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-time. The tool helps identify the primary perpetrator and their patterns of coercive control and violence, assesses the harm to children and documents protective parenting efforts. This behavioral and fact-based tool helps to avoid gender bias and supports impartiality. It specifically addresses key issues like intersections, lateral violence, and patterns beyond the family itself, including the perpetrator’s manipulation of systems and can help contextualize and evaluate concerns about “contact resistance and refusal”. The tool includes a place for workers to consider the implications for their practice and next steps.

The Safe and Together™ Model is an internationally recognized suite of tools and interventions designed to help child welfare and their partners become domestic violence-informed. Continuously refined based on years of experiencing implementing the Model across the United States and other countries, the Model helps improve competencies and cross system collaboration related to the intersection of domestic violence and child maltreatment. This child-centered Model derives its name from the concept that children are best served when we can work toward keeping them safe and together with the non-offending parent (the adult domestic violence survivor). The Model provides a framework for partnering with domestic violence survivors and intervening with domestic violence perpetrators in order to enhance the safety and well-being of children.

This e-course provides an introduction to the Safe & Together Model’s Multiple Pathways to Harm assessment and critical thinking framework. The course provides tools to apply a comprehensive assessment lens to the impact of domestic violence perpetrator behaviors on child and family functioning. This approach sets high standards for men as parents, engagement standards for men of diverse backgrounds and teaches how to partner with adult survivors. This child-centered Model derives its name from the concept that children are best served when we can work toward keeping them safe and together with the non-offending parent (the adult domestic violence survivor). The Model provides a framework for partnering with domestic violence survivors and intervening with domestic violence perpetrators in order to enhance the safety and well-being of children.

Many families impacted by domestic violence perpetrators’ behaviors have multiple, complex, intersecting issues. In the past, we might have referred to these as co-occurring issues. But the language of co-occurrence often doesn’t provide us with a sense of how these issues interact. For example, listing the family’s issues is not as powerful as explaining how the domestic violence perpetrator interfered with his partner’s recovery. Listing that the family has experienced both domestic violence and child behavioral health issues is not as useful as describing how the perpetrator’s violence has produced anxiety and aggression in the children. Using an intersections framework, versus a co-occurrence framework, we increase perpetrator accountability, improve our ability to diagnosis and treat each member of the family, and improve our ability to help the adult and children survivors. This course will provide guidance on how to understand the connections, or intersections, and make them work for us in our practice.

If we want to work with families, we cannot just work with women and children. We need to be able to work with men — from all types of families, especially poor and historically oppressed communities. We need to approach fathers with high expectations, and the willingness to learn new approaches and practices. Understanding male parental development and how men’s choices and behaviors impact child and family functioning is critical. Throughout this e-course, we highlight specific connections to the Safe & Together™ Model Principles, Critical Components, Multiple Pathways to Harm and Practice Tools.

Partnering with adult survivors around the safety and well-being of their children is a central focus of domestic violence-informed practice. Domestic violence survivors and professionals share the common goals: for the abuse to stop and for the children to thrive. By working with, not against the adult survivor, practitioners are more likely to be successful in their role related to child safety and well-being. The adult survivor is their natural ally. In addition, when practitioners partner well with an adult survivor, the survivor is more apt to share information about a) the perpetrator’s pattern, b) the impact of the perpetrator on child and family functioning and c) the survivor’s efforts around protection of the children. All three will improve assessment and lead to the development of more effective safety plans for the adult survivor and children. In this course, we describe a step-by-step process for partnering with adult survivors when children are involved. This method is useful for a wide variety of professionals and can even inform the work of attorneys, evaluators and others who are involved in assessments of families.

This Supervisor Training is designed to build upon prior training on Safe & Together™ Model CORE concepts and to provide a skills-oriented foundation to domestic violence-informed supervisory practice. While the training is designed to increase knowledge, the goal is to change professional behavior. This training is the e-course equivalent to the 2-day version of our Safe & Together™ Model: For Supervisors and Managers in-person training.

This training is designed to introduce the basics of using Zoom for hosting virtual meetings and provides tips and tricks for case consultation with international child protection agencies.

This training designed to offer information and practice guidance to child welfare professionals regarding conducting perpetrator pattern-based assessments during the pandemic.