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In this fourth installment of the multi-part minisode series on worker safety and well-being, Ruth and David explore when workers are being targeted by their own perpetrator, and the implications for the workplace.   In a just over  20 minutes , David & Ruth discuss: 

• David's history with worker personal disclosures about their own victimization 
• How workers going through the Safe & Together Model training are seeing their own experience reflected in the material
• How agencies are using the Safe & Together Model to identify employees whose performance is suffering due to abuse and provide them with greater support 

In the middle part of the minisode, David and Ruth discuss perpetrator behaviors that target the workplace including: 

• Behaviors that cause survivors to miss time at work like taking the car or stopping her from leaving or making her worried the children will be unsafe if she leave
•  Unwanted, often repeated calls to the workplace, showing up at work
•  Stalking and surveillance behaviors which may make it fearful for someone to be out in the community
• Accusations of affairs if she meeting alone with male clients
• When the professional works for agencies like child protection or the courts,  threats of calling the police or child protection may carry with it extra shame and fear of losing employment  . 

As result, survivors  may  may present as  with performance issues including missed days, lateness, being distracted or unable to focus at work; irritability with coworkers, and feelings of being overwhelmed. 

In the final portion of the minisode, David & Ruth outline some strategies for agencies including: 

•  Ensuring that any employee safety policy explicitly recognizes the connection between coercive control and employee performance, and how perpetrators target workers at worker as a powerful form of control. 
•  Agencies needing to clearly articulates how it will support and respond to an employee who is experiencing domestic violence including how performance concerns will be handled sensitively and in context.
• Particularly important in agencies where a threat of a report creates fears for one's jobs and shame, any workplace policy needs to be clear about how survivors confidentiality amongst her peers will be safeguarded, e.g. specialized process for handling information
• When the perpetrator is a fellow employee, the consequences for abusive behavior must be clear. 
• The agency policy must work to be responsive to the needs of survivors, e.g. reassignment to a different area or rotation of schedule to respond to threats of stalking that may impeding performance or safety;
• Communication of this policy must shared proactively on a regular basis so that survivors have the information they need to protect themselves from threats against their job 
• Train supervisors, managers, and HR around handling these items consistently with policy, including training to always consider domestic violence victimization as one of the possible reasons for poor performance
• Institute a flex policy that supports workers in their ability to attend court for protection order hearings, criminal cases ,and famil

Check out David Mandel's new book "Stop Blaming Mothers and Ignoring Fathers: How to transform the way we keep children safe from domestic violence."

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In this third installment of the multi-part minisode series on worker safety and well-being, Ruth and David explore the connection between worker safety and victim blaming.   In a just over  15 minutes , David & Ruth discuss: 

• How a lack of knowledge of how fathers' choices impact families and engagement skills with men hamper  work with violent fathers
•  How these gaps can be worse for fathers from communities where racism has led to the further vilification of men, as being dangerous, irresponsible, or irrelevant
• How this lack of knowledge, skills and confidence can lead to workers feeling unsafe about engaging fathers who have been violent, which leaves the worker to focus on survivors' choices as means to keep children safe
• Victim blaming results when the survivor doesn't act in accordance with agency wishes

In the second half of the minisode, David and Ruth outline some steps agencies can take including:  

• Training  workers to have the skills and confidence to assess the influence of all father’s choices on the family functioning- not just seeing the mum as the responsible for the functioning of the home. 
• Training workers in the skills and confidence to engage fathers , even ones with histories of violence
• Prioritize whole- of- family work including incorporation in to reflective supervision
• Require regular conversations about worker emotional and physical  safety in domestic violence cases as a regular, proactive part  of supervision
• Create a culture where workers know that expressing safety worries is normal, and  that they will be supported around strategies for safety, not judged for disclosing fears
• Ensure that domestic violence case are  explicitly mentioned in any worker safety policy 

About the  worker safety and well-being minisode series   
The goal of the series is to address the critical issues of worker safety and well-being as a critical aspect of domestic violence-informed systems. This is a series for frontline staff across child protection, mental health and addiction, courts and other systems. We hope it will validate their experiences. This is also a series for human resources managers and organizational leadership. Setting policies and procedures to address worker emotional & professional safety in the context of domestic violence cases is essential to creating a domestic violence-informed agency.

Topics in the series include:

• When workers are targeted by the perpetrator of one of the clients
• The connection between worker safety in engaging perpetrators and mother-blaming practice.
• When workers are being targeted by their own perpetrator (through the workplace and at home)
• When workers own experience of abuse are triggered by their work with families
• Managing your own fears, as the worker, about the safety of the family.

Listen to the introduction to the series

Check out David Mandel's new book "Stop Blaming Mothers and Ignoring Fathers: How to transform the way we keep children safe from domestic violence."

Visit the Safe & Together Institute website

Start taking Safe & Together Institute courses

Check out Safe & Together Institute upcoming events

Send us a text

In this second installment of the multi-part minisode series on worker safety and well-being, Ruth and David explore the important topic of workers being targeted by domestic violence perpetrators.   In a few minutes , David & Ruth discuss different ways   workers are targeted including:

• Manipulation,  intimidation  and bullying 
• Threats  of or actual lawsuits and  complaints lodged with managers, professional boards,  or courts 
•  Implied or real threats against family members 
• Stalking (online or in real life)

Ruth  & David also discuss how  misogyny, racism or other forms of discrimination can be factors in the targeting of workers.  

David  & Ruth finish the brief episode with specific suggestions about basic safety and support strategies that agencies can put in place to respond to the behaviors of perpetrators.  These include: 

• Explicitly widen out the concept of worker safety to include intimidation, manipulation, not just explicit threats or acts of  violence
• Make this wider definition of worker safety a regular part, preventative (not reactive)  supervision in cases
• Ensure that staff that handle client  complaint  or review boards are educated around coercive control and pattern based assessments
• Performance reviews and human resources procedures  need to be consider the impact of threats and intimidation  on a worker's performance      

About the  worker safety and well-being minisode series   
The goal of the series is to address the critical issues of worker safety and well-being as a critical aspect of domestic violence-informed systems. This is a series for frontline staff across child protection, mental health and addiction, courts and other systems. We hope it will validate their experiences. This is also a series for human resources managers and organizational leadership. Setting policies and procedures to address worker emotional & professional safety in the context of domestic violence cases is essential to creating a domestic violence-informed agency.

Topics in the series include:

• When workers are targeted by the perpetrator of one of the clients
• The connection between worker safety in engaging perpetrators and mother-blaming practice.
• When workers are being targeted by their own perpetrator (through the workplace and at home)
• When workers own experience of abuse are triggered by their work with families
• Managing your own fears, as the worker, about the safety of the family.

Listen to the introduction to the series
Read the Safe & Together Institute’s white paper on worker safety
Take an online course on worker safety related to domestic violence

Check out David Mandel's new book "Stop Blaming Mothers and Ignoring Fathers: How to transform the way we keep children safe from domestic violence."

Visit the Safe & Together Institute website

Start taking Safe & Together Institute courses

Check out Safe & Together Institute upcoming events

Send us a text

In the kickoff of their first ever minisode series, David & Ruth  will introduce the theme of  worker safety and well-being in the context of working on issues related to domestic violence. The goal of the series is to address the critical issues of worker safety and well-being as a critical aspect of domestic violence informed systems. 

 Since the inception of the Model, it has been central to  know the perpetrators pattern, not only as it related to  domestic violence-informed work with the family,  but also as it related to the safety & efficacy of the worker. A worker, who is engaging a family where there is domestic violence, needs to know if perpetrator has a known pattern of violence or intimidation toward others outside the family. This is a basic domestic violence informed practice related to worker safety.  

Since then our understanding of the organizational importance of addressing worker safety and well being has only grown.  Worker safety may impact 

• attrition and retention
• worker mental and emotional health
• worker performance  
• the safety and well-being of workers who are survivors themselves.

As the Safe & Together Institute's work and our collaborations with Professor Cathy Humphreys has shown, when worker safety concerns go unaddressed child protection workers may be more blaming of survivors and hold perpetrators less accountable as parents out fear for their own safety;  

This is a series for frontline staff across child protection, mental health and addiction, courts and other systems. We hope it will validate their experiences. This is also a  series for human resources managers and organizational leadership.  Setting policies and procedures to addresses worker emotional & professional safety in the context of domestic violence cases is essential to creating a domestic violence informed agency.  

 Topics in the series will include:

·      When workers are targeted by the perpetrator of one of the clients

·      The connection between worker safety in engaging perpetrators and mother-blaming practice. 

·      When workers are being targeted by their own perpetrator (through the workplace and at home)

·      When workers own experience of abuse are triggered by their work with families 

·      Managing your own fears, as the worker, about the safety of the family.

We hope you join us for the other episodes.

Read the Safe & Together Institute's white paper on worker safety

Take an online course on worker safety related to domestic violence 

Check out David Mandel's new book "Stop Blaming Mothers and Ignoring Fathers: How to transform the way we keep children safe from domestic violence."

Visit the Safe & Together Institute website

Start taking Safe & Together Institute courses

Check out Safe & Together Institute upcoming events

Send us a text

Many professionals mistakenly believe that concerns related to domestic violence evaporate once a relationship is over.  Survivors know differently.  Their experiences help us understand the ways that domestic violence perpetrators’ patterns of behaviors extend beyond the relationship. 

 In this episode, Ruth and David explore the nature of post separation coercive control and related topics. Ruth and David discuss:  

·      How post separation coercive control distinguishes through a heavy focus on “remote control’ abuse, abuse from a distance, using proxies to maintain and extend control; targeting and use of children; efforts to control the survivors’ parenting, and the use and targeting of finances. 

·      How post separation coercive control often involves new avenues and targets for manipulation, often centered around family court and child protection systems.  

·      How the risk assessment frameworks used by many professionals fails to capture harm to children and the omnipresent influence of coercive control in the post separation period-regardless of whether there have been recent acts of violence or not.

·      How one of the main factors used by courts for assessing the fitness of a parent-their willingness and ability to co parent-can be used to increase accountability for perpetrators as parents: when post separation coercive controlling patterns of behaviors are taken into consideration and mapped as parenting choices & are considered an impediment to healthy & safe co parenting.

Toward the end of the episode, Ruth passionately describes how systems take survivors’ disclosures and “hurt us with them”, and how this can be more harmful than the abuse itself.  David asks professionals to reflect on the ways that survivors are vulnerable to post separation coercive control by virtue of our collective lack of awareness & appropriate responses to this form of abuse. 

 Listen to related episodes of Partnered with A Survivor

Season 2 Episode 14: How to perpetrator proof custody & access processes

Season 2 Episode 12: How coercive control harms child safety & wellbeing: An interview with researcher Dr. Emma Katz

Now available! Mapping the Perpetrator’s Pattern: A Practitioner’s Tool for Improving Assessment, Intervention, and Outcomes The web-based Perpetrator Pattern Mapping Tool is a virtual practice tool for improving assessment, intervention, and outcomes through a perpetrator pattern-based approach. The tool allows practitioners to apply the Model’s critical concepts and principles to their current case load in real

Check out David Mandel's new book "Stop Blaming Mothers and Ignoring Fathers: How to transform the way we keep children safe from domestic violence."

Visit the Safe & Together Institute website

Start taking Safe & Together Institute courses

Check out Safe & Together Institute upcoming events

Send us a text

Phrases like "child witness to violence" or "children exposed to violence" only capture a small slice of how domestic violence perpetrators' behaviors harm children.  Assessment frameworks based on these concepts  primarily emphasize the traumatic impact of the direct witnessing of acts of physical violence .  Coercive control teaches us that it is patterns of entrapping & controlling behaviors which deprive adult & child survivors their basic human rights including safety, well-being, and autonomy. The Safe & Together Institute uses a multiple pathways to harm framework which brings assessment processes into alignment with a coercive control framework.

In this episode, David & Ruth discuss the multiple pathways to harm framework including:

• how it adds to the "child exposure" approach
• increases accountability for perpetrators as parents
• operationalizes improved gender equality 
• makes wider impacts of coercive control visible 

Related episodes
Season 2 Episode 14: How to perpetrator proof custody & access processes

Season 2 Episode 12: How coercive control harms child safety & wellbeing: An interview with researcher Dr. Emma Katz

Season 2 Episode 8: “I spiraled down to a dark place:” An interview with a young survivor of officer-involved domestic violence and his Mum

Now available! Mapping the Perpetrator’s Pattern: A Practitioner’s Tool for Improving Assessment, Intervention, and Outcomes The web-based Perpetrator Pattern Mapping Tool is a virtual practice tool for improving assessment, intervention, and outcomes through a perpetrator pattern-based approach. The tool allows practitioners to apply the Model’s critical concepts and principles to their current case load in real

Check out David Mandel's new book "Stop Blaming Mothers and Ignoring Fathers: How to transform the way we keep children safe from domestic violence."

Visit the Safe & Together Institute website

Start taking Safe & Together Institute courses

Check out Safe & Together Institute upcoming events

Send us a text

Intervening with perpetrators, who are the source of the harm to child, partner and family functioning, is essential for domestic violence-informed systems. In this episode, David & Ruth talk about the third principle of the Safe & Together Model which focuses on intervening with the perpetrator to reduce risk and harm to children.  The conversation covers:

• the importance of a broad defintion of "accountability" 
• how micro -practices around language and documentation are the foundation of accountability in a  domestic violence-informed  system 
• how tradition definitions of perpetrator accountability can contribute to racial inequity in the response of systems 
• how practitioners can increase their capacity to keep the focus on the perpetrator and change (and away from a "failure-to-protect" approach) 

Read our white paper on perpetrators, change and accountability
 
Listen to these related episodes
Season 2 Episode 15: She is Not Your Rehab: A global invitation to men to end abuse of women & children through radical self-responsibility & healing

Season 2 Episode 11: “We need a revolution:” Integration of trauma healing and behavior change for people who choose violence

Season 2, Episode 5: How professionals can avoid being manipulated by perpetrators

Episode 21: Listening to the Voices of Children and Young People Harmed by Fathers Who Choose Violence

Episode 19: Nine Ways to Collude with a Person Who Chooses Violence

Now available! Mapping the Perpetrator’s Pattern: A Practitioner’s Tool for Improving Assessment, Intervention, and Outcomes The web-based Perpetrator Pattern Mapping Tool is a virtual practice tool for improving assessment, intervention, and outcomes through a perpetrator pattern-based approach. The tool allows practitioners to apply the Model’s critical concepts and principles to their current case load in real

Check out David Mandel's new book "Stop Blaming Mothers and Ignoring Fathers: How to transform the way we keep children safe from domestic violence."

Visit the Safe & Together Institute website

Start taking Safe & Together Institute courses

Check out Safe & Together Institute upcoming events

Send us a text

 In this episode, Ruth and David yarn with Ashlee Donohue – a proud Dunghutti woman born and raised in Kempsey, NSW. Ashlee is an Author, Educator, Advocate and speaker around the anti-violence message. Ashlee is currently the CEO of Mudgin-Gal Aboriginal Corporation – Women’s Centre,  which is for Aboriginal women run by Aboriginal women.  Ashlee was a keynote speaker  at  the 2021 Safe & Together Institute Asia Pacific Conference  on the burning question of coercive control criminalisation. 

During the interview Ruth  and David talk with Ashlee about: 

• Her thoughts on  the criminalisation of coercive control in Australia, and the  the pros and cons of this for Aboriginal communities
• The need for one single defintion of domestic violence 
• The decision making process for Aboriginal domestic violence survivors accessing services like calling the police can be very different than white or CALD survivors. 
• The importance of listening to the stories of Aboriginal survivors 
• The need for cultural safety  in the responses to domestic violence in the Aboriginal community  

Read  Ashlee's memoir:  ‘Because I love him’ a personal account of love, motherhood, domestic violence and survival.

Watch the video "Change Your Ways" : Australian Men Speak about Domestic Violence

Other related episodes you may be interested in:
Season 2 Episode 15: She is Not Your Rehab: A global invitation to men to end abuse of women & children through radical self-responsibility & healing

Season 2 Episode 13: An Interview with Courageous Fire: Reparations & the Unique Experience of Black Domestic Violence Survivors

Season 2 Episode 7: ‘Radical Resistance to the Status Quo’: A Look Behind the Scottish Coercive Control Law with Dr. Marsha Scott

Season 2, Episode 2: Coercive Control Laws: A discussion with investigative repo

Now available! Mapping the Perpetrator’s Pattern: A Practitioner’s Tool for Improving Assessment, Intervention, and Outcomes The web-based Perpetrator Pattern Mapping Tool is a virtual practice tool for improving assessment, intervention, and outcomes through a perpetrator pattern-based approach. The tool allows practitioners to apply the Model’s critical concepts and principles to their current case load in real

Check out David Mandel's new book "Stop Blaming Mothers and Ignoring Fathers: How to transform the way we keep children safe from domestic violence."

Visit the Safe & Together Institute website

Start taking Safe & Together Institute courses

Check out Safe & Together Institute upcoming events

Send us a text

For men's violence against women to end,  men need to  talk to other men about change and responsibility. At the same time, many men who are abusive, have often experienced their own traumas at the hands of their parents or society at large.  An emerging voice in the effort to invite men to healing  is Matt Brown,  co-creator with his wife, Sarah Brown  of the "She is  Not Your Rehab" global movement. 

Matt believes that because so many boys & men are traumatized & wounded in relationship with parents/caretakers, taking radical self ownership of their own healing journey, their own behaviors is the best way to heal that trauma. This  self ownership never excuses abuse even when it recognizes the trauma & learned behaviors of abuse which can be an attempt to protect from pain & fear by inflicting pain & trying to control others.

In this conversation with Ruth  and David, Matt a barber, speaker and author of the best-selling book "She is Not Your Rehab," talks about how he translated his own healing journey into a message of  personal responsibility, behaviour change and healing for men so they may step more deeply into connected, healthy, nourishing relationships which do not continue the cycle of violence.

Read the 7 Principles of the "She is Not Your Rehab" global movement
 1. She is not responsible for your emotional rehabilitation.

2. Your healing is your responsibility and yours to take initiative for and manage. 

3. Any healing needed for you, cannot come at the expense of her healing, health and wellbeing. (David & Ruth's personal favorite!) 

4. She can support you but she can never do more for you than you are prepared to do for yourself. 

5. Regardless of what anyone has done TO YOU, it is now time FOR YOU to take ownership of your own life and be committed to living it wholeheartedly enough to do any work needed. Your childhood trauma wasn’t your fault but your healing IS now your responsibility. 

6. True change comes from genuine growth. Growth happens once we heal. Healing starts when we begin to FEEL our pain. 

7. Hurt people inevitably hurt people because what we will not transform, we transmit on those around us and healed people do indeed heal people. The question is WILL YOU have the courage to heal?

Order the book "She is Not Your Rehab"

The barbershop where men go to heal | Matt Brown | TEDxChristchurch

Other related podcasts

Now available! Mapping the Perpetrator’s Pattern: A Practitioner’s Tool for Improving Assessment, Intervention, and Outcomes The web-based Perpetrator Pattern Mapping Tool is a virtual practice tool for improving assessment, intervention, and outcomes through a perpetrator pattern-based approach. The tool allows practitioners to apply the Model’s critical concepts and principles to their current case load in real

Check out David Mandel's new book "Stop Blaming Mothers and Ignoring Fathers: How to transform the way we keep children safe from domestic violence."

Visit the Safe & Together Institute website

Start taking Safe & Together Institute courses

Check out Safe & Together Institute upcoming events

Send us a text

Building on the Safe & Together Institute's white paper on perpetrators' manipulate of systems (and the related podcast) and work with the national Family Court of Australia, David & Ruth take a closer look at how domestic violence perpetrators can continue to undermine child safety and well-being post-separation, manipulate systems regarding custody and access issues, and how they target professionals in order to extend their coercive control after a relationship has ended. 

In this episode, Ruth & David  talk about: 

•  How professionals can properly identify and assess coercive control in the context of custody and access matters 
• How professionals can use a behavioral lens to identify how systems and professionals are targeted, post separation,  by parents who choose coercive control   
• How to inoculate yourself, as practitioner, against these behaviors
• How, by using a collaborative parenting standard as a lens for identifying the risks and harms created by domestic violence perpetrators, systems can  increase accountability in custody and access situations
• How understanding patterns of pre- and post separation coercive control and actions taken to harm the children is essential for understanding,  contextualizing, and validating the protective parents' behaviors 
• How acknowledging differing cultural expectations of men and women as parents is essential to  assessing child safety and well-being in the context of post separation coercive control

Essential listening for anyone who is interested in child safety and well-being in the context of post separation coercive control, their discussion includes practical steps and has implications for women sector workers and advocates, legal practitioners, child protection, family court, children's advocates, mental health practitioners and others. David & Ruth also hope that survivors can use this information to educate professionals who work with them.

Related podcasts
Season 2 Episode 12: How coercive control harms child safety & wellbeing

Now available! Mapping the Perpetrator’s Pattern: A Practitioner’s Tool for Improving Assessment, Intervention, and Outcomes The web-based Perpetrator Pattern Mapping Tool is a virtual practice tool for improving assessment, intervention, and outcomes through a perpetrator pattern-based approach. The tool allows practitioners to apply the Model’s critical concepts and principles to their current case load in real

Check out David Mandel's new book "Stop Blaming Mothers and Ignoring Fathers: How to transform the way we keep children safe from domestic violence."

Visit the Safe & Together Institute website

Start taking Safe & Together Institute courses

Check out Safe & Together Institute upcoming events