Recognising family violence

Social workers Dee and Danae from the Family Violence Counselling and Support Service are interviewed by Cat Schofield (Executive Director of Nursing and Director of Services for Statewide Mental Health Services) for our Family Violence Prevention Month series.

In their conversation, Cat, Dee and Danae discuss what healthy relationships look like and how we can spot the red flags of family violence, including coercive control tactics such as isolation and economic abuse. They also explore tools we can use to think about our and others’ relationships.

Dee and Denae explain the impact of family violence on adults and children, and why leaving isn’t always straightforward. 

The conversation also offers practical advice for professionals and the wider community on how to recognise concerns, have safe and supportive conversations, and respond with empathy and care.

Resources:

• Duluth Power and Control Wheel
• Cycle of Abuse (also known as the Cycle of Violence) on the Lifeline website.

Support:

If this episode has raised any concerns for you, you can call 1800 RESPECT, that’s 1800 737 732, to talk to a counsellor from the national sexual assault and domestic violence hotline.

Alternatively, you could call Tasmania’s Family Violence Counselling and Support Service on 1800 608 122.

If you have concerns about your safety or that of someone else, please contact police or call 000 for emergency help.    

Transcript

Dorian Broomhall:

This episode contains reference to acts of family and sexual violence. If you have experienced violence or sexual assault and need immediate or ongoing help, contact 1-800-RESPECT. That's 1-800-737-732 to talk to a counsellor from the National Sexual Assault and Domestic Violence Hotline. If you have concerns about your safety or that of someone else, please contact police or call 000 for emergency help.

Molly Hanson:

This episode was recorded on the land of the Palawa people. We acknowledge and pay respect to all Tasmanian Aboriginal people and to their deep history of storytelling. We also acknowledge the disproportionate rates of violence faced by Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander women.

Cat Schofield:

Hi, my name is Cat Scofield and I'm the Executive Director of Nursing and Director of Services for Statewide Mental Health Services at the Department of Health here in Lutruwita, Tasmania. This Family Violence Prevention Month, we're speaking with experts about the prevalence and impact of family violence in our community, how to recognise the signs of family violence and how we can respond to family violence as well as prevent it from occurring in the first place. This is a subject that I've been involved in for many years. In the late 1990s, I worked on what I think was the first general practitioner manual around how to identify domestic violence and also how to support particularly women leaving those relationships.

It's something that I'm particularly passionate about. I was quite excited to be able to speak with two social workers from the Department of Health's Family Violence Counselling and Support Service via Teams, Dee from the Adult Programme and Danae from the Children and Young Persons Programme. The Family Violence Counselling and Support Service offers professional and specialised services to assist children, young people, and adults affected by family violence right across Tasmania. In our conversation, we discussed how we can spot the red flags of family violence, including coercive control tactics such as isolation and economic abuse. We also discussed how family violence impacts children and the tools we can use to think about our and others' relationships. Let's begin.

So I'd like to start really by asking you the first question of, what does a healthy relationship look like?

Dee:

That's always an interesting question. We do use the Duluth Wheel a lot when we're looking at the power and control and there is that opposite where we have the Equality Wheel and that's where we're looking that we can actually have our opinions respected. We're free to express and have autonomy with making decisions, whether that's financial, emotional, physical decisions about our bodies, so having that opportunity of having open and clear communication. So for us, when we're having those conversations, it's just really, "How does it actually feel to you? Do you feel that you have to censor yourself? Do you feel that you can't actually express an opinion about something? Can you have a conversation where you're allowed to express a different opinion?"

All of these things come into whether or not it's a healthy relationship or not. "Are you allowed to have friendships?" So you use both. We don't usually just focus on those healthy relationships. We can actually spin between both to actually tease apart those behaviours within a relationship.

Cat Schofield:

Can I ask, I think it was mentioned earlier, the Duluth Wheel, if you could give a bit more of an explanation about that and how we can use that perhaps to think about ours and other people's relationships.

Dee:

Yeah. So we use the Duluth Wheel in most of our conversation, especially in our initial conversations and then throughout when we're having counselling. It's a really great tool that we use to actually pull about those patterns of behaviour that perpetrators will actually use. It highlights different areas like intimidation, emotional abuse, financial abuse, isolation, threats, male privilege and ways that children are actually used, and as we spoke about earlier, the opposite of that is the Equality Wheel. And so with having both of those, you can actually start to pull apart some of those behaviours.

And so if you were looking at your own relationship, you're not going to sit down and it's not like a tick sheet that you actually work through and tick all the boxes off of what's there and what's not, but it actually just starts those conversations around, "Do you have that autonomy of making those decisions? Do you have control over your finances, your body, your time?" So it just enables that reflective thinking around, "What is my relationship actually looking like? How healthy is it?" If we're looking at other people's relationships, we can use the headings and behaviour to start unpacking those patterns of behaviour. We can use it as a starting point for conversations.

I've often been sitting down with someone, and as they've started to actually pull apart their relationship, I've pulled it out and I've said, "Okay, let's actually have a look at this and see what's actually relevant within your own relationship." It's amazing how many people are quite shocked at how many of those areas they can look at and say, "Well, actually all of these are occurring in our relationship." So then rather than them thinking that something was wrong with them, they can actually start to identify that those patterns of behaviour have been used by the perpetrator to control.

Danae:

And the will looks slightly different when we look at different cohorts or cultures. So there is a little bit of shifting ... I mean, the categories, the titles stay there, but in an LGBTIQA+ relationship, the use of power and control looks slightly different. It might be the threat to out somebody, "If you don't do what I say." So there are some nuances that we do see across different communities, cohorts. We have people that come from internationally. So we're always still using those headings, but very nuanced in how we apply it to whoever we're working with.

Cat Schofield:

And I can see that it's an incredibly complex tapestry in many ways, because when you're talking about those things, I can think to my own relationship and I can see there are elements of, I won't call it coercive control, but areas where you might have to challenge or you might say, "Hold on, that's not right." Because sometimes I'm thinking particularly of the finances, you might buy something, you get home and somebody goes, "My God, how much did that cost?" and you can say, "Oh," you answer it in a particular way and it's all fine, but there's still the tendency for those patterns to exist in all relationships. That doesn't make relationships necessarily violent or coercive.

It's just the pattern that is repetitive that builds on other patterns where you end up in a space that you're feeling uncomfortable and you don't have control over your own actions in many ways.

Danae:

So that's right, challenging, is that one thing alone isn't enough necessarily.

Cat Schofield:

There's one swallow doesn't make a summer. Yeah.

Dee:

So it comes down to that communication. So if you were feeling uncomfortable with the way that you spent your finances, but then when you actually raised it, you were shot down and then you were being criticised for spending money on other things, then that might have a bigger course for concern, whereas it could be a case of it was just a one-off thing. You can actually talk quite openly about it. It might be a case of, "Well, look, we've got some big bills coming up. We might have to just tighten our belt at the moment." So I think, communication, it's how we actually communicate those concerns and those decisions that we make that more so highlights where those patterns of behaviour and where those controls are actually coming in as opposed to, as you say, just looking at one particular area.

Cat Schofield:

Is there a different emphasis on that for children as opposed to adults?

Danae:

In terms of their experience with both caregivers, so let's talk about a mum and a dad together. A healthy relationship is one where the children feel safe, that they also are heard, that when mom and dad are able to communicate and have those healthy relationships, their needs are met. And we find in family violence, that coercion and control outside of the physical and the sexual, which is that myth that that's what family violence is, anytime it's not healthy, it impacts on attachment, it impacts on parenting choices. So moms often aren't able to parent in a way that they want to parent if it's not healthy, which impacts on child development. So yes, it definitely does impact the children, whether it's a family violence relationship versus a healthy relationship.

Cat Schofield:

What would other people in the extended family start to see in a relationship as to the behaviour that the children might be experiencing or being shown by the parent or one parent or both parents, what would people see that might alert them to the fact that something is not going well?

Danae:

Yeah, that's a really good question because it can be really difficult to tell as in the first podcast Bree was talking about, is that children don't have that ability to escape family violence. So whatever relationship is going on, whether it's healthy or unhealthy, they can't pick up the phone and necessarily call for help at a certain age. They can't go out and just say, "That's it. This isn't safe for me. I'm going." So biologically, they're very reliant on both caregivers. And when that is threatened, they develop a range of behaviours to cope and survive and they can look both ways at internalising or externalising. So it can be hard to tell. We often get children that are that classic, they let you know they are loud and they are proud and they might have lots of big outbursts. They might seem "defiant."

And I use that in quotation marks because that's not something that I would use as a counsellor, but that's their behaviours that might be described. They have trouble focusing. They might have trouble listening and following instructions. Everything is often perceived as a threat to their body and their brain, even things that look different. So for example, at school, we get those children that can't focus on their work. They have lots of peer fights and conflict because their understanding of relationships in themselves have been changed. Everything is seen as a threat.

So you've got those loud and proud ones and then you've got the internalizers that are the people pleasers and they might be overtly on top of you, like sitting on a stranger's lap or trying to engage with a stranger or they're often described as, "They're so helpful and they're so lovely and they're so compliant," but they've actually put aside their own needs to have a connection to an adult to make them feel safe. So both sides, they're putting aside their needs to keep safe. So it does greatly impact on them in those early years at school, which can go on to create really long-term mental health outcomes and physical outcomes as we know from ACEs studies and things like that. The outcomes aren't as good for finishing school, having healthy relationships in the future. We've got lots of medical, more lucky to have cancer, to smoke, to drink. There's a whole lot of really negative things.

But if you were to look at a three-year-old now, it's really hard to tell. How do you tell if a three-year-old, a six-month-old ... Even in utero, we know family violence impacts on development. It is a really hard question because not every child who is exhibiting those behaviours may be from family violence either. So it's so complicated and that's one of the complexities in family violence and knowing, we don't always know.

Cat Schofield:

And I imagine that, as you've described it, a lot of that is actually something we see normally in child behaviour, the outbursts, the tantrums, say, the quiet time, the reflection. It's bouncing in and out sometimes of a lot of domains and finding their own safe expression, their own way of expressing and what's enabled within the family. At what point might you say, I suppose, see a repetitive aspect of that behaviour where it was a constant, because obviously, the younger a child is if they're experiencing a domestic violence situation or family violence situations, the younger they are, the more normalised that behaviour becomes because they have nothing else to gauge it against?

Danae:

And it's one of those, I think it's part of a bigger picture is the behaviour in itself, if it is repetitive or it is escalating or it is extreme may mean something is happening. It could also be something developmental. It's not always family violence, but then it's that step back and looking at, "Okay, we know a child is letting us know that they're not travelling so well by what their behaviours are telling us." And it's then looking at what might be going on and asking those questions and what are they trying to tell us and then looking into that system of what if we know mom and dad or mom and partner, then starting to piece together a bit more of a story.

So I think this is when, and Dee might be able to speak to that, we start looking at the adults and we look at the system around the child, we get a bit more context about where that behaviour might be coming from.

Cat Schofield:

What are the kind of approaches that one could make to a parent where there are concerns perhaps that you have concerns about how a child is behaving that might open up the conversation as to what might be happening in the home? How would you actually approach the adult in that situation?

Danae:

So if I take a step back and think about in the broader community how that might happen and I've done that in other roles before, it can be really challenging because family violence is such a taboo subject and we know that. And I am going to use the word mom, but I do acknowledge that it's not just women that are impacted by family violence. We do see and work with men, LGBTIQA+ community, Aboriginal, Indigenous, Torres Strait Islanders. We know the stats can be quite high in different cohorts, but in terms of, I'm going to say mom, is if you notice that behaviour, it's having some of those soft conversations and noticing what's probably not said sometimes more than what is said.

So it's not often that, if we were to ask those questions, "Is everything all right at home?" most of the time we get the answer of yes, "Yes, everything is fine." So if I think about a school setting, it's a lot about relationship that the caregiver needs to feel really safe with somebody. So I would think if someone in a hospital or a school was worried, it's about building a bit of trust and rapport first and then just being curious about how things might be. We don't make assumptions about, "How are things?" and noticing what's said, body language, because body language often says a lot. If the child's with mom, you'll often see child really clingy to mom or not really able to move away to play because they need to stay close to that attachment caregiver because leaving's really scary.

So it's one of these really hard spaces where there's not one question to ask and there's not one ideal way. For me, it's just about curiosity and starting to have a bit of a relationship. If it's at somewhere you've got access regularly to somebody, you can start to do that just by good mornings in the morning and start to build that trust rather than a stranger saying to somebody, "I'm just curious if there's family violence in your home." You probably get a very different answer and I know that sounds a little bit crude to say, but it is. It's a really uncomfortable topic for people in the community, even professionals who don't work in this space. How do you ask?

So for me, it's just curiosity, it's building relationships and it's just curiously exploring what's happening.

Cat Schofield:

I did some work in domestic violence many years ago, the late '80s with the Royal Australian College of GPs and producing one of the first training manuals for GPs around identification and then how to raise the issue. And of course, it wasn't as broadly talked about there or as widely recognised as being an issue. How have things changed in relation to that over the years? We were at that stage looking at the cycle of violence or the cycle of abuse, that wheel of understanding why people don't leave, why it's hard to leave, what that whole change cycle is about and how to manage the frustration that, say, a healthcare provider has in relation to why doesn't somebody just leave?

Dee:

And I guess it's funny that you say that that was something that was being raised back then. I honestly think that society still has that same view. There is still that stereotype and that misconception that, when someone is in a family violence relationship, they can easily just pick up and leave. We know that the most dangerous time for someone is when they actually do leave a relationship. We know that, for many victim survivors, they just want the violence to stop. They just want to actually engage in that relationship with the perpetrator that the relationship had previously been.

You touched on the cycle of violence and that is often a very powerful tool that a perpetrator will use to ensure that the victim actually does stay engaged with them, because as they move through that cycle, when they start off after an explosion and they go through that period where there are the apologies and the promising that things will change, it's at that time that for a victim survivor, that's music to their ears. Yes, the perpetrator is changing their behaviour. Maybe they won't leave, "Maybe things will get better this time. He's promised that it'll never happen again. Maybe it'll be different."

But then as we know with that cycle of violence then comes that increase in behaviour they might withdraw again and we go around and around. So it's not so easy. And we have a lot of conversations with victim survivors that express a lot of guilt that they stayed in the relationship. When they've had those conversations with family members or with friends, they often hear, "Well, just leave." It's not that easy. Housing is a huge issue. So where do they go? Why is it that victims have to actually pick up their children and leave the home, go somewhere else? They just want the violence to stop.

So there's a whole range of complex issues that actually play into it. Financial abuse. If the perpetrator is actually holding all the financial cards, they don't have the money to leave. They might not have a car. They may not have access to any other resources. So family and friends might have actually been isolated from them so they don't have anywhere that they can actually turn to.

Danae:

It doesn't just start. Family violence doesn't start even coercive control. Nothing just starts in one day. It's a slow burn and slow buildup of love bombing. As Dee said, we often hear that guilt and shame of staying, but the community don't ask, "Why doesn't he just stop using violence?" And we see family violence as a parenting choice. So a perpetrator who uses family violence is choosing to use that as a form of abuse. And the Children Maltreatment Study in 2023 clearly showed that, out of all the abuse types, physical, emotional neglect, family violence is the most form of abuse that children and young people experience. It's 39.6%.

So we know that children are being exposed to all this abuse and they are in themselves a victim and survivor with their own voice and they're just so invisible often in this space.

Dee:

Because a lot of times children are actually used as weapons. If they were to actually leave the relationship, doesn't mean that the violence is going to stop. The children will be used as a weapon in family law court. So perpetrators will often say, "Well, you're not going to get the kids." So mom is predominantly trying to actually keep them safe. So it's just so very, very complex.

Cat Schofield:

There's quite a lot of very high-profile media reports of family violence where a mother and children have been harmed, sometimes murdered. So I would imagine that also feeds into the protection of children by staying as opposed to trying to flee a situation when they're going to place children in risky situations by living in cars possibly or even turning up with family members who will have good intentions of trying to get people back together as well without fully understanding the ramifications and implications of that.

Danae:

And we see perpetrators a lot of the time using the child safety service system to weaponize against mom as well, that, "I'm going to let them know you're a terrible mom. You don't feed them. You don't look after them." So the perpetrator is using a range of systems alongside family law court, child safety. Even schools, even with court reports, we see often the perpetrator being seen in a glowing light because they say the right things, but it all sits there in that coercive control. It is still a form of abuse, still a form of coercion that's going on and it's really hard to recognise.

So when we're asking these questions, "And well, how do you know?" it is so hard, it's so hard to know. Even people that are your neighbours or even your own family members, there are signs though, and Dee can probably speak to that, that you can start to notice some changes in people.

Cat Schofield:

Yes. And often family members would notice that before, say, friends or strangers even because they have an ongoing relationship with the person and would notice those changes. And of course, you also mentioned love bombing before. So what are some of the signs in the beginning relationship where things appear to be okay? But in actual fact, there are signs that, "This is not a normal or healthy development of a relationship, that the power imbalance is being set up in an inappropriate way."

Dee:

Usually, we see that relationships are so intense. Instead of it being that slow burn, it starts out, and within a couple of weeks, there's declarations of love. They're moving in together. He's trying to ensure that maybe she falls pregnant very quick in the relationship, they're engaged, they're married, they're sharing finances really quickly, but it's just those declarations of love, "No one is ever going to love you as much as what I love you." They play the victim a lot, "No one's ever loved me, past relationships. Women were all crazy. They treated me really poorly. I just wanted to actually love them." They will go above and beyond, making victim survivors feel that they're never going to be in another relationship like this. Everything is magnified and that is actually done to form that really close trauma bond.

And once you have that connection, the next stage then of course is that withdrawing. So that love bombing usually happened. We see it happen just before they actually start to withdraw, and then by then, victim survivors are wondering what they've actually done wrong. They want to go back to the way it was in the beginning where the perpetrators couldn't do enough for them. They were shining the best possible light on themselves and the relationship. So it could be excessive phone calls, asking lots of questions about their past without actually giving too much away about their own past.

And that's also done to actually ensure that they're aware of victim survivor's vulnerabilities because then they can be used to be targeted later on. Being able to play into previous relationships, so finding out about previous relationships and where the downfalls were and then ensuring that they'll say, "I would never treat you like that. I would never ever be violent towards you. I will always love you. I will always be here for you." And ultimately, that's what people want to hear. So it's very easy to fall into that, but it's usually just the intensity.

Danae:

And love bombing in itself is a red flag, I guess that we would call it, that if you notice that in someone, that that often is because normal relationships do take a bit of time to get to know each other and have a slightly different pace. Of course, it's exciting. It's like more like that honeymoon healthy space whereas in the family violence, coercive control, love bombing stage, it is that and the intensity, definitely see it and the timeframes are very short in making those big decisions.

Cat Schofield:

And I imagine as well, in that love bombing sort of phase to call it that, then it also starts the isolation and the restriction which appears to be from a good space, a caring space, but is designed then to isolate the person so that they have less opportunity to actually move away from the relationship.

Dee:

Definitely. We see that in pretty much every situation. They'll start making little comments about family members, "I don't really trust them. I don't think that they've actually got your best interests at heart." Picking just little bits, trying to actually make the victim survivor feel that they can't actually rely on those family members, that they had previously saying," Oh, I don't really like them too much," or, "They make me feel uncomfortable. I don't think they really approve of our relationship and how fantastic it is." And so it starts out like that way and then it'll start to pull back that little bit more. Well, then it'll be, "I don't want you seeing them. I don't think that you should spend any time with them," or they may then play the guilt.

If they're wanting to go and spend time with family members, they'll say, "Oh, that's okay. I'll just stay here at home on my own," or they'll create some sort of diversion so that it's usually just too much bother to actually go and spend time with the other family members and they will just stay. And so then the more isolated they are, the better it is for the perpetrator because he's gaining more control.

Cat Schofield:

Are there any other red flags? You've mentioned obviously love bombing, isolation. Are there any other red flags that can be observed?

Danae:

Yeah, definitely a lot more. And a lot of them are quite subtle when you look at them on their own, but they start to show a pattern when you start to see it happen. If you're in a relationship and you start to think, "Hang on, this might be me," or you see it in friends and family, it's just that ongoing escalation. And a lot of it is that coercion psychological of looking at what's his belief system. So I guess the big buzzword at the moment is this manosphere approach, the driver is these rigid ideas that women, we're homemakers, we're nurturers, we're carers, women belong in a certain place. And there's definitely, I've noticed a lot of the jealousy that comes out around controlling, "Oh, that guy that you work with, I don't trust him. He's always giving you the eye."

There's all these subtle little things that go on that let him know that, that inform that, "This person sees you as an object and sees that they want to control you."

Dee:

You're not able to actually make those decisions on your own anymore. They start to control the financial side. You want to actually go and spend your working or you want to spend the money that you need to and then there's those questions around, "Well, do you really need to be spending the money on that?" You're not able to actually have an opinion. As soon as you have an opinion on something, they will talk you down, make out that their opinion is the most valid, minimise any of your concerns. So if you raise something, talk about the relationship, they use those gaslighting tactics to ensure that you start to actually question everything that you say.

So as Denae was saying, there's so many red flags that we see and it's those patterns. So when we're having those conversations, we are pulling apart those patterns.

Danae:

Sometimes it's not as obvious. Yeah. So in terms of children too, you might see that mom doesn't access playgroups or the children aren't allowed to go to school because the dad or stepdad is afraid of losing that control or the child may say something, which doesn't normally happen. Children carry that burden within themselves, but there's lots of restricting of that family movement and especially around children as well.

Dee:

And when there's been physical violence, that can often be seen as something that they don't want anyone to actually know what's gone on. So therefore, they'll actually isolate themselves from their normal day to day. So they won't be going to the daycare. They won't be going to work. They'll be staying at home. They won't be spending time with other people because they don't want anyone to know what's actually going on.

Cat Schofield:

And also comments about an appearance, somebody's appearance and the clothes that they're wearing, I would imagine that's also a bit of a red flag and a difficult one because we want to look nice. We want to be appropriate in situations.

Dee:

That's right. So they'll be told, "Why do you want to wear that skirt? You just look like a slut. You're obviously trying to get attention." It's always about, "You're trying to get attention from other guys. I know you're a slut. I know that you're out there looking to get with someone," so therefore, they will start to downplay the clothes, their choice of outfit. They won't take any pride in their appearance anymore because it just ends up being too difficult to deal with.

Cat Schofield:

And is that the same for children?

Danae:

Not as directly. It's that byproduct. So children pick up on everything. So even if they're not in the room and even if, I think in the earlier podcast Bree, was talking about, we know that in a lot of the reports from the police, that children are present to 60% of family violence, but that's right there at the action space. Children are still impacted if they aren't at the home, but they come home and see a hole in the wall or a bruise on mom or they're watching mom worry about what she's going to wear. So it's not always as direct, but it's that subtle messaging that they're picking up on.

We do find sometimes, with the children and young people, they almost imitate that and that's one of the risks of exposure to family violence, is the pathway can be turning into a future perpetrator or turning into a future victim survivor because that's what you know. Your brain's being shaped and that becomes your normal. So often, it might be the brother telling the sister, "Oh, you can't go out like that. You look like a slut." So you can see some of that repetitive narrative going on. Children don't know any different. For the first five years, they really don't have access to an outside system other than that direct family in that attachment space and they [inaudible 00:31:31] some of that extended family if they've got access to it.

And not until they go to school do they start to see the world may look different, but yet, their brain's already shaped to adapt to an environment that's quite toxic. Even though they don't know that, they don't know what they don't know, but they just know that safety like a school can be really safe, but their whole system is screaming. The sense of safety feels wrong. So that's where you see some of those behaviours, "Because safety looks different at home where I know when dad does X, Y, Z, I do X, Y, Z and I'm safe." So even though on the outside we'd go, "Wow, that's really extreme," I'll say adaptive, some people say maladaptive, but they're adapting their behaviours for survival and you can't just turn that off.

So yes, everything that they're watching go on isn't always directly at them. I do find that a lot of perpetrators use their male sons or stepsons to be perpetrators and they often groom them and encourage them to speak down to sisters and to their mom. So often, children are used in that way to become like a little puppet.

Cat Schofield:

What advice would you have for healthcare workers in terms of how they might ... I mean, you've talked a lot about how you might identify or you might have suspicion, but how would you navigate through the support, relationship with somebody who might have shared with you there in this situation and then how you support them through it to be able to leave or to be able to make substantive changes?

Danae:

We look at all these signs and people are still awkward in the conversations, but if people do ask the question, the next step is, if someone says, "Yes, I am in family violence," what do they do? What does a professional do?

Dee:

Well, I guess we have lots of conversations with professionals that actually ring. I think the most important thing is for that professional to actually take that really non-judgmental approach, just keep that relationship and that rapport so that the victim survivor actually feels that it's safe for them to actually share what's going on rather than feeling that there's going to be pressure placed on them, they need to bring police straight away and report. Obviously, we would prefer them to be safe and we want to ensure that they are safe in the future, but when they're actually just in that processing part, when they haven't actually made the decision to leave the relationship, if pressure is placed on them that they have to ring police immediately, that will often cause them to shut down.

So even just having those gentle conversations around how they can best actually help them. Victim survivors, they are the expert in their life. So actually, just asking and saying, "How can I actually best support you? We can actually make a phone call to Family Violence Counselling and Support, have a bit of a chat to someone. There's no pressure on you to make a decision, to make any change right here, right now." And knowing that that pressure is not being placed on them will often actually allow them to move through that stage of processing what has been happening to them and having a conversation so that they can actually start to make those decisions for the future.

So I guess it's please don't be too heightened if someone actually does start to raise that, yes, they are in a situation where they are experiencing family violence, and actually, just allow them to sit with it and then start to talk about, "There are other options. There are financial supports that can be made," and admitting, "I don't have the answers, but we can actually talk to someone else that might be able to point us in the right direction." And usually, that will be enough for someone to actually feel safe and that they can actually start to process things in their own time.

Danae:

Believe them. Just believe them and listen. Validate, yeah. And sometimes it's not a surprise and I think the gut from a professional or a family friend member might be like, "Oh, yeah, I had that feeling," or some of the worst things to say is, "No way, he seems so nice." So it's stepping back from that and just doing that validation, believe them. Like Dee said, you don't have to solve the issues right there and then, but this might be the first time that someone's been brave enough to ... I mean, they're brave every day, but has been brave enough to actually say out loud. And if that first experience is either, "Oh, no way, he seems so lovely," or in any other way, shape or form makes them feel judged or shameful about it, they might not disclose again for a really long time.

Cat Schofield:

Can I ask then how you navigate through, say, mandatory reporting requirements because I would imagine that creates a bit of a tension and how you manage that?

Dee:

So we're quite upfront with our conversations at the beginning. So when we have that initial conversation, we tell them that it is a confidential space, but we do have some limits to that confidentiality. If they were to disclose that they are at risk of harm or that a child is at risk of harm, then because we are mandatory reporters, we have a duty of care. So it is really important that we've had those conversations. Will they consent to me actually sharing that information? If they start to say, "Well, I'm concerned that police will be called and that police are going to turn up on the doorstep," then you can start to have those conversations around, "Well, we need to ensure that you are safe."

Sometimes if they're disclosing historical, they might just need time to process it. Other times, we may have to say to them, "I'm really sorry, but you've actually disclosed something and I'm hearing that your child is actually at risk," or however that conversation is going to go. "I am a mandatory reporter and I do need to report, but let's actually have a conversation on what that will actually look like," so ensuring that they can actually be part of that conversation. And I've made reports while the person has been there with me, so then they can be actually aware of what's being said. It might be the opportunity that then they can be contacted and have that conversation, but they know that it's not going to be the case that police are going to rock up on the doorstep by the time they get home. They just need a little bit of time to actually process things.

Danae:

And because child safety has been used as a threat for a lot of our families, it is a real instant reaction. In the Children and Young Persons Programme, we come in at a different space when there's a bit more ideally stability sitting there because we do family violence trauma resolution counselling with children and young people, but for some families, it might be the first time they've disclosed what has happened. So we do report. And like Dee said, when we first meet families, we talk about confidentiality and limits to confidentiality. I've made reports with caregivers. I've made reports to Strong Family Safe Kids with children and young people.

It's just being really transparent and letting them know what I'm going to say and, "We can do that together," or, "I have to do that" And it's usually received okay. It can be scary, but when we walk that journey beside them and give a lot of validation and support and transparency and we talk about it in terms of, "It's a safety, it's because of the safety element that we want to keep your children and you safe and we need to put this down on paper. We want to note that these behaviours and patterns are here."

Cat Schofield:

And it's starting that relationship, isn't it? In the honesty, in the reality about being clear but supportive, but also having clarity around where the boundaries lie in terms of that mandatory responsibility.

Danae:

And I will say that there's lots that have gone on to have really, really, really positive engagement with different parts of ARL, Strong Family Safe Kids and Advice Referral Line and Child Safety. Once we do that really supportively, they can actually be a really great partner in creating safety and looking at things. So we can create a really good experience when we're open and honest and transparent.

Cat Schofield:

How do you look after yourselves in this space because you've described some really challenging situations and ongoing challenge of sitting with things that you know that you can't immediately make changes to? How do you look after yourselves and what advice would you give to other health professionals working in this space?

Dee:

Well, I think the most important thing is to realise, as a professional working in this space, you're not responsible for other people's decisions. I'm not there to rescue people. I respect individual's autonomy with making their own decisions. So I have to really ensure that I'm not taking the work home. I'm not responsible, like we've discussed, if they decide to stay in a relationship, I don't take that on. And just having those boundaries in place that I'm able to leave work at the end of the day, ensuring that I have a strong social connection with individuals that are not just working in this space, so that you can actually have other conversations that are not heavy all of the time.

Having great outlets. I'm a craft person, so having that opportunity for me of being with a different cohort of friends and participating in craft activities, ensuring that you're being physically active. Taking the breaks that you need to. They're all important in my space. Denae, what do you like to do for your own self-care?

Danae:

It is a really tricky space and I think for some of us that have worked in it, the longer you work in it, you do become that vicarious trauma desensitised a little bit and you have spend a lot of time trying to navigate what works for you as individuals. We try to create within a work environment that we can debrief with each other, that we create as many nice spaces and opportunities to let off a little bit of steam sometimes. Personally, I spend a lot of time with my own psychologist because I'd be a bit naive to think that it doesn't impact on me. And then I create my own little micro moments through the day. It might be a quick cup of tea or a little mantra or a couple of deep breaths or whatever, I've got in my doodling on a piece of paper.

And at home, it's nature for me. I don't look at social media very much. I don't watch the news. I really limit outside influence because the work can feel really heavy, especially currently when family violence and this manosphere and this misogynistic patriarchal. Every time you turn on the TV, there's something going on that can be really triggering. So it's just building awareness of yourself and how you can protect yourself a little bit. And I imagine it's possibly easier for Dee and I. Well, it's not easier, but we work in it every day. So be kind to yourself if you are in a profession, a school, a hospital anywhere and you do have a disclosure. It's okay that even that one disclosure feels heavy because it is heavy work.

It feels really yucky to know that something like this is happening in someone's life and could have been happening for a long time and to children. So be kind that this is big stuff.

Dee:

Share. Share with someone, other safe people that you can actually not sit with it. I think that the biggest thing is, if you've had a really tricky complex situation that you've been working on or a phone call or a counselling session, walking out and then just leaving the business at the end of the day without having that opportunity of getting it off your chest can be really quite difficult because we are holding a lot of trauma every single day. Throughout the day, we're having those conversations and it is really important that you can actually not carry it, put it down, even if it's just that imaginary box at the end of the day, picking up all of that trauma that you've dealt with, putting it in the box and saying, "Okay, I'll pick that back up again tomorrow."

But not being scared to actually reach out and say, "That was really hard. I found that really challenging to deal with." Talking to someone, talking to your coworkers.

Cat Schofield:

Thank you.

Dee:

Thanks very much for the opportunity.

Cat Schofield:

Thank you to Dee and Denae from the Family Violence Counselling and Support Service for speaking to us for this episode and for the incredibly important work that they do. The Family Violence Counselling and Support Service can be contacted on 1-800-608-122 and you can also find information on health.taz.gov.au. We encourage you to explore the resources we mentioned in our discussion. In particular, the Duluth Power and Control Wheel can be found on theduluthmodel.org. Duluth is spelled D-U-L-U-T-H. We will include this in other links in the show notes.

In the next episode, Kelly Ford, Group Director Mental Health Reform Services at Statewide Mental Health Services will speak with Bec Flakelar from Safe At Home at the Department of Justice about government and community responses to family violence as well as how we can each safely support someone experiencing family violence. If you missed it, you can also go back and listen to our interview with Bree Klerck, CEO of the Tasmanian Family and Sexual Violence Alliance.

Dorian Broomhall:

If this episode has raised any concerns for you, you can call 1-800-RESPECT. That's 1-800-737-732 to talk to a counsellor from the National Sexual Assault and Domestic Violence Hotline. Alternatively, you could call Tasmania's Family Violence Counselling and Support Service on 1-800-608-122. If you have concerns about your safety or that of someone else, please contact police or call 000 for emergency help.