Safe and Together

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

Posts Tagged children exposed to domestic violence

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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Batterer as fathers chapter published

Sep 1

Posted by David Mandel in Batterers as Fathers, Children Exposed to Batterer Behavior

by David Mandel

I recently had a chapter published on Batterers and the Lives of Their Children in the Praeger Perspectives 4 Volume Series “Violence Againt Women in Families and Relationships” edited by Evan Stark and Eve Buzawa.   My chapter appears in Volume Two “The Family Context” and focuses on the connections between batterer’s behavior and children from conception through adulthood.  I also engage issues related to the desire of many battered women for their children to have safe contact with their fathers, the double standard we apply to mother and father’s behaviors and the importance of setting high expectations of change for batterers as fathers.

The entire series offers a comprehensive overview of  the issue of violence against women in families and relationships. The volumes cover victimization and the community response, the family context, the criminal justice system and the law, and the media and cultural attitudes.   The series includes chapters by Evan Stark on the Battered Mothers’ Dillemma,  Joan S. Meier on the Misuse of Parental Alienation Syndrome in Custody Suits,  Leigh Goodmark on Battered Women who Fight Back Againt their Abusers,  Claire M. Renzetti on Intimate Partner Violence and Economic Disadvantage and Janice Ristock on Understanding Violence  in Lesbian Relationships.   Other chapters are by well known scholars and practitioners like Andrew Klein, Eve Buzawa, and Marianne Hester.  The series is a tremendous resource for students, practitioners and academics. I hope you check it out. (Fair warning: The entire series is on sale new for $400 for the four volumes.  If you decide not to purchase it, please recommend it to your local academic institution or library for their collection.)

The series is on sale at Amazon and through the publisher.

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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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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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