2023 Safe & Together™ Model North American Conference

Speakers

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  Adam Joel - Last Drop Filmmaker, co-founder of Aggressively Compassionate production company
  

  Adam Joel - Last Drop

  Filmmaker, co-founder of Aggressively Compassionate production company

  Adam Joel is an impact-driven filmmaker and a survivor of relationship abuse. He is the Writer and Director of The Last Drop a short sci-fi film about relationship abuse inspired by the memories of real survivors. Adam is leading an international campaign using this revolutionary film to help people identify and react to the lesser known forms of abuse that tend to occur BEFORE a relationship turns violent. To make The Last Drop as impactful as possible, he consulted dozens of other survivors and an Advisory Board of experts in the fields of abuse prevention, education, and social work, including The One Love Foundation and The Safe & Together Institute, who are designing custom discussion guides to accompany the film. Adam is providing this project as a tool to help educators, advocates, and community groups lead meaningful conversations about relationship safety all across the world.

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  Beth Ann Morhardt Beth Ann Morhardt Collaborations, LLC
  

  Beth Ann Morhardt

  Beth Ann Morhardt Collaborations, LLC

  Safe & Together Institute Faculty with extensive experience in DV & CPS sectors, both as a direct service & professional development provider. Founder of Beth Ann Morhardt Collaborations, LLC, a holistic professional development practice designed to support the sacred work within systems.

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  Bethani Whiting
  

  Bethani Whiting

  Bethani has spent over a decade working with children and families. Her work has included conducting child protection investigations, long term preventive services and supervising a team of on the ground field workers. Since leaving this work, she joined the Domestic Violence Bureau at NYS Office of Children and Family Services to continue her child welfare work and advocacy for the women and children experiencing domestic violence in New York. Bethani hopes to continue to make real, lasting change for our families and be a part of the efforts to help improve DV informed child welfare practice. Bethani completed the Train the Trainer program through Safe & Together in 2021 and since has been working on implementing this practice across NYS to child welfare and DV agencies. Bethani believes that together we can shift our practice in NYS across all systems, hoping to be a model for others. She has a MS Degree in Applied Family Science with a national certification as a Family Life Educator (CFLE).

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  Brenda Flores
  

  Brenda Flores

  Brenda Flores is an Investigations Supervisor for Children Youth and Families Department (CYFD). She received her Bachelor of Social Work from New Mexico State University in 2012. She started her career with CYFD in 2012 as a Backlog Worker in Investigations and has held positions of Senior Investigator, Investigator and Family Centered Meeting Facilitator. Ms. Flores has been trained in Safe and Together since 2018. She participated in the first NM Safe and Together Kickstarter Project for Protective Services and La Casa, Inc. in 2022. Along with her peers at PS and La Casa, Inc. leadership, Ms. Flores presented on the Project at the 2023 NM Children’s Law Institute and the 2023 NM NASW Conference. Ms. Flores has always found a passion for domestic violence investigations and has always looked for ways to better partner with survivors and hold perpetrators accountable for their behavior, including being a part of several domestic violence trainings throughout her career.

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  Candace Calabrese
  

  Candace Calabrese

  Candace has been working in the fields of child welfare and domestic violence since 2001. Prior to her work at NYS Office of Children and Family Services, Candace spent a number of years in the field as a child protective worker and unit supervisor for a local district in New York, she was a trainer for child welfare workers at the Office for the Prevention of Domestic Violence. Candace started her work at OCFS at the Albany Regional Office as a county lead providing oversight, practice improvement, and program support to the local districts in the region. During that time, she had the opportunity to assess local child welfare practice through state reviews and the federal Child and Family Service Review (CFSR). She joined the Bureau of Domestic Violence Prevention and Victim Support at OCFS in 2017 as the Program Manager for CPS/DV Collaborations throughout the state, which is where she was first introduced to the Safe & Together Model. This introduction to the model and awareness of the benefits it provided the collaborations lead to years of advocating for more comprehensive training, tools and support for the field statewide. Candace completed the Train Certification Program through Safe & Together Institute in 2021 and has been working with her team to facilitate implementation of the Safe & Together Model across the state in hopes of creating more domestic violence informed systems and better outcomes for children and families.

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  Courageous Fire Courageous Fire, LLC
  

  Courageous Fire

  Courageous Fire, LLC

  Courageous Fire is a Black woman who came to understand just how crushing the disparities of being a Black woman escaping domestic violence are. Not just because of being a woman, or being Black, but because she was both. As she continued to research after she achieved a more comfortable measure of “safety” from the abuser, she found out that she shared this truth with her sisters across the entire country. She wanted to know why.

  One of the biggest factors was the historical context of who America had decided she and her Black sisters were – aggressive, hypersexual, provocative, angry, violent, malicious, sneaky, incapable of or highly tolerant of pain, strong, and loved to serve others to the point of self-sacrifice. This America was incapable of hosting safe spaces to provide services to her and her sisters during crises. This America could not be trusted to meet the needs of her and the children she would be left to raise alone. Courageous wanted to #changethenarrative.

  She began Courageous Fire, LLC nearly 4 years ago to educate with a concentration on two distinct groups – Centers of Trust and Centers of Must – to increase the spaces where Black women can be treated with dignity, compassion, and stop being refused services or having services terminated for showing up fully as a Black woman during crisis. Courageous has always known her work would need to broaden to mitigate the harm of systems holding Black women accountable for the perpetrator’s violence against them and their children. That’s why she is moving toward those state-operated systems in her collaborative work with organizations such as Iowa Department of Health and Human Services, Children and Families of Iowa, and Safe and Together Institute to make that happen.

  Courageous is a consultant, trainer, and women’s empowerment speaker who comes with 11+ years of curriculum development and delivery experience, 5+ years as a motivational speaker, and 4+ years of independent studies in historical and systemic racial impact on Black women in DV. She often says her approach is never “shame on you!” which closes people down, but instead it is one of “did you know?” to give people a safe place for consideration. Courageous is aware that there is a temptation to assume how a Black woman will “teach”, but experience has shown her that knowledge, authenticity, and comfort with who she is creates a safe for her audience to be comfortable with themselves while they learn, question, seek, discard, relearn, and grow. She comes ready to invite everyone that attends that level of #permission.

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  David Mandel Founder and CEO, Safe & Together Institute
  

  David Mandel

  Founder and CEO, Safe & Together Institute

  With over almost 30 years’ experience in the domestic violence field, David’s international training and consulting focuses on improving systems’ responses to domestic violence when children are involved. Through years of work with child welfare systems, David has developed the Safe & Together™ Model to improve case practice and cross-system collaboration in domestic violence cases involving children. He has also identified how a perpetrator pattern-based approach can improve our ability to help families and promote the development of domestic violence-informed child welfare systems.

  David and the Safe & Together Institute’s staff and faculty have consulted to United States’ child welfare systems in a number of states including New York, Louisiana, New Jersey, Iowa, Wisconsin, Colorado, Connecticut, Delaware, Florida, Michigan, New Mexico, the District of Columbia, Vermont, Oregon and Ohio. In the last five years, their work has expanded outside the United States with research, training and consultation in the United Kingdom, Australia, Canada and other countries. The Safe & Together Institute works closely with domestic violence advocates, in the United States and abroad, to help them more effectively work with child protection systems and better advocate for child welfare-involved adult and child domestic violence survivors. David has written and published online courses which has launched a new Safe & Together Model Certified Trainer initiative that will increase the Institute’s ability to support sustainable implementation of domestic violence-informed practice in the US and abroad.

  David has written or co-written journal articles on batterer’s perceptions of their children’s exposure to domestic violence, domestic violence case reading tools, and the intersection of domestic violence and child welfare practice. His chapter on “Batterers and the Lives of Their Children” was published in the Praeger Series Violence Against Women in Families and Relationships.

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  Dr Emma Katz Associate Professor in Sociology, Durham University
  

  Dr Emma Katz

  Associate Professor in Sociology, Durham University

  Dr Emma Katz, Ph.D., is an internationally-renowned expert in domestic abuse and coercive control, whose work has influenced legislation in the UK and overseas. Coercive control is a form of domestic abuse where perpetrators use a pattern of threats, humiliation and intimation to control and dominate their partner and children, depriving them of independence and isolating them from support. Because coercive control does not always involve physical violence, it has often been under-reported and under-recognised. It was recognised as a criminal offence in England and Wales in 2015.

  Emma’s research with mothers and children who have survived coercive control has transformed understandings of domestic abuse. Children’s experiences of coercive control were largely invisible prior to Emma’s work, which found that children were affected by many forms of abuse beyond physical violence against their mother, including imprisonment, deprivation of resources, and isolation from the outside world. Emma’s research findings on children and coercive control have been used to train professionals internationally.

  Her book, Coercive Control in Children’s and Mothers’ Lives (2022, Oxford University Press) is described as a ‘pioneering work’ that ‘will change how we understand and response to children’s experience of domestic abuse’ (Evan Stark, Professor Emeritus, Rutgers University).

  Dr Emma Katz gained her Ph.D. from the University of Nottingham, UK and is currently a Senior Lecturer at Liverpool Hope University, UK.

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  Dr. Pamela Jordan Program evaluator with the University of Nebraska's Center on Children, Families, & the Law
  

  Dr. Pamela Jordan

  Program evaluator with the University of Nebraska's Center on Children, Families, & the Law

  Dr. Pamela Jordan, a program evaluator with the University of Nebraska’s Center on Children, Families, & the Law, oversees evaluation of our Safe & Healthy Families Court activities including the Safe & Together training provided to court professionals and our implementation of S & T principles in the problem-solving court. Pam holds a Ph.D. in Community Psychology and has worked in the domestic violence field for more than 20 years, helping programs measure the difference they make in survivors’ lives.

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  Elizabeth Buhr
  

  Elizabeth Buhr

  Beth has been with the Department of Health and Human Services since 2012 beginning her career there supervising 7 southeastern rural counties in the division of Children Family Services. She transitioned into her role as a CFS Administrator serving Lancaster County in 2017. In this role she created the first Southeast Service Area domestic violence specialized team. Beth started her work in Child Welfare in 2009 during privatization as a service coordinator, she then became a trainer until her she transitioned to HHS. Beth has her Bachelor’s Degree in Human Relations and a Master’s of Arts with an Emphasis in Management, both achieved from Doane University. Beth is trained in the Safe & Together Model CORE program.

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  Flor Gonzalez Director of Support Services at La Casa
  

  Flor Gonzalez

  Director of Support Services at La Casa

  Flor Gonzalez is the Director of Support Services at La Casa in Las Cruces, New Mexico where she works to serve victims of domestic violence and their families. As the Director of Support Services, she oversees the case management, children and youth program, transitional housing, battering intervention program, legal advocacy department, and the crisis advocacy and intake department at the main office in Las Cruces and the satellite office located in Anthony. Flor is certified as a National Community Crisis Response Team Member through the National Organization of Victim Assistance (NOVA) and is specifically trained to provide trauma mitigation, education, and emotional first aid in the aftermath of a critical incident, either small-scale or mass-casualty. She is a Crisis Prevention Institute Certified Instructor (CPI) in non-violent crisis intervention and has completed the Coaching Boys Into Men advocate Certification and is prepared to facilitate Coaches Clinics in her community. She was selected to participate in the 2022 Leadership Education and Advancement for Professionals (LEAP) Cohort 8 Academy through ValorUS and the U.S Department of Justice Office on Violence Against Women. The LEAP Project is designed to provide intensive, interactive, training and practicum for leaders of color in the anti-violence field.

  Prior to taking this position, she was the Prevention Education Coordinator at La Pinon Sexual Assault Recovery Services of Southern New Mexico for the last 11 years. During her time at La Pinon, Flor was a leading voice in sexual violence prevention efforts throughout the State of New Mexico. She was involved in the development of the It Starts With Us Communications campaign from start to finish which stresses the importance of understanding that we all play a role in ending sexual violence. In 2014, Flor was selected to participate in the development of the Statewide Strategic Plan for Primary Prevention of Sexual Violence and it was published in December of 2015.

  Her life mission has been to end disparity against marginalized communities by working with communities of color, immigrant populations, poverty, older adults, people with disabilities, LGBTQ+ and working with diverse women and youth. In the 28 years that Flor has worked with these marginalized communities, she has been able to develop and implement curriculum as a tool that focuses on the importance of consent, respect, and empathy, challenging rigid gender roles and promoting social norms that protect against violence.

  Along with her lifelong commitment to ending gender-based violence she has a passion for working with youth. She is in her 29th year as an assistant volleyball coach at Las Cruces High School. She uses the opportunity not only to teach the game but also to teach life skills that will forever be instilled in these youth.

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  Heidi Rakin Associate Director, Safe & Together Institute
  

  Heidi Rakin

  Associate Director, Safe & Together Institute

  Heidi has over 30 years of experience in the sexual and domestic violence fields and social justice. She has worked in crisis counseling, program and policy development and advocacy in both the United States and Canada. Heidi received a Master’s in Public Administration with a concentration in domestic violence from the University of Colorado at Denver, the only program of its kind in the country. In her current role as Associate Director and North American Lead, she helps agencies navigate plans for systems change and supports efforts to build capacity through training and collaboration. Heidi also oversees the Institute training staff, faculty and mentors, manages training for Certified Trainers and presents nationally and internationally.

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  Hon. Elise M .W. White
  

  Hon. Elise M .W. White

  Hon. Elise M .W. White has served as Judge of the Separate Juvenile Court of Lancaster County, Nebraska since April of 2020. Prior to her judicial appointment, Judge White ran a small firm for 14 years, specializing in family, juvenile and elder law as well as mediation services;serving as parents attorney and Guardian ad Litem in a variety of juvenile and domestic relations cases. She is currently the lead judge for the Lancaster County Safe and Healthy Families Problem Solving Court, the child welfare lead judge for the Lancaster County Through the Eyes of the Child Initiative and serves on a wide variety of Nebraska Supreme Court committees and commissions. She is a 2006 graduate of the Nebraska College of Law.

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  Katie Hansen Child and Family Services Specialist Supervisor- Domestic Violence unit
  

  Katie Hansen

  Child and Family Services Specialist Supervisor- Domestic Violence unit

  Kaitlin Hahn is a supervisor of the domestic violence unit with DHHS, Child and Family Services. Kaitlin supervises a team who assess allegations of domestic violence when children are present. Kaitlin has been with DHHS since 2013 and has had a passion for working domestic violence cases and partnering with survivors. Kaitlin assists in training OPD, school social workers and other professions about how domestic violence affects children. Kaitlin is trained the domestic violence Safe and Together model and has implemented in her unit for DHHS. Kaitlin founded the SODV fundraising foundation that raises funding and awareness for domestic violence survivors and surrounding advocacy center. SODV hosts yearly golf tournaments, volleyball tournaments and silent auctions. In her free time she is often playing volleyball, watching movies or hanging out with her dog.

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  Leah Vejzovic North America Regional Manager, Safe & Together Institute
  

  Leah Vejzovic

  North America Regional Manager, Safe & Together Institute

  Leah has been working as a social worker in the fields of child welfare and domestic violence victim advocacy since 2007. She has experience as a child welfare services provider, a domestic and sexual assault victim advocate, a therapist specializing in work with adult and child survivors and perpetrators, a men’s behavior change program facilitator and as the coordinator of domestic violence training and response for the Department of Human Services in her home state of Iowa. Leah also had the opportunity to sit on local and statewide boards related to domestic and sexual violence prevention and services and continues to be a part of the Iowa Domestic Abuse Death Review team. Leah first became connected to the Safe & Together Institute during her tenure as state coordinator when she helped facilitate implementation of the Safe & Together Model across the state. She now serves as a Resource Development Specialist for the Institute, developing training and resources. Having worked in both direct service with families and in systems change, Leah is passionate about equipping professionals with the tools they need to do effective work with families and to engage in larger agency and systems change.

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  Lindsey Turner Associate Executive Director at Voices of Hope
  

  Lindsey Turner

  Associate Executive Director at Voices of Hope

  Lindsey Turner is the Associate Executive Director at Voices of Hope, a crisis center for survivors of domestic violence, sexual assault, trafficking, stalking and other forms of abuse in Lincoln, NE. Lindsey has been with Voices of Hope for over 6 years, previously serving at the Children’s Services Coordinator in which she supported survivors who were also involved in the child welfare system. Lindsey was an active member of the Through the Eyes of the Child Domestic Violence Subcommittee and assisted in developing the Safe and Healthy Families Initiative (SAHFI) which supported the Safe and Healthy Families Court (SAHFC). Lindsey supervises three advocates who work directly with survivors and participate in SAHFC team meetings and case mappings. Lindsey also serves on the SAHFI Management Team. Lindsey is a Licensed Mental Health Practitioner and has experience working with youth experiencing mental and behavioral health challenges as well as the child welfare field. Lindsey received her MA in Counseling Psychology through the University of Nebraska-Lincoln.

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  Lisa Schmidt Program Specialist at the General Authority Child and Family
  

  Lisa Schmidt

  Program Specialist at the General Authority Child and Family

  Lisa has a Bachelor of Arts and a Bachelor of Social Work degree from the University of Manitoba. She began her career as an abuse investigator with Child and Family Services starting in 1996. Throughout the years, she has worked in front line child protection, worked with victims and perpetrators of domestic violence and has been a Program Specialist at the General Authority Child and Family since 2009. As part of this role, Lisa has been able to participate in the development and support of new and innovative child welfare practice approaches and values working with agencies to improve service delivery to Manitoba families.

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  Marianne Hernandez-Jimenez CYFD Protective Services
  

  Marianne Hernandez-Jimenez

  CYFD Protective Services

  Marianne Hernandez-Jimenez, LMSW obtained a Master of Social Work Degree in 1998 from NMSU. She has been employed with CYFD Protective Services for over 24 years and supervised the In-Home Services Unit in Dona Ana County for 12 years. Ms. Hernandez-Jimenez was also a PS Trainer/Coach for Region 5. She is now the County Office Manager for Dona Ana County and oversees Investigations and In-Home Services. She has served on several CYFD workgroups, including the Safety Assessment and Safety Organized Practice Implementation. Ms. Hernandez-Jimenez is a member of the In-Home Services Family Connections and Supervisory Practice Framework Leadership Teams. She trains new supervisors and managers utilizing the Supervisory Practice Framework. She participated in the first NM Safe and Together Kickstarter Project for Protective Services and La Casa, Inc. in 2021. Along with her peers at PS and La Casa, Inc. leadership, Ms. Hernandez-Jimenez presented on the Project at the 2023 NM Children’s Law Institute and the 2023 NM NASW Conference. Ms. Hernandez-Jimenez serves as a board member on the Dona Ana County Juvenile Justice Continuum Board and the LC3 Local Behavioral Health Collaborative. She is a Certified Parent Educator for Circle of Security Parenting Program. Ms. Hernandez-Jimenez has been an adjunct instructor at NMSU and has also served as a Field Liaison and Field Instructor for BSW and MSW Student Interns.

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  Michael Bautista
  

  Michael Bautista

  Michael Bautista (he/him) is the Manager of the Fathering for the Future program with Families Matter Society of Calgary. This specific portfolio is dedicated to work and engagement with those that identify as fathers/male caregivers. With a Degree in Child Studies from Mount Royal University, Michael has been with the agency for 16 years. He has worked in various capacities including early childhood education, youth programming, one-to-one home visitation and group facilitation.

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  Rhonda Dagg
  

  Rhonda Dagg

  Rhonda Dagg, born and raised in Manitoba, obtained her Bachelors of Science (1995) and Bachelors of Social Work (1997) degrees from the United States of America. For 25 years, she has worked for the Government of Manitoba in a variety of roles including front line worker, supervisor, business analyst and Leading Practice Specialist. In 2019, Rhonda was thrilled to join the Safe and Together Institute as a faculty member.

  Rhonda loves having the opportunity to think outside the box and to create training and educational material for staff and the community that is fun, thought provoking and inspiring. Rhonda is an advocate for families affected by domestic violence, and a strong supporter of staff who work with these families. Due to her passion of supporting children affected by domestic abuse she became a published author on the topic and attends classrooms and conferences to speak about relationships.

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  Sarah Webb MSW RSW
  

  Sarah Webb MSW RSW

  Sarah Webb MSW RSW currently works with Caring Dads as the Global Enterprise Manager as well as the Trainer for North America. Previously, Sarah worked 15 years in the Child Welfare system as a Child Protection Worker. While working in child welfare Sarah worked on a specialized Domestic Violence Team conducting child protection investigations and worked closely with the Violence Against Women sector.

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  Shelly Napoletano Flynn Trainer Certification Program Manager, Safe & Together Institute
  

  Shelly Napoletano Flynn

  Trainer Certification Program Manager, Safe & Together Institute

  Shelly Napoletano Flynn, MSW began at Safe & Together Institute in July 2018 as the Trainer Certification Program Manager overseeing the Institute’s Certified Trainer Expansion. Shelly’s professional career includes over twenty years of experience in the field of child welfare with a dual focus on direct practice with children and families and systems-level social work practice. With the focus on children birth through age eight and their families, her career included direct service, case management and administration which included intersections with statutory child protection, juvenile and family courts, mental health, substance abuse, domestic violence, and local crisis response teams.

  Shelly’s experience in systems-level practice involved projects such as the evaluation and development of a community’s local capacity to holistically serve its at-risk population of children and families. Additionally, she evaluated and reported on the state-wide supervision practices of Connecticut Certified School Social Workers. As a result of this research, Shelly served on the State of Connecticut Department of Education’s Task Force to develop and implement properly aligned and discipline-specific evaluation standards for school-based social workers in the State of Connecticut. Additionally, her work in systems practice led to the honor of being invited to present on local capacity development of a Birth through Age Eight Children and Family Initiative to the Administration for Children and Families (ACF), a division of the U.S. Department of Health & Human Services in Washington DC.

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  Tommi Fisher
  

  Tommi Fisher

  Tommi Fisher received her Bachelor of Criminal Justice from New Mexico State University in 2009. She has been with Children’s Youth and Families Department since 2015. She currently is in the role of Investigations Supervisor and held positions of Senior Investigator, Investigator and Foster and Adoption Recruiter. Previously Ms. Fisher worked as a Crime Victim Advocate with Las Cruces Police Department from 2010-2015. She has attended numerous seminars related to Child Abuse and Victim Advocacy throughout her career and is Credentialed Victim Advocate through the National Organization for Victim Assistance. She participated in the first NM Safe and Together Kickstarter Project for Protective Services and La Casa, Inc. in 2022. Along with her peers at PS and La Casa, Inc. leadership, Ms. Fisher presented on the Project at the 2023 NM Children’s Law Institute and the 2023 NM NASW Conference.