Reflect on your own tone and the way you come across
Use your supervisor and professional peer group and reflect on your own behaviour that might be contributing to an unhelpful dynamic. Plan a strategic and different response; using your power and personal style differently will change the dynamics of the care team. Consider a ‘one down’ position; seek to listen more and understand the other’s experience rather than trying to convince them of your opinion. Or alternatively, sometimes you might need to stand your ground and ‘speak up’ and ‘manage up’ because your vital information is not being considered and this inaction may be placing others in danger.
Below is a checklist (Bancroft 2007) that can be used to guide your assessment of change in a man who has previously been a perpetrator of family violence. You might use this checklist as a prompt for reflective discussion within a supervision session.
Ask yourself, is he:
• Admitting fully to what he has done? • Stopping excuses?
• Stopping all blaming of her? • Making amends?
• Accepting responsibility (recognising that abuse is a choice)?
• Identifying patterns of controlling behaviour and admitting their wrongness? • Identifying the attitudes that drive his abuse?
• Accepting that overcoming abusiveness will be a decades-long process, not declaring himself cured?
• Not starting to say, ‘so now it’s your turn to do your work’ and not using change as a bargaining chip?
• Not demanding credit for improvements he has made?
• Not treating improvements as chips or vouchers to be spent on occasional acts of abuse (for example, ‘I haven’t done anything like this in a long time, so why are you making such a big deal about it?’)?
• Developing respectful, kind, supportive behaviours? • Carrying his weight?
• Sharing power?
• Changing how he is in highly heated conflicts?
• Changing how he responds to his partner’s (or former partner’s) anger and grievances? • Changing his parenting? How? Who else says?
• Changing his treatment of her as a parent?
• Changing his attitudes towards females in general?
• Accepting the consequences of his actions (including not feeling sorry for himself about those consequences and not blaming her or the children for them)?
Seek to understand the child’s experience
Keep the experience of the child central to the review process by asking yourself questions such as:
• What has changed for the child?
• Does the child feel safe? If not, what needs to change in order for them to feel safe? • Is the child more able to play, concentrate, relate, participate and belong?
• What positive changes has the child identified?
• What other changes would the child like to see happen?
For further questions and prompts, refer to the Best interests case practice model summary
guide.
Seek to understand the non-offending parent’s experience:
• What has changed for the woman? Reflect on her experience currently as a person in her own right, as a partner/wife or ex-partner, and as a mother.
• What has been the impact of the violence on her parenting and on her life and what recovery has occurred? What is different?
• What has made the difference? How have her extended family, friends and employers positioned themselves?
• Is there adequate legal protection?
• What services are helpful or currently not in place but should be? • What have we learnt? What helped or should we have done differently? As a practitioner
• How are you feeling about the children? The parents?
• What has helped you manage this case and make a difference? • If you’re feeling stuck, what other situation does it remind you of? • What have you learnt?
• What do you or others do that makes a difference?
• How has the broader system responded? What else could we have done? • Have personal buttons been pushed with this case?
• What has been your self-talk in response to your own reactions? • What theories and research has been useful?
This guide is a summary of the ways in which family law and child protection can intersect and how Child Protection can respond to reports from the family law system.
Child protection concerns are dealt with by state and territory systems that are authorised to intervene when children are at risk of harm in the care of their families.
However, allegations about safety, abuse and neglect are also raised in the context of disputes between separated parents about the care of their children.
Two courts exercise the Family Law Act 1975 and can make decisions regarding parenting orders, property and divorce: the Family Court of Australia (FCA) and the Federal Circuit Court (FCC).
The FCC hears about 80 per cent of all family law matters. The FCA specifically hears: serious cases of physical and sexual abuse that are on the Magellan List; international child abduction cases; cases involving special medical procedures such as gender reassignment; and complex questions of jurisdiction of law.