Turnell Consulting

Made a post on LinkedIn.
Protective factors do not necessarily equate to safety.
In cases of domestic abuse.
Thought it was pretty straightforward.
It’s a thing practitioners can get caught in. In CP. But often in other supporting agencies.
Lots of protective factors and lots of high emotion, a strong sense of not punishing women for men’s violence, can result in dangerous situations for kids.
And then.
Jake enters the conversation. 🤦
Hmmmm. You ok Jake?

Is it too much to ask for a nuanced conversation, grounded in research, statistics, evidence and experience?
Apparently yes.

I’ll say it again for this struggling to get it.
Yes. Women can and do use violence. I get it. And. Mostly it’s men. Against women. And children.

Male violence is grounded in power and control.
Women’s violence is (not always..) is reactive and resistive.

I’m glad Jake isn’t a children’s services social worker 😉

It’s important to keep up with all the complexities we face when we work with domestic abuse cases. Knowing the intersections, being clear on the tactics of abusers, the impacts - immediate and secondary - the indicators of increasing risk, is so important in how we gather and make sense of the information (this is analysis!)
The links between gambling and domestic abuse are clear and need to be talked about and explored more

Link to research article in comments.

In September and I facilitated two training sessions in Kamloops, BC.
One of the participants sketched this and handed it to me at the end of the day.
Me. Always at the whiteboard! And participants working
The diversity of the talent and creativity in children’s árboles workforce never ceases to impress me
This also happened to be my birthday ☺️

Let’s talk about parenting capacity assessments 😊

When I get told by practitioners that their agency ‘requires’ parenting capacity assessments I get a bit of an eye twitch!

In my experience these kind of assessments are:
☑️Expensive
☑️Include significant waiting times
☑️Don’t tell us much more than we already think we know
☑️Can be weaponised - to exclude families and make harsh judgements, doubling down on the confirmation bias at play - meaning children don’t get to be with the people they belong to
☑️ Can leave the allocated case worker feeling like they have to abide by the ‘result’ of the assessment even when they do not agree.
☑️Create significant anxiety and stress for families.
☑️Talk in language that is not understandable to the families.
☑️Further expand the power imbalance between the professionals and the family. (Note: families will always be the losing party in the power imbalance and by association, the child)
☑️Are not culturally sensitive.
☑️Are generally only focused on individuals (mum or dad) and dont take into account their capacity when they are supported by their village.
☑️Are not facilitated by the person who has the working relationship with the family and knows them well.
I could go on….
The best way to ‘assess’ capacity ;

Is to make it crystal clear to families what needs to happen along a timeline of a safety building process. With a clear and concrete set of expectations along a clear time frame. Building in opportunities for success by allowing in incremental amounts of ‘risk’ in intelligent ways with safety and support built in and evidenced.
Is to tell families what they need to do and ask them to show us they can do it.
Is to believe that families can and want to keep their kids safe.
Is to spend time with families when they’re with their kids. And gather your evidence that way. Don’t fob ‘family time supervisions’ off to a support worker. Go and see the kids with their family‼️

Please don’t say ‘I’m too busy to do that’ this is SO important.
Give them timely, clear feedback about where they are doing great and where some of the gaps are.
Offer them the opportunity to show you they can take it on board.

If they can’t/ won’t/ don’t. Then we know the ‘capacity’ is limited.

But at least we didn’t just rule it out.
At least we can say hand on heart we gave family every opportunity to show the statutory professionals they can keep their children safe from the dangers we identified from the harm the children have experienced.
And then. If the resultant intervention is that they can’t be safe with mum and or dad, then we work hard with family, community, the people with a natural connection to the child.
So we and they do everything possible to make sure they are connected in meaningful ways to the people they belong to.
To create a sense of safety in the reality of their kin.

That is just work, fair work. work that is grounded in compassion, guided by evidenced based analysis and is truly child and family system focused.