2023 Safe & Together™ Model North American Conference
Join us September 20-22, 2023, in Albuquerque, New Mexico. Early bird pricing ends August 2, 2023!
| Register for the 2023 North American Conference Only – Virtual Attendance (Thursday + Friday) | |
| Register for the 2023 Safe & Together Model North American Conference (Thursday + Friday) & Pre-Conference (Wednesday) | |
| Register for the 2023 Safe & Together Model North Conference Only (Thursday + Friday) | |
| Register for the Pre-Conference ONLY (Wednesday) | |
| To register individuals or groups by invoice, click here. | |
Embassy Suites by Hilton Albuquerque
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Call For Abstracts
The Safe & Together Institute is now calling for breakout presentation proposals for our 2023 events. Deadline for submission is June 23, 2023. Currently, these events are planned to be in person. However, due to the ever-changing state of public health, the conference format is subject to change. In the case of a fully virtual event, presentations will be given via Zoom within our Virtual Academy. We are seeking proposals for virtual workshops and presentations that highlight work in the following categories:
- Site Implementation Presentations: Locally-based communities or organizations who would like to discuss their efforts to implement the Safe & Together Model, including their successes, challenges and/or strategies for implementation.
- Domestic Violence-Informed Practice Presentations: Content about practice that impacts child safety and well-being in the context of domestic violence, frameworks or practice models that are parallel or complementary to the Safe & Together value system and/or practices or programs that grew out of implementation of the Safe & Together Model.
- Safe & Together Model Presentation: Certified Trainers may present a workshop on a particular topic or skill from the Safe & Together Model.
Submit your abstract here.
Nominate a Safe & Together Champion
Safe & Together Institute’s mission is to create a global network of domestic violence-informed professionals, agencies and communities. In order to encourage and celebrate the hard work that so many are doing around the globe to implement and promote the Safe & Together Model, we have created the Champion Award. Deadline for submission is June 23, 2023.
Click here for eligibility requirements and a link to the nomination form.
KEYNOTES
KEYNOTE: The Disregarded Protective Capacity of the Black Woman Survivor: Why doesn’t she get any points for that?
Courageous Fire
Description to come!
KEYNOTE: Responding Effectively to Coercive Control
Dr Emma Katz
This Keynote will explore the new, innovative work that is taking place around coercive control. Coercive control is a severe but often hidden form of abuse. It involves situations where a perpetrator subjects their partner or family member to persistent, wide-ranging controlling behaviour over a long period of time and makes it clear that standing up for themselves will be punished. By repeatedly punishing their partner/family member for non-compliance, the perpetrator intends to demoralise and terrorise them into a state of permanent obedience, stripping them of their ability to freely participate in their communities and to make basic choices for themselves. Coercive controllers use multiple tactics of abuse, and every tactic harms the lives of any children in the family as well as the lives of adult victim-survivors. The experiences of adults and children subjected to coercive control are highly similar, and children and adults should be considered co-victims and co-survivors.
After exploring the dynamics and tactics of coercive control and their impacts on victims-survivors, this Keynote will emphasise the following points: it is the abuser, not the relationship, that is the cause of the abuse, and it is the abuser who is responsible for the harms experienced by any children in the family. Perpetrators are making a parenting choice to have their child grow up in a family dominated by coercive control. Responses to domestic abuse by systems and individual professionals must identify the abuser’s pattern of abusive behaviour as the source of the danger and harm. Because separation rarely brings about safety for the adult and child survivors, and most coercive controllers are determined to continue their coercive control post-separation, responses to abusers must focus on meaningfully disrupting and blocking the abuser’s willingness and ability to continue to be abusive. Both adult and child victims and survivors require not only meaningful safety from the abuser but also the freedom, support and resources to make their own choices and to thrive in the aftermath of abuse.
KEYNOTE: “Why does she keep choosing him over her children?” How to stop blaming mothers, ignoring fathers and fix the way we keep children safe from domestic violence
David Mandel
We live in a world where, consistently, mothers are still blamed for the harm violent fathers create for children and families. Fathers’ behaviors and choices, positive and negative, and their impact on child and family functioning, are underappreciated or outright ignored. As part of the prelaunch of his forthcoming book, “Why does she keep choosing him over her children?” David Mandel, creator of the Safe & Together Model, will examine some of the professional “myths” that interfere with societal and systemic change and some of the steps to fix the systems charged with keeping children safe from domestic violence.
KEYNOTE: The Four Pillars of “Failure to Protect” Culture
David Mandel
“Failure to Protect” culture holds mothers responsible for the behaviors of their abusive male partners. These practices are inefficient, ineffective, unfair and unethical. Drawing from his upcoming book “Why does she keep choosing him over her children,” David Mandel outlines “failure to protect culture,” its limitations and impact, and his suggestions for ending the use of “failure to protect” in domestic violence cases.
KEYNOTE: “The Last Drop”: A Sci-Fi Film Designed to Educate Young People About Coercive Control
Adam Joel
The Last Drop is a short sci-fi film about relationship abuse inspired by the memories of real survivors. A young woman links minds with her boyfriend to relive their favorite shared memories— but when she spots overlooked signs of abuse, she must escape before he can manipulate her memories in his favor. The film is designed to fill the glaring gap in educational material about coercive control for young people. Ruth Reymundo Mandel, the Safe & Together Institute’s Communication and Strategic Relationship Manager, and writer/director, Adam Joel, discuss the ground-breaking elements of the film, including:
– the power of storytelling to connect and empower survivors. Writer/Director, Adam Joel, will share the communal storytelling method he used to combine his own experience as a survivor with input from other survivors and experts.
– the innovative choice to use science fiction to reach younger audiences and highlight the hidden signs of coercive control.
– the partnership between S&TI (an Executive Producer of The Last Drop) and the filmmakers to distribute this film to the people who need it most.
Join us to learn how The Last Drop could be a powerful learning tool and conversation starter for your work in the field of abuse prevention, education, social work, and more!
MASTERCLASSES
Masterclass: Applying a Perpetrator Pattern-Based Approach in Family Court Context
David Mandel
Family courts are charged with balancing child safety with meaningful relationships with both parents. What does this mean in the context of domestic violence? In many instances, courts are not clearly presented with the perpetrators’ patterns and the specifics of the harm it has caused, and emphasis on collaborative parenting can work against the best interests of children in these cases. Drawing on work in family court settings in the United States and Australia, David Mandel, Executive Director and Founder of the Safe & Together Institute, will explore how the Model can be applied in the family court context. This workshop will look at the difference between risk and harm frameworks; the importance of understanding post-separation coercive control and the targeting of professionals and systems as part of perpetrators’ patterns; how to best understand and contextualize protective parenting behaviors; the centrality of a behavioral approach to objectivity and neutrality; and how to increase accountability for perpetrators as parents in the family court context. (This is not an introductory class. While not required, prior knowledge of the Safe & Together Model is beneficial.)
Masterclass: Using Coaching to Increase Effective Practice and System Change
Heidi Rakin & Shelly Napoletano Flynn
Coaching can dramatically increase individual practitioners’ capacity for applying learned skills and tools in their day-to-day practice, as well as help to create a shared language, framework, and practice across agencies, which promotes systems change. In this workshop specifically designed for Safe & Together Model™ Certified Trainers, participants will learn how to take their expertise in domestic violence-informed practice from the classroom to one-on-one and small-group consultations within their agencies. Participants will learn to promote practitioners’ critical thinking, risk and safety assessment, appropriate case planning recommendations, and overall best practices in domestic violence cases. The workshop will also focus on how Certified Trainers can coach workers in using Safe & Together Model™ tools, such as the Perpetrator Pattern Mapping Tool and the STIM Protocol, in advancing skill and knowledge development that can be applied across a range of cases as well as support practitioners in complex cases with high levels of trauma and safety issues. (This session is for Safe & Together Model™ Certified Trainers).
Masterclass: An Introduction to the Safe & Together Model
In this master class, participants will be introduced to the Principles, Critical Components, and other key aspects of the paradigm-shifting Safe & Together Model. Participants will learn how the Model’s concepts, skills and tools can transform individual practice, agencies’ culture and systems, and cross-sector collaboration. Learn about partnering with survivors, keeping children safe and intervening with perpetrators as parents. Participants are guaranteed to leave the session with new practices they can implement immediately. (This session is appropriate for professionals from any sector.)
WORKSHOPS
Before the Conference Special!
September 18 & 19 in New Mexico
Caring Dads Facilitator Training Event
We’re thrilled to announce a special partnership with the Caring Dads organization!
This is your next opportunity to join the leading international network of clinicians working at the nexus of gender-based violence and fatherhood. Register today and take the first step to becoming a Caring Dads Facilitator. Receive a 10% discount on the Safe & Together Model 2023 North American Conference when you register for the Caring Dads Facilitator Training Event.
Speakers
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Adam Joel - Last DropFilmmaker, co-founder of Aggressively Compassionate production companyAdam Joel is an impact-driven filmmaker and a survivor of relationship abuse. He is a co-founder of Aggressively Compassionate, a production company that makes films for good causes. His directorial debut, Under the Weather, screened at universities to spark mental health discussions between students and faculty. Adam also was the Impact Manager for an education film called No Small Matter, by Kindling Group, where he helped coordinate 1,300+ screening events for advocates, educators, and legislators in all 50 states. To make The Last Drop as impactful as possible, Adam consulted dozens of other survivors and an Advisory Board of experts in the fields of abuse prevention, education, and social work. His goal with this film is to help people identify and react to the lesser known forms of abuse before a relationship turns violent.
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Courageous FireCourageous Fire, LLCCourageous 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 MandelFounder and CEO, Safe & Together InstituteWith 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 KatzAssociate Professor in Sociology, Durham UniversityDr 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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Heidi RakinAssociate Director, Safe & Together InstituteHeidi 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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Shelly Napoletano FlynnTrainer Certification Program Manager, Safe & Together InstituteShelly 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.