Season 7 Episode 7: Coercive Control and Children: What Systems Miss | 2026 Asia Pacific Conference Wrap-Up
About This Episode
The most useful conference debriefs aren’t about highlights—they’re about what shifts in you when you listen closely. From the Sydney coast, we wrap up a three-and-a-half-week Asia Pacific tour and talk through the moments that changed the temperature in the room at our 2026 Asia Pacific Coercive Control & Children Conference. We start with gratitude, acknowledgement of unceded Aboriginal land, and the reality that building safer systems means showing up with humility, not just expertise.
One of the biggest breakthroughs we share is our commitment to localised training and culturally responsive practice. We premiered a new Australia-based training film designed to teach coercive control as a pattern over time, centred in a perinatal scenario that follows a family before and after a child is born. With Australian actors, filmmakers, consultation from cultural experts, and survivor input, the film is built to help professionals recognise subtle tactics, see cumulative harm, and respond in ways that strengthen child and survivor safety rather than repeating harmful system habits.
We also get into the harder conversations that practitioners can’t avoid: men’s health, masculinity, and accountability. We talk about why supporting men and boys can’t come at the cost of women and children and why we have to operationalise that promise instead of offering lip service. In the Australian context, we connect family violence practice with the impacts of colonisation, racism, intergenerational trauma, and family separation, while staying clear that healing requires stopping abusive behavior. Along the way, we reflect on survivor voices, workforce wellbeing, and the need for non-extractive organisational cultures.
Finally, we dig into the practical lever that can change outcomes in family law: pattern-based documentation. We share why judicial leaders describe this kind of documentation as “gold” and how the SafetyNexus tool supports workers with coaching, mapping, and better notes when stakes are life-or-death.
If you care about coercive control, domestic violence response, child protection, and safer systems, this conversation gives you language you can use tomorrow. Subscribe, share with a colleague, and leave a review so more practitioners can find the work.
Additional Resources
Safe & Together Institute’s Perpetrator Pattern Mapping Tool
Safe & Together Institute’s domestic abuse–informed trainings
Safe & Together Institute’s upcoming events
David Mandel’s book Stop Blaming Mothers and Ignoring Fathers: How to Transform the Way We Keep Children Safe from Domestic Violence