United Kingdom Ministry of Defence (MoD) and the Safe & Together Model: At the Forefront of Tackling Domestic Abuse in the Military
By Dana Holmes; Sara McGirr, PhD, Manager of the Office on Gender, Sexuality & Violence at the MPHI; and Kyle Pinto, MSW
When it comes to tackling domestic abuse, the Army Welfare Service (AWS) has made a change. Its aim is to overhaul how it responds to and supports Army families by creating a simple shift in the mindset of its workers and its military partner agencies. Key to this shift is the idea that the only person responsible for the suffering caused by domestic abuse is the perpetrator.
The AWS project initially comprised three Safe & Together enthusiasts: Annette Keogh, Tracie McDermott, and Steve Connolly. Once the AWS partnered with Safe & Together Institute at the urging of the trio, David Mandel, creator of the Safe & Together Model, and his team worked to contextualise the Model to the unique situations and challenges faced by service personnel and their families. They overhauled and fine-tuned the approach for the British Army, which now has nine Certified Trainers specialising in this military-specific application of the Safe & Together Model.
The initial group of three has become a driving force of nine, and since then the trainers have been promoting the approach and training military partners such as police, chaplains, specialist welfare workers, social workers, and medics across the UK and in Cyprus.
Keogh says that prior to the Safe & Together initiative, “we didn’t have a framework within which to work, and we certainly didn’t hold perpetrators to account for their abusive behaviours. Looking back, we were uncertain what course of action to take so we stuck to what we knew—old-style thinking. If there were children in the household, you were going to a child protection conference, and you were bringing in information you knew about incidents and very little attention or curiosity about what was going on between the incidents. Armed with the best of intentions, we didn’t know how to understand patterns and the wide-ranging impacts of domestic abuse. We thought we were doing the right thing; we didn’t know any different.”
The Intersection of PTSD and Domestic Abuse
Post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD) is taken very seriously by the Ministry of Defence (MoD), which recognises it as an issue among serving personnel and veterans alike and is the subject of multiple initiatives within the MoD. Support is also offered by many veterans’ organisations—the focus being on easing the struggles faced by service personnel and veterans with PTSD and helping them and their families to heal from their trauma.
However, says Keogh, the focus on this very serious condition can occasionally come at a cost where domestic abuse is concerned. “On occasion, we are aware that PTSD has been used as a reason to excuse the abusive behaviours of a soldier both in courts and Child Protection Conferences. Their abilities and experiences as a soldier on a battlefield have been used to explain away why they did what they did and how they are a first-class soldier. This is often echoed by the media who will introduce someone’s military past from many years ago as a reason for an assault on their partner only weeks earlier. In order to ensure our professional partners are looking at the right thing, we ensure we work with them to ‘throw a light’ on the subject, often best demonstrated by looking at patterns of abuse and choices made by the perpetrator. PTSD in itself does not cause domestic abuse; the need for power and control is the only cause.”
The Impact of Domestic Abuse on Soldiers
A soldier who is involved in domestic abuse—as either a perpetrator or a survivor—is not able to function at peak operational effectiveness (OE), says Connolly. “If they need to control their home environment, their mind is not on the job. Depending on their pattern of abuse, they may spend time stalking or coming home to see what the survivor is doing,” he adds. “If they’re deployed, the need for them to control their home environment doesn’t stop. The military mission ultimately suffers, as that soldier is pre-occupied, and his mind is not on the job. On the other side of the coin, when a survivor is deployed and the perpetrator is at home with the family, the pets, and the children, the fear the survivor has for the safety and well-being of those they love when they’re on operations is immense. The constant anxiety fuelled by the abusive and controlling tactics of the perpetrator will cause unbearable anxiety, which will undoubtedly have a negative impact on their ability to operate at the required level. Again, the military mission will ultimately suffer.” Lives, then, are at stake—the lives of the survivor and children, to be sure, but also the service personnel who rely on their fellow soldiers to have their complete focus on the battlefield. Their comrades-in-arms, who often have no idea there’s a problem at home.
A Focus on Patterns of Behaviour
This shift in approach aims to bring the whole picture into focus for the military and statutory agencies to which the AWS provides documentation. It also seeks to address the underlying patterns of perpetrator behaviour and decrease the overall negative impact on child and family functioning as well as operational effectiveness. “That’s the importance of joining the dots between the impacts of DA on OE. Safe & Together has enabled us to articulate, for the first time, by understanding patterns of abusive behaviour as opposed to simply just concentrating purely on incidents of abuse,” says Connolly. “Normally, a unit would attempt to solve the issue by moving one of the service personnel; often the decision could be to the detriment of the survivor.”
Keogh referred to one situation where a Safe & Together–trained AWS worker presented the chain of command with thorough reasoning for keeping the survivor in situ and was also able to explain the impact of the abuse on her ability to perform in the workplace. “Having heard this evidence, the chain of command was very supportive, and that young woman has now been recommended for promotion, and [before the AWS got involved] she was potentially going to be dismissed as unsuitable for service.”
Improving Practice
Connolly recounts a metaphor used by Safe & Together Associate Director Heidi Rankin to illustrate the focus of Safe & Together Institute on proactivity rather than reactivity. “What we have been doing in domestic abuse is constantly dragging people out of a river to try and save them—and a lot of well-meaning agencies will continually be there to drag them out. What S&T enables us to do is go up-river to understand why these people are falling into the river in the first place. What we will find is a broken bridge with people continually falling in the water.”
Using S&T tools and skills, AWS continues the drive to raise awareness and domestic abuse best practice in the Army and in MoD, striving to improve outcomes for children and survivors and calling perpetrators to account as parents. The journey will take time, and the task is to change one thing at a time, aided by the S&T common language and framework. From a small group of three, the AWS, Army, and MoD have an ever-growing band of Safe & Together enthusiasts who are determined and energised to keep this project moving forward.
Additional Resources
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