February 2024: Challenging attitudes in the assessment of safety for children who experience domestic violence

Missed the live webinar? A captioned recording is available to view now

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Children who experience domestic violence are frequently reported to child protection services. Those children often live in chronic fear with impacts as harmful as other forms of child maltreatment. While understanding about domestic violence and its impact continues to deepen across the community, there is a growing need to improve the assessment approaches of statutory systems so that the experiences of children and the perspectives of their mothers are better understood to inform decision-making.

In this FACSIAR Lunch and Learn Webinar in partnership with the Office of the Senior Practitioner, Kate Alexander, Senior Practitioner, presented an innovative research project undertaken in New South Wales aimed at improving assessment approaches for children at risk of harm due to exposure to domestic violence. Kate recruited a large sample of the child protection workforce to participate in an empirical study. The study considered whether combining a standard safety assessment tool with a holistic approach for understanding interpersonal violence improved the quality of assessments about the safety for children at risk of domestic violence. In addition, the study aimed to understand the attitudes of the workforce to domestic violence and the impact of these practitioner attitudes on assessment decisions. The findings from this study held great relevance to child protection service delivery and to inform positive practice changes in NSW.

This webinar was chaired by Jessica Stewart (Executive Director, FACSIAR).