Partnered with a Survivor: David Mandel and Ruth Reymundo Mandel - Season 2 Episode 4: Making Good Decisions: How the Safe & Together Model Critical Components can help adult and child survivors

Season 2 Episode 4: Making Good Decisions: How the Safe & Together Model Critical Components can help adult and child survivors

02/07/21 • 81 min

Partnered with a Survivor: David Mandel and Ruth Reymundo Mandel

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Season 2 Episode 3: "Cultural Tsunami": How the Safe & Together Institute Seeks to Transform Systems

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In a recent article by Tracey De Simone and Susan Heward-Belle*, they describe the "cultural tsunami" triggered by the Safe & Together Model in Queensland Australia. In this episode, Ruth interviews David about the theory of change behind the Safe & Together Model and how Safe & Together Institute is attempting to remake the practice of systems. David outlines four goals that drive the work:

Strengthening the safety, and well being of children and families
Ending mother blaming in domestic violence cases
Transforming how systems consider fatherhood
Making statutory child welfare a driver of broader social and system change

Ruth guides the conversation to how all this produces better outcomes for adult and child survivors. David calls out practitioners to remember that professionals are not the arbiters of their own success--adult and child survivors are the arbiters of our success.
*De Simone, T., & Heward-Belle, S. (2020). Evidencing better child protection practice: Why representations of domestic violence matter. Current Issues in Criminal Justice, 32(4), 403–419. https://doi.org/10.1080/10345329.2020.1840957

Now available! Mapping the Perpetrator’s Pattern: A Practitioner’s Tool for Improving Assessment, Intervention, and Outcomes The web-based Perpetrator Pattern Mapping Tool is a virtual practice tool for improving assessment, intervention, and outcomes through a perpetrator pattern-based approach. The tool allows practitioners to apply the Model’s critical concepts and principles to their current case load in real

Check out David Mandel's new book "Stop Blaming Mothers and Ignoring Fathers: How to transform the way we keep children safe from domestic violence."
Visit the Safe & Together Institute website
Start taking Safe & Together Institute courses
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Season 2 Episode 5: How professionals & systems can avoid being manipulated by perpetrators

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Domestic violence perpetrators do not only target survivors. They also target the professionals & systems who want to want to help them. Many perpetrators, often using money, privilege and power, leverage systems to amplify their control. False allegations of substance abuse, mental health issues or child abuse are lodged with social services and family courts, often to devastating effect. Other behaviors include:

Continuous litigation to exhaust the financial ability of survivors to resist
The use of police wellness checks to intimidate a survivor
The weaponization of survivor's mental health and addiction diagnoses, to gain control over children, even when those problems are the result of the perpetrator's abuse.

Survivors can feel trapped between perpetrators and systems that are not savvy to these behaviors. The effects of system manipulation on the safety & wellbeing of adult and child survivors of domestic violence is often long term, financially devastating, and harmful to child wellbeing and development. In some instances these system failures can cause MORE trauma than the initial abuse itself.
In this episode, David & Ruth discuss how domestic violence perpetrators target practitioners in different systems, and why those systems are so vulnerable to these tactics. They highlight the vulnerabilities of family court, criminal justice and child welfare. They discuss how to recognize when a perpetrator is manipulating your system to harm a victim, and how to resist these manipulations.