Safe & Together Training a Success in the North

NIFVS coordinated Safe & Together training for practitioners from services across the northern region who attended a four-day training at Bell City from 19–22 February. Managers and other practitioners from across the state attended a Safe & Together model overview day at the Melbourne Zoo on 23 February.

Safe & Together is a perpetrator pattern based, child centred, victim strengths model and the principles include:

• Partnering with the adult survivor
• Keeping kids safe and together with the non-offending parent
• Intervening with perpetrators.

The perpetrator pattern approach changes the work in the following ways:

1. Looks at the perpetrator’s behaviour, not the relationship or the survivor’s behaviour
2. Strong nexus between the perpetrator’s behaviour and child safety
3. Highlights the choice(s) to be violent, abusive and controlling as a parenting choice.

(Source: NIFVS, 26/2/17)