Safe and Together

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

Posts Tagged child welfare training

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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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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Trying to change child welfare’s response to domestic violence? Then support the supervisors!

Apr 29

Posted by David Mandel in Safe and Together Model

by David Mandel

In the Q & A after a recent conference keynote, an administrator from a child welfare community provider agency posed the following to me: “We’ve trained all our staff in better identification of domestic violence and better case practice but we are not seeing the practice changes that we expected? What are we missing?”   The question excited me because he was speaking directly to the central question of my work:  How do we make sustainable real change in a child welfare system that has a historically poor overall track record in partnering with survivors and intervening with domestic violence perpetrators?

In my experience, lots of things can contribute to training non translating into consistent practice change. While the right policies and resources are obviously critically important, most recently I’ve centered my system change work on the role of child welfare supervisors. It is the supervisors through their directives and expectations that determine the focus and the quality of much of the social work practice. The supervisors are the ones giving workers written or verbal instructions to either “Go out there and get have her sign a safety agreement that she won’t let him back into the house” (usually not recommended) or “Go out there and engage her in a conversation about what will make her safer.” (better)  The supervisors are the ones who review the information that comes from the worker and guides the case through their follow up questions.  It really matters if the supervisors ask their workers questions like “What did you learn about the father’s pattern of coercive control?” or “How does the father interfere with or support mom’s parenting?” It is the supervisors who have the final say in most cases about who the child welfare agency is going to find or indicate for child abuse and/or neglect. And it is the supervisors who convey to new workers that it is good child welfare practice to have partnership with the domestic violence survivor as key objective.

Supervisors don’t operate in vacuum. What they do and say is highly influenced by their supervisors and their agency policy. But here is an important fact: much of what supervisors do is not a matter of policy but practice. And in many agencies supervisors do not get specific training on supervision in general and rarely do they get training on specifically supervising domestic violence issues. Why should we expect supervisors to do a good job with these cases, many of which are complex and high risk, with support and training? So in Connecticut I’ve spent the last year training supervisors and administrators on how to better supervise domestic violence cases. These trainings begin by  having them identify their concerns about their workers practice in domestic violence cases.  I then outline how to apply the Safe and Together model to supervisory practices including how to a) give better, more specific directives to workers, b) evaluate the quality of information a worker presents, and  c) identify and address workers’ thinking errors.

A recent survey of supervisors and managers who participated in the training indicated that that some supervisors have made changes to their daily practice. These supervisors report that they are now asking more specific questions about coercive control and expecting workers to be more explicit in their descriptions of the batterer’s behavior. Some of the supervisors report that the changes in their practice have resulted in fewer removals of children from domestic violence survivors, less victim blaming and more batterer accountability. These changes are consistent with the Safe and Together model and what I had hoped to see when I developed the training. So for child welfare agencies who want to take the next step in improving their response to domestic violence cases, ask yourself  “What can we do to improve the focus and quality of the supervision our workers get in domestic violence cases? What values and expectations are our supervisors transmitting to their workers through their questions and directives?”

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