From Australia to the World: How Family Courts Can Lead on Domestic Abuse Through the Safe & Together Model
By David Mandel, CEO and Founder, Safe & Together Institute
In Australia, a quiet revolution is taking place in the way family courts respond to domestic abuse. Since 2020, the Federal Circuit and Family Court of Australia (FCFCOA) has been implementing the Safe & Together Model across its entire system. What began as a training request for court report writers evolved into a court-wide transformation: Judges, judicial officers, family report writers, Indigenous Family Liaison Officers, and triage counselors are now learning to apply a structured, perpetrator pattern–based lens to domestic abuse cases. The results? A growing body of domestic abuse–informed court decisions shaped by a more nuanced understanding of children’s best interests in domestic abuse cases and increased accountability for perpetrators as parents. While not true in every case, more survivors are reporting their experiences and efforts as protective parents being validated in the court experience.
But this isn’t just an Australian story. This is a global opportunity. From North America and the UK to New Zealand, Singapore, Japan, and across Europe, the core challenges in family courts are strikingly similar: inconsistent handling of coercive control, over-reliance on parental alienation narratives, and a persistent failure to link perpetrators’ behaviors to child harm. The success in Australia shows what’s possible—and offers a roadmap for courts worldwide.
The Australian Breakthrough: A Broad, Sustained Commitment
What’s striking about the FCFCOA’s approach is that the implementation of the Safe & Together Model is just one element of a wider strategic effort to improve the system’s response to domestic abuse. The court has demonstrated national leadership through a multi-pronged reform agenda, including:
Establishing a senior executive leadership position dedicated to domestic abuse, signaling a long-term institutional commitment.
Overhauling its triage and risk assessment protocols, improving early identification and safety planning for families facing high-risk dynamics.
Creating specialized case management lists for domestic abuse and other high-risk matters, ensuring these cases receive the tailored, consistent handling they require.
Reforming court processes to minimize the potential for systems abuse and retraumatization of survivors.
Supporting changes in the Family Law Act to reflect the realities of domestic abuse, including litigation abuse, economic abuse, and the use of pets as tools of coercive control.
Updating best interest factors to ensure they are sensitive to the impact of coercive control and protective parenting.
These reforms reflect a cohesive, values-based strategy to center child safety and survivor well-being while holding perpetrators accountable. In this context, the Safe & Together Model has not been a standalone intervention but a key instrument in actualizing this broader commitment.
Whole-System Engagement: Beyond the Courtroom
The FCFCOA’s work has been significantly complemented by the simultaneous, nationwide embrace of the Safe & Together Model by many of Australia’s statutory child welfare agencies, family agencies, and other sectors. These agencies—responsible for protecting children and often providing reports to the court—have adopted the Model to better assess perpetrator patterns and recognize protective parenting by survivors. This alignment ensures that when evidence is presented in court, it is grounded in the same language, logic, and child-centered values as the court’s own internal decision-making processes.
This has been further strengthened by national training for Independent Children’s Lawyers (ICLs) using the Safe & Together Model. The Institute developed localized and tailored online modules for more than 1,200 legal representatives for children. This course material will help ensure that their advocacy is informed by the same framework used by the Court, which centers coercive control, child impact, and survivor strengths. This alignment among child welfare professionals, judicial officers, and legal representatives represents a rare and critical system achievement—one that many other jurisdictions continue to struggle to replicate.
What the Safe & Together Model Brought to the Table
While the FCFCOA was undertaking structural and legislative reforms, the Safe & Together Model provided the practice frameworks to support those reforms. Highlights include:
Role-specific training for judges, registrars, and court child experts.
Blended learning and eLearning tailored to legal roles and current Australian legislation.
Expert consultation on protocols, tools, and templates.
Live application and coaching to reinforce implementation.
Content development for emergent issues, such as testimony preparation and post-separation abuse.
The most recent manifestation of these efforts is newly updated online learning modules that will be used as refreshers for existing court personnel and will form a mandatory portion of the induction process for new court staff for the next three to five years. These elements ensure that the Model became a durable part of the court’s infrastructure, not just a one-off intervention.
Global Relevance: A Mirror for Other Jurisdictions
Family court challenges in countries like the UK, US, Canada, New Zealand, Singapore, and Japan mirror Australia’s pre-reform context: fragmented agency responses, limited understanding of coercive control, misuse of parental alienation, and inconsistent treatment of protective parenting. The Australian example shows how the Safe & Together Model can translate legal reforms into durable court practice change.
In the UK, family courts are under increasing scrutiny for their handling of domestic abuse, particularly through recent reports like the Ministry of Justice’s Assessing Risk of Harm to Children and Parents in Private Law Children Cases report. The Safe & Together Model aligns with the Domestic Abuse Act 2021, helping courts operationalize its mandates by moving beyond incident-based judgments to pattern-based, child-centered determinations. Cafcass Cymru’s adoption of the Model provides a replicable example for courts across England and Wales, offering a shared framework for social workers, judges, and child advocates.
In Canada, provincial family courts are navigating how to integrate trauma-informed and culturally relevant practices into parenting determinations. The Safe & Together Model could support family court professionals in understanding how coercive control affects parenting capacity and child well-being. In jurisdictions like Ontario and British Columbia, the Model complements family law statutes that prioritize the child’s best interests by giving courts the potential to differentiate between survivor behavior and risk created by the perpetrator.
In New Zealand, family courts often deal with complex dynamics post-separation, where shared care arrangements can expose children and survivors to ongoing abuse. The Safe & Together Model’s emphasis on mapping perpetrator patterns would provide judges a reliable framework to assess safe parenting, especially within the context of the Family Violence Act 2018 and ongoing debates over the use of “parental alienation” in court.
In Singapore, the Family Justice Courts operate under the Women’s Charter and prioritize child protection, yet judicial responses to domestic abuse are still evolving. The Safe & Together Model could enhance judicial understanding of coercive control and supports the development of child impact statements and risk-informed parenting plans—an emerging area of focus in Singaporean family court reforms.
In Japan, family courts are beginning to reckon with the limitations of existing domestic violence legislation, particularly regarding non-physical abuse. With growing attention to post-separation abuse and systemic manipulation, Safe & Together could offer Japanese judges a way to integrate pattern-based analysis into custody and visitation decisions, aligning with emerging practices under the Act on the Prevention of Spousal Violence.
In the United States, states like California, Connecticut, and Hawaii, where coercive control is legally recognized, could benefit from the Model’s ability to structure court reports, expert testimony, and judicial findings around perpetrator behavior and survivor protective efforts.
Across Europe, the Istanbul Convention establishes standards that include the protection of children from witnessing and being affected by domestic violence. Family courts in countries like Ireland, Finland, and Spain could benefit from how the Model’s focus on “multiple pathways to harm” might improve custody outcomes and court-mandated services.
In many of these jurisdictions, similar to Australia, the Safe & Together Model is already influencing child protection and other sectors, offering the same synergies as Australia.
A Roadmap for Action
The Australian experience shows that:
Safe & Together is scalable and adaptable across legal and cultural contexts.
Court reforms are most successful when paired with aligned child welfare and legal advocacy strategies.
True change requires a mix of leadership, tools, and systemic alignment.
Now is the time for other countries to follow suit—by piloting joint training, adopting role-specific online learning, revising risk tools, and embedding the Model into both court practice and policy.
A Moment to Lead
Australia has demonstrated that it’s possible to align legislative reform, court practice, and community advocacy through a shared, survivor-centered framework. The Safe & Together Model has proven to be a critical instrument in making that vision real. For jurisdictions seeking to improve outcomes for families impacted by domestic abuse, the question is no longer whether the Model works—it’s how quickly they can adapt it to their own systems.
The opportunity is here. The tools are available. The leadership is needed.
Let’s move from ideas to impact—and build systems where children can be safe, survivors supported, and perpetrators held meaningfully accountable.
