Safe & Together Intersections Meeting Guide
Domestic abuse in families often intersects with the substance abuse and/or mental health issues of one or more family members. The intersection of these issues is complex and diverse.
The Safe & Together Intersections Meeting (STIM) Guide includes “real” intersections like the situation where the domestic violence perpetrator may have a pattern of more severe violence while under the influence of substances. These intersections also involve perpetrators using false claims of substance abuse or mental health issues against survivors to control them, causing mental health problems or undermining recovery efforts. Additional complexity emerges when practitioners must balance addressing a perpetrator's family or cultural trauma while confronting their current abusive behaviors.
Because the complexity of the intersection of domestic abuse and other issues spans case management, service delivery, and safety issues, it is valuable to have a specific meeting guide that offers a framework for:
Improving the assessment of how these issues intersect
Ensuring the role of domestic violence is considered when developing mental health (MH) and/or addiction (AOD) treatment plans
Developing domestic violence interventions that are domestic abuse–informed
Promoting cross-sector collaboration through the use of a common domestic abuse–informed framework (the Safe & Together Model)
Developing child protection case plans related to MH and AOD
The STIM Guide seeks to:
Keep a focus on the children when there are issues of adult domestic violence, mental health issues, and/or substance abuse, as work with domestic violence is often siloed as an adult-to-adult issue.
Use the Multiple Pathways to Harm framework. Intersections can help in the assessment of how the perpetrator’s behaviors directly, or indirectly, impact child, partner, and family functioning. The meeting protocol considers, but is not limited to, the following areas of potential disruption:
Safe, stable, nurturing home environment
The day-to-day functioning of the family
The other parents’ parenting and their relationship with the child
Their own relationship with the child
Their partner and/or child receiving services for their needs
Their relationship with kin and relative supports
Connections with cultural heritage and community
Education and learning
Housing and economic stability
Partner with the adult and child survivors by ensuring that their mental health and/or substance abuse assessments and treatments are domestic abuse–informed.
This meeting protocol can be implemented without Safe & Together Model training, but it is significantly more effective when participants are trained in the Model. The protocol is designed to work best with the Perpetrator Pattern Mapping Tool but can be completed without it.
