator’s tactics and access to the children. Most domestic violence perpetrators continue to have access to their children even when a relationship ends, after an arrest or as part of civil court proceedings.  Our focus should be on how a perpetrator is harming or using the children versus whether the parents remain living together or in relationship.

#2: It ignores everything that a non-offending parent is doing day to day to actively reduce the impact of the domestic violence on her children. This includes talking to them about safety, helping them process their feelings, providing nurturance and stability in teeth of the domestic violence perpetrator’s disruptive and destabilizing behavior patterns, and developing plans that may shield them from significant portions of the abuse.    Much of ignorance in this area derives from our double standards regarding mothers and fathers.

#3: It assumes that the non-offending parent is in control of the violence versus the perpetrator. This is best seen in safety or case plans that developed by child welfare that ask the survivor to “not engage in any more violence.”

The yardstick is flawed because it is based on inaccurate assumptions which place unnecessary barriers to collaboration between child welfare and survivors.The impact of these myths is missed opportunities to partner with non-offending parents (survivors) who are sincerely and actively invested in the safety and well-being of their children. This in turn may lead to poor case planning and inefficiency as the child  welfare systems invests energy in developing and enforcing its own strategies for safety. And since these strategies are being developed without the input of the person most knowledgeable about the perpetrator’s behavior, they are often unnecessarily aggressive and disruptive to the family, trap the non-offending parent between the child welfare system and the perpetrator, and fail to meet the needs of the children.

*Throughout this blog I will use the term “survivor” and “non-offending parent” interchangeably. When  domestic violence is the focus of a child welfare intervention it is important to articulate that the survivor is the non-offending parent (except when  they engage in their own specific abusive or neglectful behaviors).  Inappropriately  labeling a domestic violence survivor as a perpetrator of child abuse and/or neglect can create an unnecessary obstacle to collaborative safety planning, push the survivor and perpetrator into an avoidable alliance against child protection. It can shift the focus off the domestic violence perpetrator and offer him another potential tool for gaining power over the survivor and impeding her efforts to protect the children.

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