Skip to main content
Gippsland Family Violence Alliance
  • Flags
Courses Filter
Sort by
Type

Structured Professional Judgement Model

We use the Structured Professional Judgement Model to determine the level of risk someone is experiencing or the threat they pose to others. The model has four elements:

  • It holds the victim survivors self assessment of risk at it’s heart,
  • Then it examines the evidence based risk factors which tells us the likelihood of lethality or permanent injury as a result of the person using violence
  • It then requires we gather information through the Information Sharing Schemes which informs us about what is occurring for all members of the family,
  • it then applies an intersectional lens which lets us examine other oppressive systems that the client may be experiencing.

See Key Concepts for Practice for more information on:

  • Applying Structured Professional Judgement
  • Using Structured Professional Judgement with perpetrators

Click here for – MARAM Practice Guides – Key concepts for practice

Person-centred approaches

Using a person-centred approach can help you understand the profound impact violence has on adult and child victim survivors.

This approach gives the person space to describe the violence they have experienced, allowing you to sensitively identify presenting and cumulative risk and trauma.

As well as understanding their experience of family violence, you should also identify other factors in the victim survivor’s life that may create barriers or increased risk.

A person-centred approach combines intersectional analysis and trauma-informed practice, allowing you to:

  • validate experiences of violence and its ongoing impacts
  • be aware of the person’s experience of barriers, structural inequality and discrimination that may be co-occurring, **which may also cause or exacerbate existing trauma.

You will then be able to tailor your responses to empower victim survivors to make informed choices and access services and supports they need.

Source – MARAM Practice Guides

See Key Concepts for Practice for more information on:

  • Person-centred approaches with victim survivors
  • Using a ‘person in their context’ approach with perpetrators

Click here for – MARAM Practice Guides – Key concepts for practice

Intersectional approaches

Both victim survivors and perpetrators of family violence may experience intersecting forms of power and privilege, or discrimination and disadvantage.

Intersectionality, or intersectional analysis, is a theoretical approach recognising the interconnected nature of social categorisations and identities with experiences of structural oppression, discrimination and disadvantage.

The theory of intersectionality can help you to understand and examine power, privilege and oppression, and how these overlap or intersect in people’s lives to reinforce and produce power hierarchies.

Many people’s experience is shaped by multiple identities, circumstances or situations. Applying an intersectional lens means considering a person’s whole, multi-layered identity and life experience to understand the ways in which they have, and may continue to, experience inequality and oppression.

This can shape a person’s experience of the impact of family violence, the nature of a perpetrator’s violent and controlling behaviours and access to services.

For example, if an Aboriginal person also identifies that they have a disability, you should respond in your risk assessment and management practice to address any combined associated barriers. This provides a respectful, safe and tailored approach.

Intersectional analysis reflects an individual’s age, gender identity, sexual orientation, ethnicity, cultural background, language, religion, visa status, class, socioeconomic status, ability (including physical, neurological, cognitive, sensory, intellectual or psychosocial impairment and/or disability) or geographic location.

Gender and the drivers of family violence are critical to informing your understanding of intersectional analysis in the family violence practice context.

Structural inequality and discrimination create and amplify barriers and risk, which continue to exacerbate systemic marginalisation, power imbalance and social inequality.

Your organisation’s policies, practices and procedures can either address these inequalities, or contribute to them further by privileging the dominant group and reinforcing the exclusion of people outside of it.

People and communities experience structural inequality, barriers and discrimination as oppression and domination. These relate to the impacts of patriarchy, colonisation and dispossession, racism, ableism, ageism, biphobia, homophobia and transphobia.

When applying an intersectional lens, you must reflect on and understand your own bias, so you can respond safely and appropriately in practice. You can use supervision with managers and engagement with colleagues to reflect on and respond to bias.

The MARAM Practice Guides provide extensive information about applying an intersectional analysis lens to working with both victim survivors and perpetrators.

Your organisation’s policies, practices and procedures can either address these inequalities, or contribute to them further by privileging the dominant group and reinforcing the exclusion of people outside of it.

People and communities experience structural inequality, barriers and discrimination as oppression and domination. These relate to the impacts of patriarchy, colonisation and dispossession, racism, ableism, ageism, biphobia, homophobia and transphobia.

When applying an intersectional lens, you must reflect on and understand your own bias, so you can respond safely and appropriately in practice. You can use supervision with managers and engagement with colleagues to reflect on and respond to bias.

The MARAM Practice Guides provide extensive information about applying an intersectional analysis lens to working with both victim survivors and perpetrators.

Source – MARAM Practice Guides

See Key Concepts for Practice for more information on:

  • Applying an intersectional lens
  • Using an intersectional approach with victim survivors
  • Using an intersectional approach with perpetrators
  • Professional reflection

Click here for – MARAM Practice Guides – Key concepts for practice

Trauma and violence–informed practice

Trauma is defined as the experience and effects of overwhelming stress that result in a reduced ability to cope or integrate ideas or emotions that are the result of that experience.

Trauma arises from activation of instinctive survival response to threats.

It can occur through everyday events outside a person’s control (loss of housing or employment), exposure to vicarious trauma, collective trauma (such as large-scale emergencies, natural disasters, war, acts of terror), systemic violence (including institutions), interpersonal violence, neglect and abuse during childhood or adulthood (such as from an intimate partner, caregiver or known person/family member and stranger violence), and historical and intergenerational trauma.

Complex trauma can result from repetitive, prolonged and cumulative violence. Complex trauma is often interpersonal, intentional, extreme, ongoing and can be particularly damaging when it occurs in childhood.

Trauma for children may be identified as adverse childhood experiences, which typically include physical, sexual and emotional abuse, physical and emotional neglect or witnessing family violence as a child.

Trauma and violence–informed practice considers ‘the intersecting impacts of systemic and interpersonal violence and structural inequities on a person’s life’.

This includes using intersectional analysis to highlight current and historical experiences of violence so that symptoms are not understood as exclusively originating within the person. Instead, these aspects of their life experience are viewed as adaptations and predictable consequences of trauma and violence.

Resources:

Responsibility 2: Appendix 1 – Observable signs of trauma that may indicate family violence

Source – MARAM Practice Guides

Source – MARAM Practice Guides

See Key Concepts for Practice for more information on:

  • Impacts of family violence trauma on victim survivors
  • Effects of trauma
  • Trauma and violence–informed practice when working with Aboriginal people and communities
  • Locating non–family violence related trauma in your practice (intersectionality)
  • Establishing a trauma and violence–informed approach with all service users
  • Using a trauma and violence-informed approach when working with perpetrators of family violence

Click here for – MARAM Practice Guides – Key concepts for practice

Safe, non-collusive practice

The term ‘collusion’ refers to ways that an individual, agency or system might reinforce, excuse, minimise or deny a perpetrator’s violence towards family members and/or the extent or impact of that violence.

Invitations to collude occur when the perpetrator seeks out the professional to agree with, reinforce or affirm their narrative about their use of violence, the victim survivors or their situation.

When taken up by professionals, this practice colludes with the perpetrator’s attempts to avoid responsibility for their use of violence.

Recognising Collusion

Collusion takes many forms. Professionals collude by demonstrating compliant collusion (agreement) or through oppositional confrontation (reprimand or arguing with them).

It can be expressed with gestures implying agreement, a sympathetic smile or a laugh at a sexist or demeaning joke.

It is there when all or partial blame is laid on a victim survivor and when a perpetrator’s excuses are accepted without question.

Collusion by professionals is often unintentional.

It arises from the long-standing subjugation of women and legitimisation of various forms of violence against women and children.

It can be conscious or unconscious, and it includes any action that has the effect of reinforcing the perpetrator’s violence-supportive narratives as well as their narratives about systems and services.

Perpetrators can intentionally invite professionals to collude in their narratives. This gives the narratives legitimacy, while allowing them to avoid thinking critically about their behaviour and its impact on others.

Professionals have a responsibility to recognise invitations to collude.

This includes recognising your own discomfort when hearing perpetrators’ narratives and knowing when and how to adjust your responses to maintain the person’s engagement while holding awareness of their use of violence.

Effects of collusion

The effects of collusion depend on the form it takes. It can:

  • strengthen the violence-supportive narratives and justifications that a perpetrator uses to excuse their use of violence
  • strengthen and/or reinforce the ways that a perpetrator minimises or denies responsibility for their behaviour, thereby making it less likely they will stop their use of violence
  • allow a perpetrator to call on the authority of a professional (such as a counsellor) to shore up their own position. For example, saying to a victim, ‘My counsellor agrees with me that you need to …’ reinforce a perpetrator’s position to take an oppositional or argumentative stance that gets in the way of them taking responsibility for their behaviour
  • allow a perpetrator to use the service system against family members. For example, by conveying the message that the service system is taking the perpetrator’s side and therefore that the victim’s resistance is futile.

Source – MARAM Practice Guides

See Key Concepts for Practice for more information on:

  • Avoiding collusion

Click here for – MARAM Practice Guides – Key concepts for practice