SAFE CONTACT TRAINING

Edinburgh 2012

Training ground rules

•Confidentiality•Looking after ourselves•Respecting others•Sharing the responsibility to challenge each other respectfully•Timekeeping•Distractions

The system

Life on three planets (Adapted from Marian Hester)

Child protection: (public law);

Child as victimmother seen as

failing to protect focus On changing her

Domestic violence: (civil and criminal law);Focus on offence and

offender and changing him;

Woman as victim; Child invisible

Child contact:

(private law);Mother’s resistance Considered hostile;

Presumption of Contact; father

As victim (?)

Father invisible

Child invisible

Domestic Abuse and the System

• Family and friends• Bail conditions• Interdicts and Non Harassment Orders• Family Mediation• Children’s Hearings• Child Protection Plan• Court Systems• No support

Getting It Right for Every Child

Named Person

Midwife Health Visitor

Head Teacher

Service Generated Risks

Victim’s Vulnerability

Service Generated

Risks

Perpetrator’s Risks

Service Generated Risk

Service Generated

Risk

Perpetrators Risk

Victim’s Vulnerabilit

y

What are Service Generated Risks?• When agency gives poor advice• When an agency thinks someone else is doing it• When agencies don’t have resources• When an agency follows beaurocratic processes• When a agency “refers on”• When an agency focuses on one participant• “Clearly not within our remit”• When professionals are judgemental• When professionals don’t know what to do• When professionals don’t see the bigger picture

Service Generated Risks

• An important job had to be done and Everybody was sure that Somebody would do it. Anybody could have done it, but Nobody did it. Somebody got angry about that because it was Everybody’s job. Everybody thought that Anybody could do it, but Nobody realized that Everybody wouldn’t do it. It ended up that Everybody blamed Somebody when Nobody did what Anybody could have done.

The worst advice in the world

Most common contact scenario

Group Task

• Identifying Service Generated Risks in contact scenarios

Day 1 - Domestic violence and parental separation

Domestic violence and parental separation

Of the many thousands of incidents of domestic violence against women recorded each year in the British Crime Survey, 54% occurred when the couple were no longer living together.

Parental separation• In Every Child Matters 2003 it was noted that around

150,000 couples divorce in the UK per year. Two thirds of them have children under 16. This does not even include figures for unmarried family separations. At least 1 in 3 children under 16 in the UK will experience parental separation.

The good childhood report 2012

1. A study of 2500 children of separated parents in the States found that between 75% and 80% of them were functioning well within two years of separation. This means that 20 – 25% will experience serious social or emotional problems amounting to significant harm compared to less than 10% of young people from intact families.

• A UK study in 2004 found unsurprisingly that family conflict both before and after separation is a big determinant of whether your child will be one of the 75% who fare okay or the 25% who don’t.

Elizabeth Marquardt (2005) interviewed 1500 adults in the USA and found that

• half of those from separated parents compared to 1/3 of others say they felt the need to protect their mothers emotionally

• nearly 1/3 compared to 1/6 of others felt need to protect Dad

• nearly 1/3 of those from separated parents compared to less than 1/6 of others felt need the protect siblings

Risk

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Risk assessmentIt’s easy to overlook risk issues in contact cases:

• There is a strong assumption that contact must always be beneficial for the children, or that it is the parent’s right to have contact no matter what they have done - (whereas court inspections show that the “presumption of contact” leads to unsafe decisions and a tendency to disregard risk issues)

• There is a tendency to overlook the impact on the children of violence to the mother “he was never violent to the kids” (whereas guidance to the courts clearly indicates that “domestic violence is a significant failure in parenting”)

• Professionals find it hard to ask in detail about abusive behaviour

• And parents find it hard to tell us about it

• We tend to over-rate our impression of the client, and underrate their past history (but past behaviour is the best predictor of future behaviour)

• We get confused when there are competing allegations (serious allegations always need to be investigated in detail)

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Risk assessmentTo counteract these tendencies, we need to ask the right questions about the right things:

Risk assessment involves establishing the presence or absence of factors known to be associated with continued perpetration of abuse. The most important of these is the history of abuse – once a person has hit their partner, they tend to keep on doing it

(one US study of 1500 men showed 35% average re-assault rate within 6 months of the offence, but 80% of offenders engaged in threatening and/or verbally abusive behaviours within that time)

Williams and Houghton (2004) Law and Human Behavior, Vol. 28, No. 4

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Assessing the history of violence and abuse

• Severity, frequency, persistence, escalation of violence

• Signs of imminent risk

• Severity, frequency, persistence of other forms of abuse:– Verbal, psychological/emotional abuse– Jealous, ‘proprietorial’ behaviour– Coercive control –perhaps key indicator– Sexual violence and abuse– Post separation abuse– Exposure of children– Direct abuse to child– Violence in other/previous relationships

Approaching the issue with mum

Getting started• Role explanation• This might be a difficult process and involve difficult

compromises • I’m sure you’ve thought about that when deciding to

come. • What made you think it mattered enough to give it a try?• What are the costs of the conflict / would be the

advantages of moving on for you and for xx?

Get her consent to ask direct questions • Would you tell me if I ask you something you don’t want to

answer - would you speak out?

Exploring worst fears

• What are your worst fears?

• What do you think are your xx’s worst fears?

• What are dad’s worst fears?

• How could dad best reassure you and xx?

Risk

• When did you first meet?• First like about each other?• What were the strengths and weaknesses of the

relationship? • What did you argue about most? How were your

arguments at best and worst?• How did it get physical when arguing? • What do you feel are the worst things he’s done to you?

And to xx? And post separation? (get clear pictures)• Check out remaining concerns around mental health,

substances, where this person lives and with whom.

Meeting with mum and child together

To child

Who do you think is most worried about you seeing your dad? What do you think mum’s biggest worry is?

To mum

Do you agree with that?

To child

Do you worry you might upset mum if you wanted to see dad?

To mum

Could you reassure xx that you okay with them wanting to see their dad?

To child

How do you guess mum might feel if you saw dad and things went well - do you worry she might be a bit upset?

To mum

Could you reassure xx that you’d be okay with things going well between xx and dad?

To child

Is it okay if we spend some time talking about this together without mum now?

Day 2Speaking with children

ISLANDS

• There are three islands drawn by the worker – One is where the child lives, one is joined to this by a gated bridge. Potential visitors to the child’s island live here. The child has the key to the gate and control who visits and when. There is another island further away and not joined at all to the child’s island.

• Get the child to put what and who they want on their island and to decide who might be able to visit sometimes (putting those people on the visitors island). When will they be allowed to the child’s island? Who lives on the island far away? What is in the water?

• They can use colours and/ or pictures to draw these people and the worker should ask open questions about what the colours and pictures and positions of different people mean to the child.

Wishes and feelings about contact

• If your mum was OK about you seeing your dad, how would you feel about seeing him?

• What would be the most comfortable and safe feeling place to see him?

• Is there someone else who might make your seeing him feel more fun, more comfortable or safer by being there?

• What would you especially worry about seeing him? What would biggest worry?

• What would you look forward to most about seeing him?

ICEBERGS

• The worker explains to the child how most of an iceberg is hidden beneath the water and draws this out.

• The worker asks the child what they show when their mum and dad fight? What would be visible in terms of their actions and feelings. This is drawn or written onto the visible section of the iceberg.

• The worker asks the child what they don’t show and what lies underneath. This is drawn or written into the submerged section of the iceberg.

Icebergs

Making sense of the behaviours that aren’t okay

• Daddy / mummy does some things that are not right. • A lot of families have problems like this even though they

might not tell people about it. • Daddy / mummy loves you.• This is very confusing.• It isn’t even a bit your fault - you’re too young / small to be

able to control them or stop them • There is no excuse for daddy hitting mummy or you. Violence

is wrong, no matter how angry you get. No matter what you do you don’t deserve to be hit.

Approaching the issue with dad

stanceDo Don’t

Be neutral Be conflictual

Be Matter of fact Be judgemental

Explain why you’re asking Try to do intervention – try to change him

Explore alongside Ask “why?”

Make an ally of the side of him that wants to change

Collude

Be respectful Be nasty

Be direct Breach other’s confidentiality – especially re. safety (no “she said…” etc)

Be matter of fact Expect him to tell the same story as her

Empathise with his pain (not his hostility) Expect to know the truth

Be gently persistant Challenge him a lot

Be curious interrogate

Getting started• Role explanation• This might be a difficult process and involve difficult compromises • I’m sure you’ve thought about that when deciding to come. • What made you think it mattered enough to give it a try?• What are the costs of the conflict / would be the advantages of moving

on for you and for xx?Repositioning his anger – reflecting back values• You feel like no-one’s heard your side - so being listened to is really

important to you• so fairness really matters to you• so justice is something you feel really strongly about – tell me what

you mean by justice….Get his consent to ask direct questions • Would you tell me if I ask you something you don’t want to answer -

would you speak out?

Be explicit about your safety needs

If the above gives you cause for concern then you can ask

• If you begin to feel angry at me or misunderstood by me how can we make sure you won’t [do whatever he has done elsewhere] or just walk out on this for good?

• What could you do in that situation?

• What could I do to help?

Exploring worst fears

• What are your worst fears?

• What do you think are xx’s worst fears?

• What are mums worst fears?

• Thinking about xx’s child’s fears, what’s the worst you could do right now?

• What’s the most reassuring you could do?

The wall

• What / who are obstacles between where their lives and contact with their children are now and how they want them to be? (this might, for example, be about what stands between them and their contact with their children) – these are the bricks in the wall (you can draw it or build it or just talk about it)

• When they face this wall how do they feel? (for example, anger, helplessness, shame)

• How might they act when these feelings are strongest? (what are they tempted to do and say?)

• Which actions would help to dismantle the wall and which would only serve to strengthen it? (possibly brainstorm in 2 columns)

Risk

• When did you meet? When did the relationship start getting serious? How soon did you move in together/marry?

• What did you see in your partner when you first met? What did she see in you, do you think?

• What were the strengths and weaknesses of the relationship?

• What did you argue about most? How were your arguments at best and worst?

• How did you get physical when arguing? In what ways do you think you might have come across as scary or intimidating in an argument?

What do you think is the worst thing you’ve done to her? And post- separation? (get clear pictures)

If you could see a film of yourself during that argument, how would you look? Did you pace around, shout, bang things, break things, shout?On a scale of 1 – 5 how loud/hard etc was that?How long that go on for? Where was xx?

How did that incident end?

When you picture that in your minds eye (describe back the end of that incident) what are realising?

Back to the children• How has the violence in your relationship affected your

relationship with your children?

• What do you think they are aware of?

• What have you noticed about how the children are affected by the violence and abuse between the adults?

• Do you talk with your child about the conflict in the family?

What do you say? What would you want to say, if you could?

Challenging minimisation• Acknowledge and discuss the barriers to disclosure

• But be neutrally persistent in order to get detail and context of what happened

• use scales – on a scale of 1-5 (5 being punching her as hard as you can) how hard did you punch her?

• Reflecting back without the minimising e.g. he says “I just slapped her” – reflect back “you slapped her”.

• start at higher levels of violence than you believe has been used so that the client then has to work back to the actual level of violence

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Feeding back your report to the familyIncluded:

Either

• Your recommended course of action , which aims to• Reassure everyone’s worst fears (reasonable or not)• Keep everyone safe• To move us from conflict to contact – accepting that at this

point in the separation it may only be possible to find a minimally adequate resolution, involving compromise on all sides, but hoping that in time, as the plan settles in and begins to work , a more satisfactory situation can be found.

orExplain that due to the complexity and / or possible risk levels, you feel that a more in depth assessment is needed.

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