Focus
Perth & Kinross has emphasised the importance of raising awareness of the Safe & Together model across local leaders and decision-makers to raise the profile of being domestic abuse informed. Safe & Together Overview Sessions have been held, with attendees including elected members and senior managers from across the council. Children’s Hearing Panel members and reporters have also attended these overview sessions; with all the reporters who work with referrals in the Perth & Kinross area trained in the model and a significant proportion of panels members too.
The roll out of training has also been a focus in Perth & Kinross. Perthshire Women’s Aid has attended Safe & Together training and has been integral in rolling this out to staff across the area. One group that has been targeted through this training are those involved in decision making forums, such as conference chairs and review officers. All team leaders and senior practitioners in services for children, young people and families, as well as LAC officers and chairs of child protection planning meetings are now fully trained in the Core Model to ensure that decision making is in accordance with the Safe & Together principles. All of these workers will now have the opportunity to complete the Supervisor’s Training to enable them to better support the work of the social workers who are directly undertaking the model with service users.
In addition to training and awareness raising, Perth & Kinross is incorporating relevant questions in its data recording system for assessment frameworks. These questions aim to prompt staff to provide information in a way that partners with the victim/survivor and provides further context around the situation.
Outcomes
At the beginning of Safe & Together being implemented in March/April 2021, Perth & Kinross had 85 children on its child protection register. As of March 2024, there are 47 children on the child protection register – a significant decrease over this time. These statistics consistently decreased over the past three years, and although there may be several factors that have contributed to this, it is significant that it has coincided with implementing Safe & Together locally.
Further impacts have also been seen across Perth & Kinross. This includes the involvement of local leaders and decision-makers in Safe & Together Overview Sessions and training, as the profile of domestic abuse and the domestic abuse-informed approach across Perth & Kinross has been significantly raised. There has been an evident culture shift towards recognising the prevalence and impact of domestic abuse:
I think one of the main impacts has been the raising of awareness that a situation is not always what it seems – that a mother can actually be making protective decisions that don’t at first glance seem protective. I think having a curiosity to find out more is another impact of the Safe & Together training, also a willingness to let women be more in control of their own lives and decisions.
The Safe & Together training has had an impact on staff, as more individuals within the workforce have shared their own experiences of being subjected to domestic abuse; either as children in the family home or as adults in their intimate partner relationships. This has provided a space for honest conversations and highlighted that there is no ‘them’ and ‘us’ when working within this environment – anyone can experience domestic abuse, including our staff. As a result, it has been suggested that a domestic abuse-informed strategy for staff is necessary to be able to respond to staff who are being subjected to domestic abuse, in accordance with Equally Safe at Work.
The impact of the Safe & Together training is also becoming more evident in practice, as observations have indicated that social work practitioners now have a greater insight into the complexities of domestic abuse, violence and coercive control:
I also note there is more of an information balance between the reporting of factual information that has been shared by the Police with Social Work which needs to be documented, alongside detailing the impact that the incident has had on the parent, child and wider family dynamics. Social Workers are more inclined to note the strengths and protective factors and emphasise the support needs of the person who has experienced domestic abuse as well as ensuring the child’s safety and wellbeing.
Embedding the Safe & Together model locally has also provided opportunities for strengthening joint working across services and organisations. For example, working with Perthshire Women’s Aid to facilitate training has create a much stronger link with this organisation; whose closer relationship with victims/survivors allows us to create a feedback loop in which victims/survivors’ voices can be heard, with anonymity if so desired by the individual. This relationship has also led to Perthshire Women’s Aid providing training to social workers on the model they use to work with victims/survivors of domestic abuse.
On the recent Core Training, places were provided to a health visitor, two school nurses and the GIRFEC co-ordinator for Perth & Kinross so that greater expertise on the model could be located within these teams. The GIRFEC co-ordinator has a key role through supporting the child protection officers in schools and intends to provide a session to them on the model to raise awareness.
Additional courses have been purchased from the Safe & Together Institute on partnering with victims/survivors and working with perpetrators which will be rolled out this year.
Enablers
From the beginning, the explicit support of senior management across the Community Planning Partnership for the introduction of the model has been key. Significant numbers of housing officers and assistants, justice social workers and assistants, Integrated Drug and Alcohol Team workers and education colleagues have all been released to attend two afternoons of training for the Overview training, which is significant when time is in short supply.
Involving elected members and senior managers in the Safe & Together Overview sessions has been extremely useful in raising the profile of the model and ensured that this is on the agenda across Perth & Kinross. Additionally, this has been well received due to the interest and motivation of those within the workforce, as they understand the need for this approach and were keen to learn. The drive and commitment of staff to improve their response to service users who have been subjected to domestic abuse has been pivotal – at a time of high demand, they have committed to completing the training and implementing the learning.
Barriers
Recruitment and retention of social work staff has been a continuous challenge in implementing the Safe & Together model in Perth & Kinross. This has resulted in a loss of knowledge and skill across teams, leading to a cycle of training to replace this and the time-limited funding is a concern on how this may be continued longer-term. Additionally, as this training has taken place from 2021-2024, sickness absence through COVID-19 or similar illness has sometimes prevented staff attending planned training, or if they remained well, meant that they have been required to cover operational need.
The Safe & Together development work is currently undertaken as part of a wider operational role, leading to a lack of capacity in being able to complete all necessary work to embed Safe & Together. In addition to this, the reporting mechanisms and administrative asks for DES funded organisations places more pressure on this role. It was noted that, due to this high workload, it would be beneficial to have a dedicated, full time Safe & Together lead to focus on embedding this approach sustainably.