08 Nov Season 2 Episode 21: Minisode Series on Worker Safety & Well-Being: When workers are targeted by the perpetrator
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 abuse-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 abuse-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 position paperon worker safety
Take an online course on worker safety related to domestic violence
Join us on January 13-14 2022 for our fully virtual Europe/North America Safe & Together Model Conference. Check out our events page to learn more and to register.
More About The Podcast
You asked, we answered. Amidst our current, global political and social upheavals, during movements, activism and testimonies, legal cases, fear and victim-blaming – we’ve heard your voice asking for clarity, insight and thoughts about how all of this is reflected in the Safe & Together Model. Many of the stories and news pieces we hear about from our partners all over the world involve complex questions, yet the beginnings of change and hope are based on the sound, simple principles of the Model.
To that end, in our new podcast, “Partnered with a Survivor,” S&T’s Executive Director and Founder, David Mandel and Ruth Reymundo Mandel offer a raw and intimate glimpse into their personal and professional partnership and what it means to truly partner with a survivor, raise a family based on S&T principles and engage in social change at every level. This is a podcast for practitioners and parents, partners and employers, coworkers and friends – and anyone else who may want clarity, understanding, hope and healing.
What does it mean to give consistent consent? What is coercive control? How do you probably see it or feel it every day? This is a podcast you’ll wish you had heard when you were a teenager. In unsure, confusing times, it’s our goal to widen the audience for the Safe & Together Model-associated material to survivors, their family members, and even perpetrators. For professionals familiar with the Model, it will offer another angle on the issues addressed by the Model. For those who don’t know Safe & Together, it offers a connection to the themes and ideas behind the work.
These podcasts are a reflection of Ruth & David’s on-going conversations which are both intimate and professional and touch on complex topics like how systems fail victims and children, how victims experience those systems, and how children are impacted by those failures. Their discussions delve into how society views masculinity and violence, and how intersectionalities such as cultural beliefs, religious beliefs and unique vulnerabilities impact how we respond to abuse and violence. These far-ranging discussions offer an insider look into how we navigate the world as professionals, as parents and as partners. During these podcasts, David & Ruth challenge the notions which keep all us from moving forward collectively as systems, as cultures and as families into safety, nurturance and healing.
Note: Some of the topics discussed in the podcast are deeply personal and sensitive, which may be difficult for some people. We also use mature language to describe some feelings. Finally, we use gender pronouns like “he” when discussing perpetrators and “she” for victims for two reasons: 1.) statistically, more men are perpetrators than are women when it comes to domestic violence, abuse and coercive control; and 2. For clarity’s sake, sticking with one pronoun causes less confusion for the listener. We know there are many men who are in abusive relationships and we are not invalidating their situations.
About the podcasters: David and Ruth are committed to creating systems and cultures of nurturance and safety. David Mandel founded the Safe & Together Institute which trains systems in domestic violence aware practices from a child safety lens. Ruth Reymundo Mandel is a survivor of complex abuse, child abuse and domestic abuse growing up in a cult. She is a former teacher and trainer using her experience to clarify messages and complexities around abuse and survivors.