Turning Learning into Action: Scotland’s Safe & Together Toolkit for Domestic Abuse–Informed Systems
By the Safe & Together Institute Team
Across Scotland, professionals are using a new, evidence-informed toolkit to answer a critical question: How do we know if our systems are truly domestic abuse–informed?
Developed through a partnership between the Improvement Service, the Scottish Government, and the Safe & Together Institute, the Implementing Safe & Together in Scotland: Monitoring and Evaluating Impact report introduces a comprehensive practitioner and system evaluation toolkit designed to help local authorities and partner agencies turn Safe & Together principles into measurable practice.
A Toolkit for Change
At the heart of the report is the Domestic Abuse–Informed Practice and Systems: Self-Assessment and Evaluation Framework Toolkit, developed to help agencies track their progress as they embed the Safe & Together Model.
This isn’t a generic checklist—it’s a set of living tools co-created with practitioners across Scotland to measure how well systems are:
Partnering with survivors and recognizing their strengths
Holding perpetrators accountable as parents
Keeping children safe and together with the non-offending parent
The toolkit helps practitioners and leaders alike connect day-to-day practice to long-term outcomes—making domestic abuse–informed practice visible, measurable, and improvable.
What’s Inside the Toolkit
The toolkit provides a suite of practical tools that support reflection, measurement, and improvement across agencies. These include:
A Self-Assessment Framework – enabling local teams to evaluate where they are on the journey to becoming domestic abuse–informed and where there’s room to grow.
Logic Model Templates – linking short-, medium-, and long-term outcomes to concrete activities such as training, supervision, and documentation improvements.
Indicator Guidance – showing how to use local and national data to track change in practice, language, and outcomes.
Practitioner & Survivor Engagement Tools – gathering feedback from both those delivering and those receiving services.
Evaluation Planning Resources – helping managers design local monitoring systems that align with the national vision for domestic abuse–informed services.
These tools can be used individually or as part of a broader implementation strategy, which makes them equally useful for local authorities, nonprofit partners, and cross-agency networks.
Designed for Real Practice
What makes the Scotland toolkit stand out is how practical and grounded in experience it is. It was developed collaboratively with frontline practitioners who are already implementing the Safe & Together Model, ensuring that the tools reflect the real complexities of working with families impacted by domestic abuse.
The result is a resource that doesn’t just measure compliance; it supports reflection, learning, and culture change. It guides professionals to ask the right questions:
How do we center child safety without blaming survivors?
How do we document perpetrator behavior as a parenting choice?
Are our systems truly supporting collaboration across sectors?
Evidence of Impact
The Scotland evaluation demonstrates that these tools are already making a difference. Among participating local authorities:
100% report stronger practitioner understanding of domestic abuse impacts on children.
92% say their staff are more effective in assessing perpetrators’ patterns of coercive control.
83% note improvements in documentation and recording—a critical shift toward more accurate, survivor-aligned practice.
By embedding these tools into supervision, team meetings, and quality assurance systems, Scotland is turning Safe & Together training into sustained, systemic change.
Why It Matters
Every system—whether in child welfare, health, or justice—faces the same challenge: How do we know our response to domestic abuse is effective? This toolkit gives organizations a clear pathway to answer that question, grounded in the Safe & Together Model’s globally recognized principles of child safety, survivor partnership, and perpetrator accountability.
It’s a model of what learning in action looks like—moving from awareness to application, from training to transformation.
From Measurement to Momentum
Scotland’s work demonstrates that transformation is not only possible—it’s measurable. By embedding reflection, partnership, and accountability into everyday practice, agencies can ensure that every decision, assessment, and policy keeps children and families safe and together.
