“It Has Empowered Me”: Iowa Parent Partners on the Safe & Together Model

Three domestic violence survivors who serve as Parent Partners in Iowa’s child welfare system—mentors who support families navigating the same system they once experienced as parents—described in a small pilot evaluation how Safe & Together™ Model training changed the way they, and the caseworkers around them, work with families experiencing domestic violence.

These Parent Partners said the training helped them have more open conversations with clients about domestic violence, and that they saw the same shift in caseworkers trained in the Model—less shaming, more appropriate referrals. The change felt personal: participants said that as clients themselves, they’d rarely disclosed their own abuse to untrained workers, one explaining she never wanted to “throw another wrench in there.” One participant reflected that her own case might have gone differently, including avoiding separation from her children, had her caseworker been trained in the Model.

Participants described a shift toward documenting a perpetrator’s specific behaviours rather than a generic “history of domestic violence” and said fathers were increasingly held to the same accountability standards as mothers—expected to engage in services and recognise their impact on the family, rather than the burden falling on the non-offending parent to prove she’d protected her children.