The American Humane Association‘s Newsletter Alternative Response Quarterly highlights the work of David Mandel & Associates in Ohio. To read the article, which highlights how Ohio plans to use Safe and Together certified trainers to achieve cost effective coverage of the entire state, click here.
At a time when interest in how to respond to domestic violence under Differential Response grows, David Mandel & Associates will be presenting at the American Humane Association conference on Differential Response in Chicago from November 8-10 2011. David Mandel and National Training Director Kristen Selleck will be leading a three hour workshop entitled “Shaping Differential Response Practice to Effectively Respond to Domestic Violence” on Wednesday November 9th. And on Thursday November 10, David Mandel and Jennifer Thompson from the National Center on Adoption Law and Policy will be presenting “The Ohio Intimate Partner Collaborative: Using the Safe and Together model to address Domestic Violence in Alternative Response.”
The Battered Women’s Justice Project’s (BWJP) Promising Practice section recently added a piece on the Ohio IPV Collaborative including its use of the Safe and Together™ model to improve practice and cross system collaboration. To read the article click here. On October 20, 2011 the BWJP will be hosting a seminar on the implications of the Safe and Together model for custody and visitation. Details about the webinar will be available soon on their and our websites.
In January 2011, the Missouri Coalition Against Domestic and Sexual Violence published a report entitled Supporting Battered Mothers Protects Children: Reducing the Effects of Domestic Violence on Children. The report was created at the request of the Chairman of the Missouri Children’s Services Commission, Representative Jeff Grisamore. As it indicates in its acknowledgments “It contains the latest research on the prevalence of child exposure to domestic violence and best practices in addressing this violence. The report also includes recommendations on how the state of Missouri can better meet the needs of children and mothers experiencing violence.” In the section on the child welfare system’s response to domestic violence the report cites Connecticut’s application of the Safe and Together™ model as example of good practice for protecting children. In the recommendation section, the report highlights the Safe and Together™ work, which is sponsored by the Jackson County Missouri Safe Family Coalition and funded by the Health Care Foundation of Greater Kansas City, as an example of a model effort promoting better collaboration between the Children’s Division and victim advocates. To read the report in entirety click here. To go the Missouri Coalition Against Domestic and Sexual Violence click here.
On March 21, 2011, Connecticut’s new Department of Children and Families Commissioner Joette Katz sent out an all staff memo regarding the agency’s approach to domestic violence. In the memo the former Connecticut Supreme Court Justice, outlined her support for the work of the Department’s domestic violence consultants, the Safe and Together™ model, the importance of partnering with domestic violence survivors and collaborating with community partners. She also announced the ground breaking step of requesting a special review of a case involving the alleged homicide of a parent by another parent where no children were physically harmed. By requesting this review, she made explicit the importance of the connection between violence perpetrated against parents and the needs of children, even in situations where the children have not been physically harmed. The full text of the memo is below:
MEMORANDUM
To: All Staff
From:Joette Katz, Commissioner
Date:Monday, March 21, 2011
Subject:Domestic Violence
As the Department continues to evolve, it is important to validate and
build upon our existing strengths and partnerships. Almost five years
ago, in response to its deepening understanding of the devastating and
pervasive impact of domestic violence on children and families, the
Department reached out for assistance from Connecticut domestic violence
experts. In partnership with these individuals and agencies, we launched
the Domestic Violence Consultation Initiative with the purpose of
improving our capacity to identify and respond to domestic violence. Over
the past five years through the efforts of our staff and our community
domestic violence consultants, we have achieved significant positive
changes in our domestic violence practice. These changes reflect the
values and efforts that I will continue to support and expand upon as we
move forward.
The principles of this Initiative approach are consistent with a focus on
child well being, family centered practice and differential response.
Whenever possible, we should be attempting to keep children safe and
together with the non-offending parent in families experiencing domestic
violence. Partnership with domestic violence survivors should be our
default approach in these cases because these partnerships are the most
efficient and effective means to meet the safety and well being needs of
children. The vast majority of domestic violence survivors are devoting
tremendous energy towards the safety, stability and nurturance of their
children. We need to validate, support and build on these efforts,
wrapping our arms around domestic violence survivors on our caseloads, not
passing judgment on them.
We also need to use every tool at our disposal to intervene with domestic
violence perpetrators to reduce the harm they inflict on children and
families. This means actively engaging perpetrators, developing
meaningful plans that address their behaviors, making referrals to
services that are aimed at addressing domestic violence, and coordinating
with criminal court and law enforcement. Staffing cases at your local
multi-disciplinary team, attending a criminal court domestic violence
docket meeting, providing service providers with the specific information
we have gathered about the perpetrator and filing neglect petitions
focused primarily on domestic violence perpetrators are all steps we can
take, when appropriate.
As DRS and the Practice Model roll out, I am committed to maintaining the
progress the Department has already made in the area of universal
screening and assessment for domestic violence in all our cases regardless
of the presenting issue. I am especially interested in focusing on our
adolescent cases, where it is so important for us to be screening for
dating violence victimization and perpetration. I also will be looking to
our partners in the community-law enforcement, the Judicial Branch,
battered women’s advocates, mental health providers, batterer intervention
programs, and others to continue to enhance our abilities to reduce the
harm created by domestic violence perpetrators.
Lastly, I want us to consider the impact of domestic violence on children
from a holistic perspective. We need to expand beyond an incident based,
safety focus to include the chronic behavior patterns of perpetrators like
undermining a partner’s parenting and interfering with the normal routine
of children. A domestic violence assessment focused on a range of tactics
that impact both safety and well being over time is often central to a
meaningful understanding of the behavioral health, substance abuse and
mental health needs of our families.
As part of this holistic approach, we also need to strengthen our
understanding that the well-being of children in homes is closely tied to
the well being of the parent who is a victim, usually their mother. To
demonstrate my commitment to this perspective I have ordered the first
special review of a recent case involving the murder of a mother by a
father where the children were neither physically harmed nor direct
witnesses of the homicide. There is no way to deny the devastating, life
shattering impact of this event on these children. We need to learn from
this tragedy how best to respond to families where children have not been
physically harmed but there is severe violence directed at one of their
parents by a caretaker or partner.
The Department has already taken strong strides in the area of domestic
violence. It is now viewed as a national leader in the area of child
welfare and domestic violence. I want to commend all our staff and our
domestic violence consultants and promise continued support for their
efforts.
By Kristen Selleck, MSW
National Training and Consultation Director
I recently had a conversation with child protection investigators about their use of “failure to protect.” When I suggested that failure to protect was not helpful to child welfare’s mission, some of the workers agreed and some disagreed. It led to an important conversation.
Those who agreed said they thought that when they used failure to protect they were being victim blaming and that they were uncomfortable with that. While I appreciate the empathy inherent in this statement, I’m aware that empathy by itself does not help us address the issue of child safety specific to child welfare’s mission.
Those who disagreed stated that they felt they needed to use failure to protect to maintain child safety. When I asked them what inherently increased safety for children when child welfare uses failure to protect, there was no concrete answer. There was no way in which workers could find failure to protect related specifically to child safety. In fact, several participants added that they thought using this paradigm would lessen the information victims of domestic violence would share with child welfare, making it harder for child welfare to assess the risk to children. This reasoning shows that children are actually less safe in the system when we use failure to protect.
Some workers still struggled with the idea of shifting away from failure to protect and answering this important question: How do we keep children safe without failure to protect? The answer is both easy and hard. We need to shift our thinking away from the adult victim and focus on both the needs of the children and intervening with perpetrators. It’s been my experience that we use failure to protect most often when we don’t want to or cannot find a strategy for working with perpetrators. The down side of this is that when we focus on victims it makes it easier for us to ignore perpetrators; by ignoring perpetrators we do NOT reduce the risk to children regardless of our intervention with victims.
It’s hard for child protection workers, I believe, to think about how to shift away from failure to protect because it’s been the paradigm in child welfare for so long. However, if we really want to focus on ways to keep children safe, we need to move away from failure to protect and improve our capacity to assess children’s needs and our interventions with perpetrators.
The National Center for Adoption Law & Policy has produced a report on the efforts of the Ohio IPV Collaborative, which “seeks to reduce the entry of children experiencing violence in their homes into foster care by forging community partnerships to develop a collaborative and holistic response to intimate partner violence.” These efforts rested heavily on Safe and Together training and technical assistance from David Mandel & Associates. The full report is available here.
The report summarizes the efforts, recommendations and impact of the Intimate Partner Violence Pilot in four Ohio counties implementing Alternative Response in child welfare cases. Alternative Response, also known as Differential Response or Family Assessment, is an approach towards child safety and well being that is based on close collaboration with families. Domestic violence (or Intimate Partner Violence) poses some unique challenges for the implementation of Alternative Response as a child welfare strategy. For example, child welfare agencies struggle whether to place domestic violence cases within the Traditional Investigations track or the Alternative Response Track. Interviewing partners together, which is encouraged with Alternative Response, can hinder the disclosure of domestic violence. Severe domestic violence histories may exist in cases that are presenting as substance abuse or mental health related.
Ohio contracted with David Mandel & Associates LLC to provide intensive training and technical assistance over the course of approximately six months to four Ohio counties. This package included 8 days of training for Alternative Response social work staff and supervisors; multi-day training for community partners including advocates, law enforcement, mental health and substance abuse providers and others; a leadership retreat and on/off site technical assistance and on-site coaching. Below is a sample is some of the feedback on the package captured in the report:
- “During the final retreat, workers and supervisors indicated that training and technical assistance in Safe and Together had resulted in enhanced IPV competencies among workers, including interviewing skills, assessing patterns of coercive control, and documenting those patterns/behaviors and their impacts on the whole family.”
- “Workers agreed that the training built concrete strategies and skills for working with children, survivors and perpetrators, not just an enhanced knowledge of domestic violence terminology and theory.”
- “(Domestic violence) Advocates indicated that they had gained a better understanding of CPS and increased confidence about referrals made to CPS. Advocates also noted that they were better equipped to talk with survivors about CPS and ease survivors’ anxieties about the involvement of CPS, creating a smoother transition during referrals.”
- “(Domestic violence) Advocates noted that, as a result of the training, they are focusing more on the effects of the trauma on the child, rather than just the survivor, which helps with conversations with CPS and assists in making referrals more effective.”
- “Local DV advocates noted that survivors had indicated a higher comfort level with speaking to CPS and felt that CPS did not blame them for the batterer’s actions. Advocates also noted that survivors felt that CPS was more willing to work with them regarding child safety, regardless of their decision to stay or leave.”
- “As the project progressed, local DV Advocates and CPS workers realized how much their work complements one another’s and how each could be an asset to the other. “
To learn more about the Ohio IPV Collaborative, click here.
Also on April 21st 2011 at 3 pm EDT the American Humane Association’s Differential Response Webinar Series will highlight the integration of the Safe and Together model into Ohio’s Alternative Response efforts. To learn more about this particular session entitled “A Family Intact: An Alternative Response to Domestic Violence” and the entire AHA Differential Response Webinar Series click here.
By Kristen Selleck, MSW
National Training and Consultation Director
Child welfare workers regularly state that one of their frustrations with having domestic violence cases is that survivors “minimize.” It’s been my experience, however, that when those cases are described to me, workers often have actually learned quite a lot of information from the domestic violence survivors. So why label her as minimizing versus a more positive, strengths based interpretation? Workers may choose to use the term “minimizing” to describe a domestic violence survivor who discloses her partner’s behaviors but who cannot or will not end her relationship with the abuser. This frequent, quick and negative labeling of domestic violence survivors’ actions and statements is one of my major on-going concerns about the child welfare system practice in domestic violence cases. The reflexive interpretation of the decision to stay or withhold information as “minimizing” can interfere with the collaborative efforts to improve the safety and well being of the children.
Domestic violence survivors have various valid reasons for not disclosing their abuser’s behaviors when interviewed by child welfare workers. In some instances, it is simply unsafe for a survivor to disclose, particularly if the perpetrator has threatened to harm her or the children if she tells anyone what happens. In several cases I’ve worked on, perpetrators monitored the survivor’s disclosures through the use of cameras, recording devices or hiding in another room to listen. In other instances, survivors may not trust that the information she shares with child welfare will remain confidential or will not wind up coming back to penalize her. Survivors with past negative experiences with child welfare may also choose not to disclose their experiences to their workers, even when workers have the best intentions. Child welfare, however, rarely recognizes survivors’ inability or unwillingness to disclose as measures taken to ensure the safety of themselves and their children; instead, child welfare misinterprets this as minimizing.
When a domestic violence survivor refuses to disclose some or even all of the abuse she’s endured we, as a field, often blame her or deem her noncompliant. The impact this negative assessment has on our ability to partner with her may be profound. When a survivor does not trust child welfare or feels that she is being judged, she is less likely to tell child welfare about additional information related to the safety and well-being of children. She is less likely to bring up new or additional concerns that could directly impact child welfare’s ability to assess the children’s safety. This breakdown in communication often leaves child welfare groping to understand the situation in the home. This can lead to incorrect assumptions and poor case planning decisions which may create serious and potentially dangerous consequences for children and their family.
When workers misinterpret a survivor’s inability or unwillingness to disclose to child welfare, there can be repercussions on many levels.
- The “minimizing” label may remain with the survivor throughout the life of the case.
- Child welfare is more apt to focus on survivors when they feel she is not complying; this may lead to survivors being burdened with unnecessary services which take away from important parenting time and may give perpetrators more unsupervised access to children.
- A strong focus on survivors’ “minimizing” contributes to child welfare to ignoring domestic violence perpetrators; the perpetrators then go without services, without child welfare expectations and monitoring, and can continue to harm the children further in various ways.
Because in domestic violence cases the stakes around safety are so high, and because it is so consistent a practice, I’m making a practice-related suggestion: Child welfare should not use the term “minimizing” in reference to domestic violence survivors’ comments about abuse perpetrated against them. Instead, child welfare workers may consider the following alternatives:
- Ask the survivor what feels safer to her about not disclosing to child welfare.
- Document what the perpetrator has said or done to preclude survivors from disclosing.
- Document circumstances that may influence survivors to not disclose, such as whether or not the perpetrator was in the home or if the children were within earshot (both of which can be reasons survivors don’t disclose that are protective efforts on her part).
- Document what we know about the perpetrators abusive behaviors/ safety concerns for the children from other sources (the children, schools, police, doctors, criminal records, etc).
By changing how we talk about and document domestic violence cases, we have a better opportunity to continue efforts to work with survivors as allies in our work to promote the safety and well-being of their children.
By Kristen Selleck, MSW
National Training and Consultation Director
In a recent training, a child protection worker asked me how we know children are really safe when domestic violence has occurred in the home. It’s such a simple and yet incredibly important question; unfortunately there is no easy answer. Because of the complexities, we’ve decided to do a blog series about children’s safety. This is the first entry specific to physical safety of children. Please look back in the future for information on emotional safety, assessing safety in the context of Differential Response and others.
In order to assess safety, it’s important to first assess the risk in a home. Every batterer represents a different level of risk so without knowing how dangerous a perpetrator is, it’s hard to know how safe the children will be. This is also important to know even if the perpetrator is out of the home because the children will not necessarily be safer because perpetrators will continue to harm children and be abusive regardless of the status of the relationship.
For the purposes of this blog I’m focusing on physical safety though there are various other issues related to emotional safety, child development and health that are important to consider as well. In order to assess if the children are physically safe in their homes, the following are some of the factors we need to assess to determine if the children are at risk of being physically harmed:
- Whether or not the batterer has ever physically or sexually abused the children;
- Whether or not the children have intervened to stop the violence increasing the likelihood that they’ll be physically hurt;
- Whether or not the perpetrator has made to harm children or to take children away from the survivor;
- Whether or not the domestic violence perpetrator is exercising coercive control in a manner that seriously interferes with the basic needs of the child being met such as denying child essential medical care or deprivation of food.
This assessment should take into account history and changing circumstances that might point to on-going or escalating danger such as severe violence directed at the adult survivor, recent court order denying access to the children, the presence of weapons and/or substance abuse or mental health issues as potentially aggravating factors.
Child welfare needs to balance the risk batterers pose to children with the protective capacity of survivors to ensure that child welfare decisions are balanced and are grounded fully in the actual safety needs of the children in the specific case at hand.
Assessing protective factors that increase safety for children can be a difficult task on its own. A child welfare worker can look into the following (though it is not limited to these questions) to assess that protective capacity regardless of if the perpetrator is in or out of the home:
- What has the survivor identified as helpful to protecting the children?
- Are there plans in place (places the kids can stay or go during escalation, plans for the kids to be out of the room or to be able to call 911 or another plan) that the children are aware of?
- Has the survivor identified people that are aware of the abuse who can help care for the children when there’s a concern about escalating abuse?
- Do the children and adult survivor have access to phones, cars, services or other safe resources?
- What have the children identified their experiences and fears and what helps them feel safer?
When child welfare is faced with decisions about determining the imminent safety of children, it’s hard at times to know what level of risk we’re comfortable and what we’re not. But when we have a clear sense of a batterers’ risk and we know about the protective capacity of the survivor to counteract that risk, we have a better idea of how to shape our decisions to protect children.
On April 21st 2011 at 3 pm EDT the American Humane Association’s Differential Response Webinar Series will highlight the integration of the Safe and Together model into Ohio’s Alternative Response efforts. To learn more about this particular session entitled “A Family Intact: An Alternative Response to Domestic Violence” and the entire AHA Differential Response Webinar Series click here.