There have been a number of activities across East, North and South Ayrshire over the last two years that have contributed to implementing the Safe & Together model. Interim guidance has been developed to aid practitioners across the three Ayrshire HSCPs and for Children’s Hearing Scotland panel members in Ayrshire. This aims to help with the application of Safe & Together and encourage thinking in a domestic abuse-informed way. Guidance is in development which will align the model with Signs of Safety, The Promise, Trauma-Informed Practice developments, GIRFEC, Routine Enquiry, and the Caledonian System amongst other local policy/practice areas. MARAC and Initial Referral discussions are currently embedding the principles and components of the model into their processes.
A quality assurance tool has also been developed, which involves adaptations for individual services such as education, children’s health and justice. The tool underpinned a case file audit of children’s plans in one area, of which the findings have directed the recently developed 2023-25 implementation plan.
Collaboration between North Ayrshire’s Child Protection Social Work team and the Safe & Together Lead Officer allowed for the development of a bitesize programme of reflective learning to apply the Safe & Together model. The programme creates space to practice the language changes required to influence a culture shift and is available to practitioners across social work, education, children’s health and third sector. Each session focuses on a different area including signs of safety assessment and documentation, working with men and assessing change, disentangling women from domestic abuse, working with children, and the dual contexts of supporting young people who experience domestic abuse in their families and in their relationships.
Individual case consultations are facilitated by the Safe & Together lead across the three Ayrshires. To expand this work, a Safe & Together Practice Facilitator role is currently being developed, with champions developing their skills and confidence in applying the model to take forward this role. This aims to widen the reach and availability of case consultations across statutory and non-statutory services.
A lived experience exercise has been conducted in collaboration with each Ayrshire’s Women’s Aid services. This has informed the aforementioned practice learning sessions and the development of each Ayrshire’s implementation plans. The lead is currently improving the methodology for further lived experience work with the guidance of a service user.
Finally, each Ayrshire has established an implementation group which drives and oversees the wider strategic implementation plan for Safe & Together and explores and resolves the various challenges that arise within wide scale implementation and culture change.
Outcomes
The impact of implementing the Safe & Together model is becoming increasingly evident across each of the Ayrshires. Practitioners appear to have an increased understanding of the impact of domestic abuse on children and survivors, and there is a move towards the strengths of the survivors being highlighted more frequently. It was also clear that the development of the multi-agency individual case consultations has been key for practitioners across agencies to work together, encouraging use of the same language and response to domestic abuse across the team around the child/team with the family. These have been well received due to their various benefits that bring people together to improve practice, align thresholds and promote shared language, while demonstrating the benefits applying the model brings to achieving better outcomes for children.
Confidence has also increased in respect of social workers holding the perpetrator to account, with trauma-informed practice skills and knowledge developing through peer support, individual/group consultations and practice learning sessions. Although there is a marked increase in this principle of the model being actioned, the impact of this will be measured in 2024 evaluation activities.
Feedback has been received that has indicated a change in practice, with service users highlighting how this has changed things for the better:
[The child’s dad] feels the social worker has made a real difference in his life to be the best parent he can be despite his horrific childhood, he has been able to overcome major issues and although he has to take credit for himself, he couldn’t have done it without the social worker’s support, hard work and dedication to helping him.
Staff who have completed Safe & Together training have also emphasised how it has impacted their way of working:
…prior to the training and the on-to-one consultations with [Safe & Together lead], I felt very much at a loss in how to approach perpetrators and had no real idea of what a piece of work might look like. I have found our one-to-one sessions invaluable, particularly having the focussed set of questions from as early on as a pre-birth.
I have since started meeting with a perpetrator and I’m becoming more confident in challenging the behaviour and holding them accountable, whilst also trying to get to the root of the issue.
One of the things that I feel has had a positive impact on my practice and families I work with, is looking deeper into how protective factors are put in place by parents (which I previously overlooked) and highlight these in case notes and child protection meetings. Also, the confidence hearing this in a public setting this gave the mum that I was working with was fantastic. This type of practice really helps build trusting relationships with parents.
Practitioners have highlighted that the practice learning sessions are key in terms of building confidence in upholding the Safe & Together principles in practice. It was noted that there had been challenges to learning being fully consolidated post-training due to the required shift in thinking, particularly in high-risk situations, and therefore the sessions focussing on assessing and effecting change have been useful in reinforcing this learning.
Challenges identified through evaluation activities and liaison with frontline practitioners highlighted specific areas for development. Examples of this include:
- Good practice could be overshadowed by other members of the team around the child who are not using domestic abuse-informed practice or have not accessed training, therefore multiagency training strategy has been developed that specifically targets training candidates for the 2023-25 period.
- There can still be a lack of confidence in identifying patterns of behaviour and control and therefore practice learning sessions incorporate this thread in all sessions, and visual prompts and guides have been produced to help practitioners in all agencies identify behaviours to increase understanding of patterns.
Enablers
Strong, collective leadership with a shared vision for embedding domestic abuse-informed approaches using the Safe & Together model has been instrumental for the change in progress. As a result of this, joined-up working across local partners, as well as local and national strategies and agendas, is supported and promotes collaboration in the implementation process. Support from external agencies has helped build capacity which furthers the ability for the workforce to undergo training and embed this learning into practice. All implementation plans and actions are reported to the local Child Protection Committees and Violence Against Women Partnerships.
Barriers
A lack of confirmation for long-term funding is considered as a significant barrier for East, North and South Ayrshire as this impacts sustainable planning for the implementation of Safe & Together, which is proving difficult if the emerging cultural changes are to be further developed and sustained beyond 2025.
The auditing process requires significant time and practitioner resource and a proficient understanding of the model to ensure an accurate understanding of its application which can be challenging with the demands of frontline practice. This labour-intensive activity, however, is key to identifying training gaps which have been essential to inform the plans and ensure the right implementation activities are underway and achieve the planned outcomes. The recognition as to the resource which is required for such an imperative activity requires to be highlighted.
There have been unique challenges in specific areas, one being the implementation of Signs of Safety alongside the Safe & Together model in North Ayrshire. Alignment work has brought the two models together within the practice learning programme, and there is a clear commitment from social work practitioners to embed the complementary models into practice by accessing practice learning opportunities. Ongoing review and learning from these sessions will inform the practice and policy context, including future evaluation activities.