Worker Safety and Domestic Violence in Child Welfare Systems
By David Mandel, CEO and Founder, Safe & Together Institute
Addressing social workers’ safety concerns must be at the forefront of efforts for child protection agencies. From the inception of the Safe & Together Model’s perpetrator pattern–based approach, worker safety has always been a crucial element. Currently, worker safety is one of the main topics covered in our Supervisor Training.
Worker fear can result in victim-blaming and in under- or overestimating the level of danger, which affects the safety of both survivors and workers. They become angry at the survivor for “not making the right choices” so we don’t have to deal with our fear.
Ignorance of Perpetrators’ Patterns Hinders Social Workers’ Safety
In case consultations that shaped the development of the Model, it was a concern when child welfare workers couldn’t describe whether a domestic violence perpetrator had a history of assaultive or threatening behaviors to persons outside the family. It was a rare worker who could answer questions about aggressive behavior directed at professionals (e.g., social workers and police). Similarly, workers frequently lacked knowledge of whether the perpetrator had threatened or assaulted family and friends who attempted to intervene to help the adult and child survivors. Few workers even considered this information might be meaningful to them.
While this gap in knowledge is a subset of the wider problem of an overall lack of knowledge of perpetrators’ patterns, it was and is a glaring omission from a worker safety perspective. Child welfare workers are among the human services professionals who are most at risk for workplace violence, which includes both physical and psychological violence.[1] Since domestic violence is one of the most common case factors they face, it is reasonable to assume that domestic violence cases are one of the main sources of danger to social workers.
Similar to law enforcement, which identified domestic violence as one of the factors most associated with officer fatalities, child welfare assessments of patterns of violent behavior need to be one of the central strategies for managing domestic violence interventions as safely as possible.[2]
Worker Safety Is a Supervisory Issue
Social worker safety issues surface in different ways. Supervisors and managers may struggle with how best to support a worker who is expressing fears about working with a particular violent perpetrator. Workers need assistance in reflecting on how their own personal and professional history might impact their professional attitudes and behavior. Many workers are child or adult survivors of domestic violence or know someone impacted by it.
The following is a brief example from a case consultation:
“I met with a new worker who, just before going on his first home visit to meet with an identified domestic violence perpetrator, shared with me that his father had been abusive. He expressed his concern that in meeting with this client, he (the social worker) might ‘go over the table at him’ or freeze up. Because he was able to share with me these fears around ‘fight, flight, or freeze,’ I was able to support him in bringing these concerns to his supervisor. I encouraged him to request that his supervisor accompany him on the home visit.”
In another instance, the linkage between addressing workers’ safety concerns and greater engagement with perpetrators was clear. An Australian team of child welfare workers received guidance on planning for safely interviewing a perpetrator. As a result of this guidance, they were able to be more assertive and effective with him. Discussions of fieldwork personal safety strategies have been a regular part of Safe & Together Model trainings.
These strategies were often complex and sophisticated. They encompassed a variety of areas, including:
The timing of visits to reduce risk
The selection of what to wear in the field (e.g., shoes that are easy to move in)
Informing supervisors of their movements
Ensuring their mobile phones are fully charged
An added bonus to the exploration of their own safety strategies is that it often allows them to better understand the safety efforts of survivors.
Unaddressed Worker Safety Fears May Increase Victim Blame and Perpetrator Manipulation
There is a likely correlation between workers’ safety concerns related to domestic violence perpetrators and a “failure to protect” approach to casework. The "failure to protect" approach places the focus of the intervention on the adult survivors’ decisions. If workers have unidentified and unaddressed fears surrounding working with domestic violence perpetrators, then it is more likely they will:
Center their family engagement and case planning on the domestic violence survivor, who is usually female
Expect the survivor to take drastic, potentially dangerous steps to avoid removal of her children
Remove children when other options may exist to keep them safe in their own home and community
Have no or limited engagement with the perpetrator
Have little documentation of the perpetrator’s attitudes about his behavior and its impact on his partner and the children
Do little to no service planning related to the perpetrator’s behavior change
Unaddressed Worker Safety Concerns Can Manifest as Collusive or Placating Behavior
Workers may be more likely to avoid engaging with a perpetrator about his behavior.[3] This can lead to case plans that focus on “safer” issues like substance abuse or mental health issues and avoid a direct focus on violence and abuse.
Avoidance associated with worker safety concerns can also create opportunities for the perpetrator to manipulate the system. For example, in the US, parents have the right to “reasonable efforts” to prevent a removal or reunify with their children. Perpetrators, who have never had visits from child welfare workers, make claims during court hearings that they were never given “reasonable efforts.” This will allow them to present late in the court case, which will still enable them to complete the required services and get access to the children. This can occur even while he is sabotaging her case plan goals and when his behavior was the reason the children were removed.
“It’s really important to recognise that workers’ fears about perpetrators show up in subtle and not-so-subtle ways. Workers may not try all avenues to locate perpetrators because of fear for their own or survivors’ safety, or not see the point in engaging him as they don’t think it will achieve anything.”[4]
Unaddressed safety issues that manifest in social worker avoidance of the perpetrator may lead the survivor to think that professionals are just as scared as she is. This can cause her to lose faith that outside intervention will make her and the children’s situation better.
Organizations Are Failing to Address Social Worker Safety Concerns in Domestic Violence Cases
Finally, unaddressed worker safety issues may interfere with our engagement with the perpetrator. In workplaces where there is little support for safety concerns, these fears will go unnamed and show up “symptomatically.” These “symptoms” may manifest as “inability” to find the perpetrator or complaints that the perpetrator is avoiding or not returning calls. Social workers may also choose to meet with the mother and children repeatedly instead of meeting with the perpetrator. Also, look for complaints about the survivors’ poor choices, being at fault for the continued danger, and the worker’s minimization of the value of meeting with the perpetrator.
These “symptoms” cannot only be attributed to workers’ fears, but they are also connected to organizational and systemic issues.[5] These organizational and systems issues allow workers’ fears to exist due to a:
Lack of training and support to increase workers’ confidence working with men as parents
Low expectation of workers around male engagement and responsibility
Lack of training related to work with domestic violence perpetrators
Organizational practices that fail to create clear policies and procedures for addressing domestic violence–related concerns
An overall lack of reflective supervision.
These gaps make it more likely that safety concerns will be either under- or overestimated. Both of these outcomes can have serious repercussions for the worker and/or the family.
“It was difficult to deliver an appropriate service when I was more concerned about my own safety then providing a safeguarding service to a child.”[5]
Three Factors Influencing Workers’ Assessment of Their Own Safety
In addition to organizational culture, workers’ assessment of their physical and emotional safety are affected by a variety of other factors. These factors fall into three areas:
Workers’ personal and professional experiences of violence and abuse
Workers’ fears for their own psychological safety tied to their fears for the family’s physical safety
Workers’ fears for their own physical and emotional safety as a result of the perpetrator’s actions toward them
The first area refers to the impact of a worker’s prior experiences with violence, which may influence their assessment of safety for themselves (and the family) in a current situation. If a worker has experienced assaultive or aggressive behavior directed toward them on another case or if this perpetrator reminds them of a family member of their own who was assaultive, then they may over- or underestimate the danger to themselves in this case.
The second area is the fear that their actions or inaction cause the perpetrator to further harm the family. In trainings and consultations, workers regularly expressed their fears that something they did or didn’t do might contribute to further harm to the family by the perpetrator. Their assessment of risk to the adult and child survivor was something they experienced very personally and often appeared to impact a worker’s sense of well-being. The sense of unsafety related to case decision-making can be especially high in agencies where workers fear being blamed for children being hurt or killed.
Agency policy (or lack thereof) can also impact workers’ psychological safety. Workers may be afraid that the information about the perpetrator received from the survivor may not be handled safely. This can have a negative impact on how the worker engages the family. Perpetrators may have access, through the court process or other administrative means, to documentation of the survivors’ safety plan.
Workers, who worry that the redaction process will be managed poorly, may not ask specific questions about her plan or choose not to write down the specifics. While this may protect the survivor from the perpetrator learning her plan, it may lead to unnecessarily punitive actions taken against the survivor (e.g., losing her children because there is insufficient evidence of her protective capacities). Agencies need clearly defined processes to protect survivors’ safety plans from perpetrators. This not helps with managing the physical safety of the adult and child survivors but also managing workers’ psychological fears.
Finally, there is the straightforward fear that the perpetrator may target them for physical and/or emotional abuse. Workers can worry that if they take certain actions, the perpetrator will retaliate against them and/or their family for harm. Workers can feel this fear when a client with a history of violence starts asking them questions about their (the worker’s) children. These fears can be particularly strong when the worker takes the following actions: helping the adult and child survivors to leave the relationship or the home; the removal of a child from a perpetrator; or directly confronting the perpetrator around his behavior. All of these fears, if left unaddressed, can influence the case trajectory and/or impact the worker’s well-being and performance.[5]
Intersectionalities and Worker Safety
One other very important area to consider when engaging in a discussion related to worker safety is the combination of a domestic violence perpetrator who also has a propensity for violence toward women in general or people of different races, ethnicities, sexual orientation or religions. Many domestic violence perpetrators are “family violence” only and refrain from abusive behaviors toward others outside the family. But others may have histories of racist statements or action, homophobia, overall misogynistic attitudes toward women, or other forms of hate speech and actions.
These factors exacerbate worker safety concerns and cannot be ignored in any discussion of worker safety.
Read part two of this blog to learn about supervisory and organizational strategies to promote worker safety.
Additional Resources
Safe & Together Institute’s Supervisor Training
References
[1] Kim and M. Hopkins, “Child Welfare Workers’ Home Visit Risks and Safety Experiences in the USA.”
[2] Breul and Luongo, “Making It Safer: A Study of Law Enforcement Fatalities Between 2010-2016.”
[3] New Jersey Department of Children and Families, “New Jersey Department of Children and Families Policy Manual: Child Protection and Permanency: Domestic Violence.”
[4] Healey et al., Invisible Practices Intervention with Fathers Who Use Violence.
[5] Hunt et al., “If I feel like this, how does the child feel?”