Season 2 Episode 22: Minisode on Worker Safety & Well-Being: The Connection Between Worker Safety and Victim-Blaming
About This Episode
In this third installment of the multi-part minisode series on worker safety and well-being, Ruth and David explore the connection between worker safety and victim-blaming. In just over 15 minutes, David and Ruth discuss:
How a lack of knowledge of how fathers’ choices impact families and engagement skills with men hamper work with violent fathers.
How these gaps can be worse for fathers from communities where racism has led to the further vilification of men as being dangerous, irresponsible, or irrelevant.
How this lack of knowledge, skills, and confidence can lead to workers feeling unsafe about engaging fathers who have been violent, which leaves the worker to focus on survivors’ choices as a means to keep children safe.
How victim-blaming results when the survivor doesn’t act in accordance with agency wishes.
In the second half of the minisode, David and Ruth outline some steps agencies can take including:
Training workers to have the skills and confidence to assess the influence of all father’s choices on the family functioning—not just seeing the mum as the responsible for the functioning of the home.
Training workers in the skills and confidence to engage fathers, even ones with histories of violence.
Prioritizing whole-of-family work.
Requiring regular conversations about worker emotional and physical safety in domestic violence cases as a regular, proactive part of supervision.
Creating a culture where workers know that expressing safety worries is normal and that they will be supported around strategies for safety, not judged for disclosing fears.
Ensuring that domestic violence case are explicitly mentioned in any worker safety policy.