Webinar:
Invisible practices: Working with fathers who use violence

Women and children living with violence can experience inconsistent responses from different service systems.

While domestic and family violence (DFV) services often focus on supporting them to separate from men who use violence, the family law system generally allows contact between parents who use violence and their children.

This webinar builds on the learnings from Sadie’s story, a webinar produced in collaboration with ANROWS highlighting one woman’s challenges with a fragmented system. It adds to this earlier webinar by exploring how all-of-family approaches can help address the differences between service systems and the need to work with men who use violence. In particular, this webinar will draw on ANROWS-funded research that highlights a need for practitioners to:

• make patterns of violence and control visible and understandable
• partner with women to ensure safe and effective practice
• apply all-of-family approaches to better meet the needs of women and children.

Presenters will invite the audience to consider how services can use an all-of-family approach to working with men who use violence, and demonstrate the skills needed to ‘pivot to the perpetrator’. They will also explore how to work safely with families, including culturally competent practice with Aboriginal men who use violence.

Please read the pre-reading material for the webinar.  The practitioner presenters (Jackie, Emma and Steve) will refer to this case study in the webinar session.

This webinar would be of interest to professionals working in the fields of DFV, men’s behaviour change programs, child protection, family relationship services, family support services and related services.

This webinar is presented in collaboration with the Australian Insitute of Family Studies.

Enquiries: [email protected]

Invisible Practices role plays

Extended questions time

Presenters

Cathy Humphreys
Cathy Humphreys is Professor of Social Work at the University of Melbourne. Her program of research crosses two major areas: children in out-of-home care; and domestic violence and family violence. With Professor Kelsey Hegarty she co-directs the Research Alliance to End Violence Against Women and Their Children (MAEVe), an inter-disciplinary centre to progress research on domestic and family violence. Research on fathering and domestic violence and the collaborative processes between Child Protection and specialist FV services are current research areas. Cathy was a social work practitioner for 16 years prior to becoming an academic.

Emma Rogers
Emma has 25 years of experience working in the social work field in Australia and the UK in the areas of Domestic and Family Violence (women’s refuges), Mental Health, Youth Homelessness, Asylum seeker support and Child Protection. Emma currently works for the Queensland Government Department of Child Safety, Youth and Women as a Regional Domestic and Family Violence Senior Practitioner. For the past three years she has developed and worked in the Walking with Dads Program – an innovative program that has a strong partnering foundation with mothers and children to create intervention for fathers, to hold them accountable and responsible for their destructive behaviours to increase safety and wellbeing for families. Emma is also a certified Safe & Together Trainer.

Steven Lock
Steven Lock has been a child protection practitioner for 25 years working in the UK and Australia. Steven is currently a Practice Leader (Domestic and Family Violence) at the Department of Child Safety, Youth and Women in Queensland. Over the last five years Steven has co-led the implementation of domestic violence (DV) informed practice in Child Safety work in Queensland. Since 2016, this has included the new WalkingWithDads workers as DV specialists in Child Safety teams. These innovations have been directly related to participation in the ANROWS research The PATRICIA Project (2016) and Invisible Practices (2018) led by Professor Cathy Humphreys. Both studies have drawn on the Safe and Together model (developed by David Mandel) as the core practice framework. Steven is also a registered trainer in the Safe and Together model.

Jackie Wruck
Jackie Wruck is a proud Aboriginal Yindinji woman from Far North Queensland, Yarrabah region and Cultural Practice Advisor for at the Department of Child Safety, Youth and Women in Queensland. Jackie’s own experience of domestic and family violence led her to becoming a certified Safe & Together trainer, and a facilitator and cultural advisor for the Walking with Dads program that works with, and walks with, fathers who have perpetrated violence in their families. Working with families all of her life, Jackie is a vocal advocate for families and passionate about keeping children out of the child protection system and making sure families’ voices are heard.

Facilitator

Michele Robinson
Michele joined ANROWS in 2017 as the Director, Evidence to Action. Michele leads the translation and dissemination of research at ANROWS to support the take-up of evidence into policy and practice, to reduce violence against women and their children. This role builds on Michele’s 18 years of experience in leadership roles developing advice and strategies on research, knowledge partnerships and exchange in a diverse range of sectors, including the prevention of violence against women and their children.