Safe & Together in NSW Health: What the ESTIE Project Found

When domestic violence overlaps with substance use or mental health concerns, workers in Australia’s health system have historically struggled to see the full picture and perpetrators can exploit that blind spot to manipulate services and workers. The ESTIE Project, a University of Melbourne research partnership built around the Safe & Together™ Model, spent 2021 embedding the approach across four NSW Local Health Districts to help health workers respond more effectively to families facing these intersecting issues.

Of the health workers who took part, 96% said exposure to the Safe & Together Model improved their practice, and documentation saw the largest shift: 84% reported improved documentation, most often in describing a perpetrator’s pattern of coercive control and its impact on children—the area researchers had found weakest beforehand. Participants then acted as “change agents,” passing on what they learned to colleagues; by the project’s end, more than 300 additional workers across the four districts had been reached this way.

Beyond casework and documentation, the project surfaced a theme not addressed in earlier Safe & Together research: how perpetrators target the workers trying to hold them accountable, through intimidation, manipulation, and complaints made to professional boards or employers. Workers described feeling less prepared for this kind of threat than for physical safety risks, and researchers called for clearer protocols for handling perpetrator complaints and stronger organisational support for worker wellbeing.