Transforming Practice, Reframing Safety: How the Centre for Women & Co. Are Embedding the Safe & Together Model
By Kyra Feetham, High Risk Team Coordinator in Logan, Queensland, 2025 Safe & Together Champion Award Winner
The Centre for Women & Co. and High Risk Team (HRT) in the Logan area in Queensland, Australia, have been on a journey—not just of implementation but of reflection and recalibration. Embedding the Safe & Together Model into our systems hasn’t been a single act. It’s been an ongoing, evolving commitment to language, lens, and leadership.
As Lead Agency of the Logan HRT, the Centre for Women & Co. have restructured how we approach intake and risk assessment, integrating Safe & Together–aligned language and criteria not only into our frontline tools but also into our client file audits. These audits are no longer just retrospective—they’re a way to deepen practice, identify gaps, and build team learning. One gap I noticed? Practitioners weren’t regularly completing the “family functioning” field. That observation sparked implementation of refresher trainings on the Model and conversations about what gets overlooked and why—a chance to reconnect to the Model and engage in self-reflective practice.
The Centre for Women & Co. has embedded the “impact on family functioning” into its case note templates, prompting more reflective questions during survivor partnership work. It’s encouraging staff to see their conversations through a new lens—one that foregrounds both harm and resistance. Internally, I have also implemented a process for child safety notifications that insists on shared review and leadership oversight before anything is lodged. It’s about ensuring we hold the person using violence in the light and that every report tells the full picture—including the protective strategies of the non-offending parent.
In our HRT meetings, we’ve shifted our culture of information-sharing. We now deliberately summarise information using the behaviours of the person using violence, inspired by the Model’s Perpetrator Pattern Mapping Tool. We speak of “victim survivors” rather than “victims,” we review intersections and intersectionalities to unpack complexities of each case, and we name each child individually, recognising them in their own right as affected family members. It might sound simple, but these changes mark a move away from adult-centric defaulting, and they reflect how the Model helps us honour the full family story and capture a 360-degree assessment.
This isn't just about better practice—it's about better culture. Our HRT has broken down silos to share relevant information in a timely manner with purpose. We’re getting better at asking: “What are the unintended consequences of this action?” before we act. And we act in collaboration, ensuring the risk is shared.
Winning the Safe & Together Champion Award this year was deeply humbling. But the real achievement is seeing the language of the Model showing up in daily interactions —pivoting conversations, clarifying decisions, validating survivor strategies and highlighting strengths. This is where our passion for increasing safety and accountability, meets transformational practice and systemic change. This is the change that matters.
Additional Resources
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
