Keeping Children Safe & Together: Why Family-Centred Approaches Save Families and Strengthen Our Communities
By David Mandel, CEO and Founder, Safe & Together Institute
The effectiveness of the Safe & Together Model has always depended on local “champions” applying the Model in their local context. Using their skills, expertise, trust with families and community partners, and intimate knowledge of local challenges and needs, individual practitioners, agencies, and indeed entire systems have used the Model to achieve positive outcomes for their clients.
There is no better example of this than DV West’s application of the Model in support of women and children not only endangered from domestic abuse but also from harmful and unnecessary removal of their children due to the behaviours of the perpetrating parent. By embedding the Model within their Children and Young Person’s (CYP) Framework, DV West was able to prevent child removals, including Aboriginal children being taken into care when it wasn’t necessary—interrupting the repetition of the historical pattern of First Nation children being taken or “stolen” from their families.
Australian child protection statistics show that there were 44,868 children in out-of-home care (OOHC) at 30 June 2024. According to the SNAICC Annual Report 2023–24, Aboriginal or Torres Strait Islander children made up 42.8% of all children in OOHC, despite representing only 5.98% of all children in Australia. New South Wales has the highest number of children in care, at 13,983 children, of which nearly 45% are Aboriginal. For 2024–25, the allocated budget for OOHC was $2 billion.
The evaluation of the CYP Framework found that 30% of the 107 children and young people in the study had been assessed at risk of serious harm and had an open file with a statutory child protection agency on entry to the service. For families engaged in the CYP Framework, there were no child removals and several restorations of children that had been removed prior to engaging in the program. Last year’s government review into NSW OOHC found that not enough investment was spent on services that provide early intervention, like DV West. In fact, the lack of investment was found to be a key driver of rising demand in OOHC. 61% of the budget was spent on OOHC and only 13% was invested in support services.
Setting the Stage
DV West is a specialist domestic and family violence service supporting women and children across Western Sydney, Nepean, Blue Mountains, Blacktown, and the Hawkesbury. The organisation has been operated by women for women and children for over 40 years. DV West delivers crisis accommodation, transitional housing, outreach support, and an after-hours rapid response program—all grounded in a feminist, trauma- and violence-informed approach.
Their Children’s Domestic and Family Violence Specialist Program is a pioneering initiative that recognises children as co-victims/survivors of DFV and responds with holistic, culturally safe, child-centred support. Guided by the Children and Young People’s (CYP) Framework and the Safe & Together Model, the program works to increase protective factors and reduce risk by strengthening mother-child, sibling, and kinship relationships, empowering mothers and carers as agents of change in their children’s healing, making perpetrator patterns visible, and building stability across the whole of the child’s varying environments including health, developmental, education, housing, and community domains. For Aboriginal children, strengthening connection to culture, identity, and kinship connections is a key focus.
The Safe & Together Model is embedded in the practice of the CYP Framework. The third edition (2022) was adapted after the Safe & Together Model of practice was adopted by all DV West staff because of its emphasis on making the impact of the perpetrator’s behaviour visible, including strengthening the specificity of documentation. The program is funded by the NSW Department of Communities and Justice (DCJ), NSW Health, and The Petre Foundation. Together, this integrated and family-centred approach has led to significant safety, wellbeing, and resilience outcomes for children and their families.
Understanding the CYP Framework
The CYP Framework, developed by DV West CEO Catherine Gander in 2015, has three guiding principles;
Lift the context of children’s lives into the foreground of practice and away from the assumption that the support provided to the mother/carer will have an adequate flow-on effect to the child.
Establish therapeutic environments where children and families can restore their connections, stability, and healing, away from violence.
Empower mothers/carers as agents of change in their children’s recovery.
These principles are operationalised through the application of the CYP Case Planning Tool, which is underpinned by the developmental-ecological model. The nine elements of the framework provide information to guide considerations in developing an individualised case plan for each child and young person. They are based on contemporary research evidence, the experience of specialist DFV practitioners, learnings from the implementation of the CYP Framework, and the findings from the independent evaluation of the program.
How the Safe & Together Model Adds Value to CYP Framework
The Safe & Together Model enables organisations to translate the CYP Framework into actionable, measurable practice. It does so by:
Keeping the perpetrator’s patterns of coercive control and violence visible and central.
Creating documentation that counters mother-blaming narratives and supports effective advocacy.
Enhancing cross-sector understanding and coordination around family functioning and child safety.
This alignment resulted in a seamless, client-centred approach that improves outcomes while also strengthening the capacity of child protection, legal, housing, and health systems.
Complementary Approaches in Practice
| CYP Framework | How the Safe & Together Model Supports Them |
|---|---|
| Rebuilds mother/carer-child relationships | Highlights maternal protective efforts; reduces mother-blaming |
| Addresses holistic child needs, strengthens connections with siblings and kinship ties | Focuses on family functioning, safety, and developmental needs |
| Advocates across systems | Creates shared language for interagency coordination |
| Embeds cultural safety for staff and clients | Empowers culturally responsive, community-informed practice |
| DFV- and trauma-informed approach | Integrates understanding of violence and trauma with service planning |
Quotes from the DV West Evaluation
A formal study was done of the effectiveness of this program, and the report captured some very powerful results. Much of the impact of the CYP Framework and the Safe & Together Model centred around how it helped frame the child protection concerns in relation to the perpetrators’ behaviours, not the survivors’ choices, and how the perpetrator pattern–based approach provided clarity around how the perpetrator created harm for the children and around the survivor’s protective efforts.
The application of the CYP Framework and the Safe & Together Model was transformative for the survivors, as it helped them shift their understanding of themselves and what they had experienced, often reducing blame and shame and deepening their appreciation of their own parenting. The effectiveness was not just limited to the survivors themselves—the approach also shifted their relationship with their children in positive ways and increased the protective factors and resilience in children’s lives.
By focusing on the perpetrator’s pattern and identifying the survivors’ protective efforts, CYP staff were able to shift their conversation with DCJ workers and others. Documentation changed to reflect this information, which was critical to supporting decisions to keep children safe and together with their protective parents.
Here are the words of the clients and their practitioners sharing about the real-world benefits of this approach.
Client’s Voices
“There is no end to their support. It is just amazing. And it really strengthens you and gives you the ability to be able to make your own choices or make your own decisions and move on in life.”
“We embrace our culture, our family too, and sometimes it’s just going back and sitting on Country, and we just sit there. It’s just as easy as that sometimes and they (DV West) support that.”
“Because like our family is a big mob. So we have seven kids. No one misses out in the family. You know what I mean? When we had the domestic violence going on with (mother), she was isolated. She missed out on a lot of our family things. We tried to get together. So connecting this sense of what it’s done for the whole family too. Connecting (mother) back with the siblings.”
“To be allowed to do things in a most cultural way because that’s the way our family rolls. We just don’t go one out. We never go out alone. We always go in a mob. And to do that and to have someone see that and to know that that’s something we need… it’s just overwhelming to just know there’s someone out there that can do something like that.”
Practitioner’s Voices
“You intentionally think about it. It’s about looking at that protective factor and that’s partnering with the mum. When you are partnering with the mum, the mum actually feels a lot more powerful and also in the eyes of the children. The children see the mum as the safest person. Also, that rebuilds the trust, if there has been any mistrust and manipulation by the father, because she’s linked with these support services. She’s the one who brought these people into my life.”
“For mums to know that there’s no blame on them. That I’m not here to take your children away. I’m here to build that relationship with your children.”
“We’ve got a 10-month-old up there (at the refuge). I think they’re (DV West) are doing a fantastic job as they looked at it from the point of view that this is going to impact greatly and have a positive impact on the children.”
These quotes reflect how the CYP Framework and the Safe & Together Model together shifted practice—supporting self-advocacy, rebuilding relationships, and equipping professionals to document and validate the impacts of violence and protective actions.
Cross-Sector Outcomes from the DV West Evaluation
The independent evaluation of the DV West program also revealed the following critical results:
30% of children had an open child protection file, but no children were removed while involved in the program.
71% of families saw reduced perpetrator contact and increased safety.
100% of mothers reported better access to critical services (health, housing, legal, education).
100% of mothers reported they better understood their strengths and protective strategies.
78% of clients reported an increase in their social connectedness with community.
Therapeutic, Cultural, Financial & Systemic Benefits
Programs like this often are seen as expensive for the government when they should be seen as investments. When a DFV program like this successfully keeps children with a protective parent instead of taking them into care or restoring children back into the care of the protective parent, the social and financial benefits are immense. By partnering with the non-offending parent, addressing perpetrator patterns, and empowering the mothers/carers to be agents of change in the children’s recovery, the cost benefits extend well beyond that specific family.
Potential social and therapeutic benefits include:
Relationship, contact, and care from protective parents are often a major source of healing and stability for a child who has been impacted by a domestic abuse perpetrator’s behaviour.
Children remain connected to culture, kin, and community.
Children avoid the risks associated with foster care including multiple placements and abuse.
The environments the child inhabits are expanded and their agency within them by employing an ecological-development model in case planning
Potential financial and systemic benefits include:
The cost of a child entering OOHC in NSW is estimated between $55,223 and $71,436 per year per child. Preventing just 10 removals per year could save up to $714,360 annually and future costs to the system associated with the personal suffering outcomes for children who are removed.
Avoiding costly legal processes and repeated interventions further reduces pressure on courts, police, and child protection workers.
Reductions in trauma, homelessness, and school disengagement lower long-term costs in health, criminal justice system, housing, and education.
Implications for Child Protection and the Women’s DFSV Sector
The DV West program, combining two powerful frameworks, illustrates an approach that:
Meets both sectors’ mission to keep children safe and together with protective caregivers.
Reduces system contact by building the capacity of the non-offending parent rather than penalising them.
Improves professional practice through shared language, documentation tools, and training informed by the Safe & Together Model.
Establish therapeutic environments where families can restore their connections, stability, and healing, away from violence.
Directly acknowledges each child’s unique experience of DFV and the accompanying risk and harm factors and works with the child to strengthen their protective and resilience factors.
Builds practitioners’ confidence and skills to assess risk and protective factors and work more effectively across systems to achieve better outcomes for families.
A Call for Expansion and Replication
This integrated model is not a one-off success. It is a scalable, adaptable approach that other DFV and child-focused services can adopt. It aligns with the National Plan to End Violence Against Women and Children 2022–2032 to develop and implement age-appropriate, culturally safe programs to children’s support healing and recovery, Closing the Gap targets, and findings from the Australian Child Maltreatment Study.
To maximise its impact:
Governments should sustain and expand funding for programs like DV West’s Specialist Children’s Program.
Sector leaders should adopt the combined CYP and Safe & Together frameworks as best practice.
Training and system reform should prioritise both the CYP and Safe &Together frameworks to transform how agencies assess risk, document safety, and support families.
This program’s success offers a roadmap for delivering on national goals of safety, early intervention, and recovery. At its core is a simple but transformative principle: Children do better when we partner with the parent who is already trying to keep them safe and work individually with the child. The Safe & Together Model combined with the CYP framework helps make that possible—across systems, across sectors, and across Australia.
Thanks to Catherine Gander for her partnership and her reflections on this piece before it was published.
Additional Resources
Report: The University of Melbourne’s Multi-Agency Triage Project
Safe & Together Institute’s domestic abuse–informed trainings
Safe & Together Institute’s upcoming events
David Mandel’s book Stop Blaming Mothers and Ignoring Fathers: How to Transform the Way We Keep Children Safe from Domestic Violence
