Turning Learning into Action: Scotland’s Safe & Together Toolkit for Domestic Abuse–Informed Systems
By the Safe & Together Institute Team
Understanding whether we’re making a real difference to families experiencing domestic abuse requires us to listen to the people at the heart of the work: the practitioners embedding new approaches into their daily practice, and the survivors engaging with our services.
Scotland’s Improvement Service has developed a comprehensive Local Practitioner and Survivor Engagement Toolkit* to support local areas across Scotland in monitoring and evaluating the impact of their work to embed the Safe & Together Model. This resource provides practical, ready-to-use tools that put meaningful evaluation within reach of every area working to create domestic abuse–informed systems, services and workforces.
Why This Toolkit?
Between October 2021 and March 2025, the Scottish Government provided dedicated Delivering Equally Safe funding to support 12 local authorities and partnerships across Scotland to embed the Safe & Together Model. The Model is an internationally recognised suite of tools and interventions designed to help social workers and other key professionals engage with families experiencing domestic abuse in a child-centred, strengths-based way.
During this period, the Improvement Service has been working alongside these areas to understand the impact of the changes being made. From this collaborative work, several evaluation tools and resources have been developed—and this toolkit brings them together in one accessible package for wider use across Scotland.
What Makes This Toolkit Different?
Meaningful evaluation goes beyond collecting training feedback forms. It requires understanding how learning translates into changed practice and how that changed practice feels for the families at the centre of our work. This toolkit recognises that reality by providing structured approaches to engage with both practitioners and survivors.
The toolkit includes:
A Safe & Together logic model that outlines inputs, activities, and expected outcomes at both local and national levels, helping you frame your evaluation work and ensure your activities link clearly to the outcomes you’re working towards.
Practitioner engagement tools, including focus group schedules for multi-agency professionals who have completed overview training and in-depth interview schedules for social workers and others regularly using Safe & Together in their practice with families. These tools help capture learning around enablers and barriers to embedding the Model into day-to-day work.
A survivor journey mapping questionnaire designed to understand survivors’ experiences of engaging with child protection processes and services and the extent to which they experience Safe & Together principles being embedded across their journey.
Practical guidance on format and facilitation considerations, consent processes, confidentiality, and crucial safety and well-being considerations when working with survivors.
Template consent forms for both practitioners and survivors that you can adapt to your local context and requirements.
Designed for Local Flexibility
One of the strengths of this toolkit is its adaptability. Every local area has different circumstances, resources, and evaluation priorities. The tools provided are deliberately designed as starting points that you can tailor to suit your needs. The focus group and interview schedules, for example, contain more questions than you might use in a single session—allowing you to select the most relevant questions for your local purpose and keep engagement activities manageable and accessible.
Safety and Ethics at the Heart
The toolkit takes seriously the responsibility of engaging survivors in evaluation work. It provides detailed guidance on safety and well-being considerations, emphasises the importance of working closely with specialist services, and carefully considers issues like consent, the right to withdraw, and ensuring survivors have appropriate supports in place.
The guidance encourages areas to think through practical questions: Who should conduct interviews with survivors? How do we ensure consent is truly informed? What support needs to be in place? When might someone’s changing circumstances affect their participation? These aren’t afterthoughts—they’re central to doing this work responsibly.
Moving from Activities to Outcomes
The toolkit encourages a shift in thinking—from simply recording what activities we’ve delivered (training completed, policies revised, meetings held) to understanding the difference those activities are making. Are practitioners more confident holding perpetrators accountable? Do survivors feel their protective efforts are being recognised? Are children being kept safe and together with non-offending parents? These are the questions that matter.
The logic model included in the toolkit maps out the journey from inputs and activities through to short-, medium-, and long-term outcomes, helping local areas think clearly about what success looks like and how to demonstrate progress towards it.
Who Is This For?
This toolkit is designed for:
Local authorities and partnerships implementing the Safe & Together Model across Scotland
Areas that received Delivering Equally Safe funding for Safe & Together implementation
Any organisation or partnership working to embed domestic abuse–informed systems, services, and workforces who want to evaluate their impact
You don’t need to be an evaluation expert to use these tools. They’re designed to be practical and accessible, providing clear guidance on how to approach engagement activities safely and effectively.
Getting Started
The toolkit sits alongside the Improvement Service’s broader evaluation resources for Safe & Together implementation in Scotland, including the Domestic Abuse–Informed Practice and Systems: Self-Assessment Tool and Evaluation Framework. Together, these resources provide a comprehensive approach to understanding and demonstrating the impact of work to create domestic abuse–informed change.
All tools in this toolkit are free to use and adapt. If you would like to discuss how best to use any of these tools, or what support the Improvement Service can provide, you can contact vaw@improvementservice.org.uk
Looking Forward
As Scotland continues its journey towards fully embedded, domestic abuse–informed systems, services, and workforces, understanding what works—and what needs to work better—becomes increasingly important. This toolkit provides practical support to help local areas capture that learning, celebrate progress, and identify where continued focus is needed.
Most importantly, it ensures that the voices of practitioners and survivors remain at the heart of how we understand and demonstrate the impact of this vital work.
*The Local Practitioner and Survivor Engagement Toolkit was developed by the Improvement Service in collaboration with local areas implementing Safe & Together across Scotland. It forms part of the broader support provided to the 12 local authorities/partnerships funded through the Scottish Government’s Delivering Equally Safe Fund between October 2021 and March 2025.
