Violence Against Women http://vaw.sagepub.

com/

Safety Conferencing: Toward a Coordinated and Inclusive Response to Safeguard Women and Children
Joan Pennell and Stephanie Francis Violence Against Women 2005 11: 666 DOI: 10.1177/1077801205274569 The online version of this article can be found at: http://vaw.sagepub.com/content/11/5/666

Published by:
http://www.sagepublications.com

Additional services and information for Violence Against Women can be found at: Email Alerts: http://vaw.sagepub.com/cgi/alerts Subscriptions: http://vaw.sagepub.com/subscriptions Reprints: http://www.sagepub.com/journalsReprints.nav Permissions: http://www.sagepub.com/journalsPermissions.nav Citations: http://vaw.sagepub.com/content/11/5/666.refs.html

>> Version of Record - Mar 22, 2005 What is This?

Downloaded from vaw.sagepub.com by Claudine Dombrowski on October 23, 2013

VIOLENCE AGAINST WOMEN / May Pennell, 2005 Francis / SAFETY 10.1177/1077801205274569 CONFERENCING

Safety Conferencing
Toward a Coordinated and Inclusive Response to Safeguard Women and Children
JOAN PENNELL
North Carolina State University

STEPHANIE FRANCIS
University of North CarolinaChapel Hill

To reach out to women from different backgrounds, the battered womens movement needs to place women and their informal supports at the center of a coordinated response. This article shares the views of domestic violence survivors, staff, and supporters on how to create such a coordinated and inclusive response, lays a conceptual foundation for a decision-making forum called safety conferencing, and sets forth guidance for its practice. Safety conferencing is proposed as one means of building the individual and collective strength to reshape connections, make sound choices, and promote the safety of women and children from diverse cultures. Keywords: coordinated response; domestic violence; family group conferencing; safety planning

Safety conferencing is so important for the person thats being abused but also for the family members, you know. Weve got to have . . . a group that we can get together and feel like a family, feel like were safe at all times, or [if] not, we can call the whole group together and get that support and that strength. A survivor of child abuse and domestic violence

Although her family relationships brought deep-seated pain, this survivor points to the necessity of feeling like a family for a
AUTHORS NOTE: We wish to acknowledge the support of the participating domestic violence programs, the creative thinking of Amy Holloway, the research assistance of Amy Smoker, the feedback of Kelly Mitchell-Clark, and the encouragement of Jim Ptacek. This article is based on a paper by the authors presented at the annual meeting of the Law and Society Association, in Pittsburgh, PA, June 2003.
VIOLENCE AGAINST WOMEN, Vol. 11 No. 5, May 2005 666-692 DOI: 10.1177/1077801205274569 2005 Sage Publications

666

Pennell, Francis / SAFETY CONFERENCING

667

sense of safety and strength. It is to family and friends that the large majority of women who are abused turn for help, and their reactions significantly affect the womens perception of wellbeing (Goodkind, Gillum, Bybee, & Sullivan, 2003). The informal network and its response are especially crucial to women who are abused and their children coming from historically oppressed cultures; their communities are understandably skeptical about appealing to outside agencies given their disproportionate receipt of correctional services (U.S. Department of Justice, 2002) and foster care placement (U.S. Department of Health and Human Services, 2000). This article shares the views of domestic violence survivors, staff, and supporters on how to construct family connections and create a safety plan. These discussions lay a conceptual foundation for a decision-making forum called safety conferencing. This is one response to the challenge faced by the battered womens movement in building alliances that include the formal systems as well as the informal supports underlying abused womens sense of identity, belonging, and safety. In posing a challenge to womens advocates, historian and activist of the battered womens movement Susan Schechter (1999) acknowledged the essential work of domestic violence programs and coalitions in advancing shelters, improving law enforcement, and raising public awareness. At the same time, her reflections on 15 years of experience led her to recognize that
these extraordinary reforms have often left out key sectors of the community that respond to domestic violence, collaborative partners we need in order to improve the lives of all battered women and their children: the health care and child welfare systems, the schools, religious communities, housing and job development agencies, and neighborhood based organizations. (Schechter, 1999, p. 3)

She and others have moved outside of domestic violence programs to engage with women who are abused and their children who are living in poverty and come from marginalized cultures. Likewise, we have devoted considerable attention to domestic violence work, but given the extensive cooccurrence of child maltreatment and woman abuse (Edleson, 1999), we have also turned to child welfare reform. In particular, we have advanced a model called family group conferencing so that women, young people, and other family members have a greater say in child welfare

668

VIOLENCE AGAINST WOMEN / May 2005

decisions. Family group conferencing brings together the family of concern with their relatives, friends, and other close supports that is, their informal networkto develop a plan to safeguard children and other family members. Before these plans go into effect, they must be authorized by the involved protective agencies. Repeated studies have documented the benefits of this partnership-building model in democratizing decision making, respecting family and community cultures, and promoting the safety and well-being of children and women (Burford & Hudson, 2000; Merkel-Holguin, Nixon, & Burford, 2003). Nevertheless, taking up Schechters challenge, this article envisions a model for domestic violence programs maintaining a leadership role in developing these collaborations. Extending the child welfare model of family group conferencing, this approach is called safety conferencing. This name is in keeping with its primary focus on safety planning and its domestic violence auspices. In a deconstructive turn, the article begins by reviewing contradictions in feminist analyses of domestic violence, the elevation by the battered womens movement of womens choices over family connections, and the ensuing conflict between domestic violence and child welfare regarding the safety of children. Next, family group conferencing is described because this model serves as the platform from which to construct safety conferencing. Then the article overviews the participatory approach utilized for defining safety conferencing and discusses the practice guidance provided by women who are abused and shelter staff on the model. The article concludes with an agenda for advancing a coordinated and inclusive response that integrates informal and formal networks to safeguard women and children. This discussion is particularly timely given the developing initiatives to apply conferencing to domestic violence and sexual assault under the auspices of womens organizations or in conjunction with them (see other articles in this special issue). CONNECTION, CHOICE, AND SAFETY In the United States and Canada, the middle-class womens movement during the 19th century upheld womens domestic role as central to their identity and societal contribution (Rothman,

Pennell, Francis / SAFETY CONFERENCING

669

1978; Valverde, 1991). By the 1960s, this same role was challenged by the White feminist movement, which identified womens connection to marriage and the nuclear family as limiting their choices and relegating them to second-class status (Thorne, 1982). Contrasting feminist or womanist positions were held by many Native people and people of color in Canada and the United States, and these views influenced White society (Allen, 1986). In these alternative analyses, colonization and oppression degrade women and breed family violence (hooks, 1981); and their solutions affirmed connections within the extended family and cultural community (Bushie, 1997), rather than separating women from their men (Combahee River Collective, 1979/2001). From these mixed origins, the battered womens movement in the 1970s evolved and quickly began to establish refuges for women who were abused and their children (Schechter, 1982). The aim in many shelters was to offer women a safe place in which to make choices about their lives. Although the focus was not initially on childrens needs, shelters offered an alternative child welfare system that permitted women and children to stay together (Callahan, 1993) and to form bonds with others in similar circumstances. Congruent with their prior leftist and civil rights involvements (Evans, 1979), early U.S. feminist proponents of shelters were suspicious of the legal authorities who were seen as part of the problem and predicted that accepting public funding would create organizational hierarchies and derail the movement (Ahrens, 1980; Sullivan, 1982). In Canada, womens groups were more likely to give credence to the welfare state, and they expected and demanded public funding of their programs (Vickers, 1991). Reflecting differences in the womens movement (Ryan, 2001), shelters encompassed conflicting beliefs about whether women should strive to separate from men or create an integrated and egalitarian society (Pennell, 1987). The focus on action, though, permitted participants with divergent beliefs to work together on establishing desperately needed shelters and support services. With experience, they also came to recognize that, for the most part, women and their children moved fluidly in and out of relationship with the abusive partner and might, after numerous attempts, finally leave for good (Campbell, Rose, Kub, & Nedd, 1998).

670

VIOLENCE AGAINST WOMEN / May 2005

By the 1980s, the battered womens movement had accepted the necessity of public funding and legal intervention (Pleck, 1987). They pushed for mandatory arrest policies and protective orders along with court advocacy programs to help women who are abused maneuver through the legal process. The intent was to give women protection and choice over their lives. The results were often less sanguine with women who were abused charged with failing to testify or arrested for defending themselves, and racist law enforcement practices targeted women of color (Martin, 1997; McGillivray & Comaskey, 1999). Nevertheless, battered women, whatever their background, overwhelmingly preferred legal recourse to struggling on their own, and despite the inconsistent responses of judges, many found that restraining orders helped to shift the balance of power between themselves and their abusers (Ptacek, 1999). Continued frustrations with how the law was implemented combined with fears that the emerging therapies for abusers would decriminalize domestic violence. These concerns, along with the rapidly rising number of women seeking shelter, created a context in which women activists joined with legal authorities to develop a coordinated response, commonly called the Duluth model (Pence & Shepard, 1999). Their aim was institutional change that centralizes victim safety, and their method was an interagency response that includes criminal justice, batterer intervention programs, and services for women and children and that monitors the participating agencies to ensure a consistent approach. A particularly controversial component of the coordinated response was the groups for batterers. These groups were seen as siphoning much needed resources from womens services, replacing a criminal justice perspective with a rehabilitative one, and raising false hopes for the mens partners. In response to these criticisms, standards have been imposed on batterer intervention groups to keep the focus on offender accountability and generate a so-called firewall excluding therapeutic approaches, especially those bringing together couples. Although this focus is crucial, rigid standards prevent experimentation that might make groups more effective with different cultures, cooccurring problems such as substance abuse, and same-sex intimate violence

Pennell, Francis / SAFETY CONFERENCING

671

(Mederos, 1999). Nevertheless, when participants complete the program, court-mandated batterers groups tend to increase womens and childrens safety (Gondolf, 2002). Gradually, domestic violence programs recognized that far more attention had to be devoted to the children, who formed the majority of shelter residents. Given their exposure to the batterers, some children suffered from severe physical, emotional, and behavioral problems (Bancroft & Silverman, 2002). Typically, the batterer harshly punished them and undermined their mothers ability to parent. The resulting mother-child interactions raised issues about appropriate forms of discipline and care at the shelter. This led to tensions between mandatory reporting of child maltreatment and the staffs sense of loyalty to the women who were abused as well as distrust of the child welfare system. These tensions escalated as child welfare workers increasingly terminated the abused mothers custody rights for failure to protect the children from witnessing her own victimization. In response, womens and childrens advocates called for a redesign of child protection and voluntary community-based services to abused mothers and their children (Edleson, 2004). In summary, during three decades, the battered womens movement sought to advance womens safety by offering women who are battered a means of making choices about their lives and separating from abusive relationships. Many women, though, remained connected to their abusers, and by necessity the focus expanded outward from womens services to criminal justice and batterer intervention programs. Even more than the men, the children posed a dilemma for the battered womens movement. To thrive, children need safe homes and connections to their families, communities, and ethnic identity, all the more so in a society where one culture dominates (Helms, 1994). Womens choices are never solely autonomous decisions; they are made within relationships, norms, and circumstances that sustain and constrain what is acceptable and feasible. Although the battered womens movement advocated for womens choices with the expectation thereby of advancing their safety, many women who were abused saw their social connections at the heart of their decisions. They knew some bonds endangered their lives; however, they also would never feel safe and empowered without links to others.

672

VIOLENCE AGAINST WOMEN / May 2005

FAMILY GROUP CONFERENCING IN CHILD WELFARE Meanwhile, child welfare was developing alternatives to agency-driven models of decision making and sought to bring to the table the childrens parents and their wider support group. One of these was a model called family group conferencing (FGC) that was legislated in New Zealand after Indigenous protests that Eurocentric practices were undermining Indigenous families and culture (Rangihau, 1986). It was instituted for child welfare and youth justice. The intent of this reform was to emphasize the family groups responsibility for their young relatives, affirm childrens safety and rights, respect cultural diversity, and advance community-government partnerships (Hassall, 1996). Soon other countries imported and adapted FGC to their contexts (Burford & Hudson, 2000). The model has been successfully applied in a wide spectrum of cultures and with difficult family situations (Merkel-Holguin et al., 2003). In child welfare, the family group is generally taken to mean the immediate family along with its network of kin, friends, and other close supports and is distinguished from the professional service providers. The conference is a decision-making forum in which the family group develops a plan for addressing the issues of concern, and this plan must be approved by the referring social worker in terms of protective measures and allocation of agency resources. The plan is intended to guide the ongoing work of child welfare with the family and may be presented to the court for sanctioning. Thus, FGC is envisioned not as family therapy, couples mediation, professional case conferencing, or diversion from the court but instead as an opportunity to widen the circle of those committed to safeguarding children and other family members (Pennell & Burford, 1994). Usually, the referral to an FGC is made by the familys caseworker, although some agencies now encourage self-referrals (Lupton & Nixon, 1999). Conferences are typically called to determine where children should live and how they can have safe, caring, and long-term homes. To deprofessionalize the conference and encourage genuine participation by the family group, three features are particularly beneficial: an independent FGC coordinator, conference preparations, and family private time to make a plan (Burford, Pennell, & MacLeod, 1995; Marsh & Crow, 1998; Paterson & Harvey, 1991;

Pennell, Francis / SAFETY CONFERENCING

673

Pennell & Anderson, in press). The conference is organized by an FGC coordinator who does not have case-carrying responsibility for the family and in this manner is considered neutral or, if outside of the child welfare unit, independent. Jurisdictions differ on whether to base the FGC coordinators in social services or the community. Whatever the location, conferencing requires child welfare to make or support referrals, participate in conferences, and follow up on the plans. During the conference preparations, the FGC coordinator first explains the process to the family members and after gaining their consent to participate, works with them to organize the conferencewho to invite, where and how to hold the meeting, and what measures to put in place for safe and effective participation. Usually, relatives and friends accept the invitation to attend or send a message to the conference, and the proceedings include far more fathers and extended family of different generations and sides of the family than is typically the case for child welfare practice (Gunderson, Cahn, & Wirth, 2003). Often conferences are held in community or faith-based centers at times that fit the schedules of family group members. Cultural groups differ on whether and how to include young children; however, strategies such as playing a tape recording are available for ensuring that their voices are heard. With participants who may feel at risk, the coordinator develops safety measures. These may be asking them to select a support person to stay by them at the meeting or having the police on call. The coordinator also prepares the service providers to come to the conference ready to engage with the family group members in a way that encourages their input. The coordinator is responsible for assessing whether to hold the conference and should consult closely with victims and other family members. In making the decision to proceed, the coordinator should take into account agreement on the meetings purpose and participants willingness to take part and their safety. The conference may begin with an opening of the familys selection, such as displaying the childrens photographs or joining in song. Then the FGC coordinator ensures that everyone is introduced, states the purpose of the meeting, reviews the process, and reaches agreement on guidelines for the deliberations. Service providers specify the areas that need to be covered in the plan and give information on the situation and possible resources

674

VIOLENCE AGAINST WOMEN / May 2005

but are asked to refrain from stipulating the action plan. The intent is that they offer needed information without preempting the family groups role as planners. During this information sharing, family groups often raise questions and add concerns for their relatives to the service providers list. When the family group understands the areas for planning, the service providers, including the FGC coordinator, leave the room to provide them with the privacy in which to speak among themselves. After drafting a plan, the family group then invites the service providers back. At this time, the plan is reviewed, and usually agreement is reached on its action steps (New Zealand Department of Social Welfare, 1999). Commonly, plans include contributions by family group members, community organizations, and public agencies; FGC plans are more likely than child welfare service plans in general to include cultural and faith-based supports (Gunderson et al., 2003; Pennell & Burford, 1995). Plans should include mechanisms for monitoring and evaluating their implementation and revising the course of action as needed. For the most part, family group and professional participants like the process and the resulting plans (Merkel-Holguin et al., 2003; Trotter, Sheehan, Liddell, Strong, & Laragy, 1999). Plans are primarily made by consensus (Pennell & Burford, 1995). Violence is reported to never occur (Marsh & Crow, 1998) or rarely occur at FGCs (Paterson & Harvey, 1991), and violence does not appear to result from conferencing (Burford & Pennell, 1998). Two studies of FGC programs with family violence referrals reported no incidents of violence at conferences (Burford & Pennell, 1998; Social Services and Research Information Unit [SSRIU], 2003). Notably, conferences addressing domestic violence encourage women in particular to band together across generations and family lines and foster their leadership as decision makers (Pennell & Burford, 2002). In carrying out the plans, the main difficulties arise because family group and service providers may need more supports to carry out their parts. It is well established that FGC keeps children with their siblings, families, kin, or cultural group and stabilizes their placements without jeopardizing their safety (Crampton, 2001; Merkel-Holguin et al., 2003; Walter R. McDonald & Associates, 2000). Canadian (Pennell & Burford, 2000a) and British (SSRIU,

Pennell, Francis / SAFETY CONFERENCING

675

2003) studies of family violence referrals have found that FGC increases the safety of children and their mothers. FGC, however, appears least effective in redressing young peoples violence against their mothers (Pennell & Burford, 2000a). In many ways, the development of FGC in child welfare parallels that of domestic violence programming. Both have radical roots, are committed to safety, wish to increase peoples say over their lives, combine community and state resources, and seek to develop a coordinated response. Their divergences, though, are extensive. They have distinct auspices: Generally domestic violence services for women are based in the community, and FGC for children in need of protection is affiliated with public child welfare. They differ in their primary focus, women versus children, although both recognize that no one in a family is safe unless everyone is safe. And they disagree on their methods, in particular regarding the inclusion in the same group survivors, abusers, and often individuals who fit both categories. Combining abusers and survivors from different generations and sides of the family has led to close articulation of safety measures for FGC (North Carolina Family Group Conferencing Project, 2002; Pennell & Burford, 2000b) and a related model (Carrillo & Carter, 2001). Such group composition, though, continues to resonate far better with the aspirations of nonmainstream groups (Waites, Macgowan, Pennell, Carlton-LaNey, & Weil, 2004) and the restorative justice movements than those of the battered womens movement (Strang & Braithwaite, 2002). Concerns of womens advocates were evident in focus groups that we held under the auspices of the North Carolina Coalition Against Domestic Violence (Francis, 2002). The purpose of these sessions was to elicit their guidance on conducting FGC in child welfare cases where there is domestic violence. On one hand, the North Carolina womens advocates appreciated that the conference eliminates the secrecy about the abuse and offers another way of planning for womens safety. On the other hand, they were uneasy with the model because it raises concerns about power and control dynamics during and after the conferences. Most of all, they were skeptical about holding FGC under child welfare auspices and articulated the following questions:

676

VIOLENCE AGAINST WOMEN / May 2005

Will meetings be arranged without attention to the safety of the participants? Will the children be removed if the abused mother refuses to take part? Will the abused mother be blamed if the perpetrator does not follow the plan? Will child welfare workers, because of their lack of knowledge about domestic violence, approve plans that endanger women? Will child welfare seek guidance from domestic violence workers and include them at meetings where domestic violence is an issue? (Francis, 2002)

These strong concerns motivated us to explore the possibility of conferencing under domestic violence auspices. We now turn to an effort to apply the understanding of womens advocates to conceptualizing how domestic violence agencies could implement conferencing, that is, safety conferencing. COLLABORATIVE DEVELOPMENT OF SAFETY CONFERENCING Safety conferencing developed through four processes: discussion in an advisory group; focus groups with women who were battered and separately with shelter staff; exchanges with domestic violence counselors on the relevance of the model for the women with whom they worked; and feedback from focus group participants on a report of the findings. The analysis was further extended through discussion of the findings at national conferences. The advisory group included representatives in North Carolina from abused womens programs, batterer services, childrens community services, child welfare, police, domestic violence court, womens correctional services, and social work education. The meetings were chaired by the director of a domestic violence center and organized by the two authorsJoan, a university faculty member, and Stephanie, a shelter director and doctoral student. This arrangement helped to promote communityuniversity collaboration in developing the agenda and deliberative process. During the course of their meetings, the group delineated the underlying realities that inform a theory of change. They

Pennell, Francis / SAFETY CONFERENCING

677

assumed that change efforts need to overcome the isolation of survivors, acknowledge women and childrens continued connections with the batterer and his family, and provide avenues for abusers to take public responsibility for their actions. They observed that without added supports, families often responded in a scattered way to their abused relatives. They identified that services operating in isolation had difficulty reaching out to communities marginalized because of culture, language, and low income. And they recognized that the coordinated response as currently constituted was made up of services. To their mind, these collaborations would be strengthened by including victims and survivors and their social support networks. From this foundation, the advisory group posited a theory of change that formal services and informal networks had to work together to stop domestic violence. They then developed a mission statement for safety conferencing that a coordinated response should include women who are abused and their close supports in making and carrying out safety plans. Safety conferencing was envisioned as a way for all of these partners to educate each other, design feasible and culturally respectful actions, and contribute their resources to keeping women and children safe. The advisory group concluded that safety conferencing should not be used if this was contrary to the victims wishes or placed her and her children in danger. At the same time, they recognized that even if the couple was separated, children made for an ongoing link between their parents, and safety conferencing served as a way of managing these bonds. They saw safety conferencing as usefully applied when women were leaving shelter, men were in a batterer program, and abusers saw their children at a visitation center. The advisory group acknowledged that its membership was limited to services, and separate focus groups were planned with women who were abused and shelter staff to gain their perspectives. The focus groups were held under the auspices of a shelter, and residents and staff were invited to take part. Each group had three members, which permitted in-depth discussion over a 2hour session. The staff group consisted of counselors who were culturally diverse, had worked at the shelter between 1 and 5 years, and knew each other well. The group of abused women was composed of women who all were mothers and came from

678

VIOLENCE AGAINST WOMEN / May 2005

different cultural backgrounds (urban and rural, White and African American). They were currently in different living situations: one was in shelter, the second was living independently after being in shelter, and the third was living with her batterer and receiving counseling from a domestic violence worker. None of the survivors had met prior to the session. To continue the collaborative development of safety conferencing, what was learned from the focus groups was then shared back through three forums. First, the focus group participantsthree staff and one survivorwere asked to review a report of the sessions. Two survivors were not accessible. All reviewers agreed that the report was an accurate account. Second, the findings were presented to the advisory group to plan the next steps. The group stressed the importance of continuing to involve the womens community in conceptualizing safety conferencing. Third, the strategies for carrying out safety conferencing were shared with counselors of women who were battered in another program. This group discussed how the model could be applied to their own work. Working from one of their family examples, they saw safety conferencing as a way to reach out particularly to the Hispanic/Latino population, a rapidly growing group in North Carolina. In their view, safety conferencing was a means of educating the family members and their relatives and church about domestic violence and engaging them in safety planning. They stressed the need to build in supports for women who are abused and their children at conferences and to uphold protective orders and other legal constraints on the batterer. This agency is now considering how to pilot safety conferencing. GUIDANCE FROM WOMEN WHO ARE ABUSED AND SHELTER STAFF We turn now to the guidance offered by the focus groups of survivors and shelter staff. This section is organized according to key questions identified by the participants. Their reflections converge with those of the advisory group and the domestic violence program interested in undertaking safety conferencing.

Pennell, Francis / SAFETY CONFERENCING

679

CAN FGC WORK IN THE UNITED STATES?

To orient the focus group participants to FGC, they first viewed a New Zealand video of a conference. In the discussion afterward, both groups immediately questioned if FGC could be applied in the United States given the fragmentation of families here. One survivor said that FGC was kind of easy because in the video everyone was around in the family group; another said, My family was never like that; however, another reflected back, We did something like that for an aunt over the phone. A Latina staff member noted that extended family is important in her culture and that the family group informally plays a significant part in decision making. She suspected, though, that it happens less often in the United States; however, it would be helpful to get everyone together and to empower them to make the decisions. Nevertheless, she worried about decisions that concerned not only the children but also domestic violence. Picking up on the theme of culture, another staff member anticipated that her very traditional Euro-American family would also come together to make decisions.
ARE WOMEN WHO ARE ABUSED TOO ISOLATED TO USE CONFERENCING?

Moving from FGC to the circumstances particular to shelter life, both groups highlighted the dislocation of women and children from their social support networks. The staff focused on the challenge of convening a safety conference when women dont have the support in place yet. They explained, One of the problems particularly with the shelter is that if [the women] had great family supports, they might not be in the shelter in the first place. At the same time, they acknowledged, If we did [bring them together], it would be good because we would empower and strengthen those connections. The women who were battered relayed the heart-wrenching pain of being separated from their families and friends and an intense fear of making new and possibly abusive connections. Describing at length her circumstances, one woman said,

680

VIOLENCE AGAINST WOMEN / May 2005

What about those of us like in my case . . . who relocated for my safety . . . and had to leave all of my family and friends behind. . . . You feel so alone, so alienated . . . and it makes you wonder, you know, if it is ever going to be safe again, if there is any plan that you can have in your life. . . . It is hard for me because, you know, I am very susceptible about making new friends. It is hard because I fear that Ill be abused.

In response, another woman separated from family advised, Keep our guard up . . . but yet still have them down so much to let people that we trust in. The third woman who returned to her batterer explained, I got more depressed when I didnt have anyone around. All three survivors agreed that the one group with whom they felt safe was their domestic violence counselors: Thats the only people that I have faith in.
WILL THE BATTERER FIND OUT WHERE SHE IS?

The three survivors spoke of the secrecy that shrouded their lives and isolated them further. Having to hide her whereabouts led one woman to feel like you dont exist. This was further reinforced by her employer who swore me to secrecy and stressed, You cant never ever tell anyone or else you lose your job. Another woman found that friends could not be trusted to hide her location and learned, Mother was the one person that I could [trust]. And the third woman living with her batterer responded, Im scared to leave cause hes going to find me. . . . Im staying for the safety because Im scared if I leave hes going to get me. Sharing the survivors concerns, the staff emphasized that the conference would need to be held in a location that would not disclose the womans current place of residence: Where the conference is going to take place may disclose some of that confidential location even if not in that confidential location.
WILL THE SURVIVOR BE TOO ASHAMED TO SHARE HER PLANS?

The staff identified another form of secrecy. Often women were too ashamed to tell the staff that they were returning to their batterers: They think were going to be disappointed in them for

Pennell, Francis / SAFETY CONFERENCING

681

their going back so they like kinda say something that really doesnt apply and later on we find they went back to their partners. This secrecy, the staff recognized, applied not only to the staff but often to the family whom women likewise feared would reject them for reuniting with their partners:
Although we try to explain to people we understand your choices and well try to support you no matter what, but they also get these messages from their family and often times that is why they have lost some family support.

The staff saw the conference as a way to educate the family group about domestic violence:
It would be important to have the coordinator to talk with [the family] about leaving as a process and to pull them back in. To be able to move on, it is necessary to have as much support as possible and to discuss how they can support her even if they dont agree with that decision, whatever.

From observation, the staff knew that shelter residents move from an initial stage of being terrified of their abuser to a later phase of feeling like everything is going to be okay having been away for 2 months. Given this progression, they concluded that safety conferencing should be raised around Week 4 of the stay and take place prior to Week 8.
HOW CAN WOMEN WHO ARE ABUSED DEVELOP A SUPPORT NETWORK?

The survivors recognized that secrecy made them sick, and they needed to hold on where possible to their safe connections and develop new ones. They spoke of developing a social network at the shelter with other women more likely to understand what they are experiencing. One survivor explained, We all come here as residents. We are all in the same situation to try to be safe. . . . We are like sisters. Agreeing, another woman stated, Cause I know that they know, theyre not going to judge me. At the same time, they worried about their new connections maintaining the rule of confidentiality and had experienced such breakdowns outside of the shelter.

682

VIOLENCE AGAINST WOMEN / May 2005

WHAT ABOUT SUPPORTS FOR THE CHILDREN?

Although the survivors identified their own needs for a social network, they were keenly concerned about supports for their children. With much emotion, one woman who had to flee from her abuser without the children exclaimed, Safety conferencing is for us [the women]! But what about my children that I left there? Where is their safety net? The second spoke of having to separate her children from important family connections: We love our family. . . . My children dont understand that there is a lack of trust. . . . I dont say anything negative about the family around them. And the third pointed out that even though her partner abused her, he was the supplier of her childrens needs and never abused them. The survivors stressed that safety conferencing is for the women; however, their children needed to have a separate FGC, and their childrens father should be part of those deliberations.
WILL IT BE TOO DEMANDING ON THE FAMILY?

Picturing conferences for themselves, the survivors primarily talked about who should participate from their family, social contacts, and formal services. They wanted family at their conferences but worried about whom they could trust to keep the proceedings confidential. Even more so, they worried about placing demands on their already overtaxed family members: You dont want to put a burden on everybody. If she wasnt so busy all the time. Mother cant come because Grandmother needs her, but I could have her on the phone. They identified that the safety conference participants needed to expand beyond the family to their new support network. Here again they worried about becoming a burden: I think one woman is truly concerned about my health. . . . I call her sister. . . . I know that I lay so much on her. Nevertheless, they all immediately said they would go to each others safety conferences. In their own session, the staff likewise identified the need to include new supports at conferences:
If you are talking about other people providing support, like if they are involved with AA and their sponsor is there or a close friend

Pennell, Francis / SAFETY CONFERENCING

683

that they met in group or other supports like that, then you would have more to work with than just the family.

Both groups further recognized that not only the mothers new supports needed to be present but also those of the children.
SHOULD THE CHILDREN TAKE PART?

The survivors agreed that where possible children should attend the conference. They knew that the children already were aware of the violence and thought that the children needed to be part of the deliberations: The people that have their children, they have to be involved, too. So that the children can continue planning safety along with the family. They also saw important roles for the children at the conference. One woman spoke of how she and her son talked a lot and that he was a peacemaker. She also knew that the children would draw the support of extended family: They [ex-husbands family] would be there for me, [my son], his sisters. Another survivor in hiding recognized that the safety conference focusing on her needs had to be separate from a conference focusing on her childrens needs. The staff members initially differed among themselves as to whether children should participate. The Latina counselor assumed that children would be present; the more traditional Euro-American counselor raised a series of concerns: Would the children become a distraction? Do they need to hear all that was happening? Would the parents be honest in front of the children? After further discussion, the staff agreed that adolescents with preparation could sit in on the entire session, whereas young children would probably benefit from hearing parts of the conference and could move between a playroom with a babysitter and the conference room. They concluded that a support person should stay by any young person in the conference.
SHOULD THE BATTERER TAKE PART?

The thorniest issue for survivors and staff was whether the batterer should be present, and here viewpoints diverged the most widely within both groups. The women hiding from their batterers knew that they could never be with him again, including

684

VIOLENCE AGAINST WOMEN / May 2005

at a safety conference: I wouldnt want my batterer there, I couldnt stand being in the same room, probably break down and go into a sweat and everything. All supported this decision, and all agreed in both groups that restraining orders should not be violated by having a perpetrator at a group. Whether or not the batterer was under a restraining order, one survivor firmly stated that he should not attend and explained,
Because wheres your boundaries going to be? If hes going to be there while you are doing safety planning, then hell know what signs to look for, hes going to know how to handle what you are trying to become safe from.

Conversely, another survivor took the stance, As long as they are not talking about me, theyre talking about the child, he could be there for the child. She added that if he were present, The law would have to be there. The staffs discussion paralleled that of the survivors. The staff agreed among themselves that whether he attended the safety conferences or not, Chances are he is going to be involved afterwards. Given this likelihood, one staff member stood fast that the batterer should attend. Another staff member agreed, but only in the instance where he was also the father of the children. Questioning the exclusion for childless couples, the first staff member responded,
If all of the support is on the outside but they are in their home alone together. How much outside influence is he going to allow for there to be. If he can block the phone calls and isolate her from her family as it is, would having this in place without him change things?

The other staff member asked, Why do you think that if he were there, he would be changed by the conference? She replied, No, and explained about how his context and his awareness of this context would change:
I dont know if he would be in a position to understand, or be in a position to hear. But maybe he would be able to understand or hear that his influence and his voice is not going to be the only one heard. Because other people do know whats going on, they dont agree with whats going on, and people are going to be checking.

Pennell, Francis / SAFETY CONFERENCING

685

The third staff member reflected on the influence that his family could exert over him and how they could protect his partner:
If he is there, I would have some of his family there if at all possible. He is the batterer, but we have to be careful that we are not putting him on a hot seat in this meeting. He still needs to have some support with him as well.

At this juncture, the survivors group converged with the staffs discussion. One woman who was abused welcomed the input of her batterers family and particularly that of his mother who was abused:
I could actually see my boyfriends family there . . . even though [the boyfriends mother] was in an even worse situation than I was in because her husband, or his step-father, goes aroundhe drinks a lot, hes actually held them in hostage all of them in the house. Shes a strong woman, though, cause shes been through a lot, so I would like to have her there, too, for her grandbabies sake.

Her image is backed by the FGC experience of many mothers who found themselves supported by other women who were abused, including their mothers-in-law.
IF HE IS IN A BATTERER INTERVENTION PROGRAM, SHOULD HE TAKE PART?

Both groups agreed that when a partner was in a batterer intervention program, a safety conference should be held. The staff thought that for the safety of the women and children, a conference should be held at the beginning, middle, and end of the batterer intervention group. They hoped that he would be in a different place when those three different safety conferences occurred. The survivors reflected on the links between the batterers group and their safety conferences. They agreed that the facilitators of the batterers group should attend the safety conference to help her know how to keep safe without breaking his confidences in his intervention program: Not that they would come to my safety group and tell me anything about him, but just to give me some feedback so that I can be safe, you know, from him. This woman also saw this communication as leading to the batterer intervention program exerting greater controls

686

VIOLENCE AGAINST WOMEN / May 2005

over her former partner if he were to assault her again: They would be working hand-in-hand, not only with him, but with me also. Not as a reunification program . . . but as a safety net for me. . . . Its like its his probation officer.
WHO IS THE CONFERENCE COORDINATOR? WHAT HAPPENS AT A CONFERENCE?

An area discussed only by the staff group was the design of a safety conferencing program. They agreed that they should serve as the conference coordinators and work together as a team to organize and convene the conferences. This fit with their usual mode of operating, their wish to safeguard the womens interests, and the survivors expressed faith in them. It also served as a means for womens programs retaining control over safety conferencing rather than opening up ownership to other services, such as child welfare and police. At the conference, the staff thought the information should be provided by the service providers, not the survivors, to take some of the pressure off of her. Recognizing that unlike in child welfare the shelter does not have a legal mandate, they saw the woman as having the final say over the plan. In practice, though, the shelter staff anticipated that everyone would negotiate and come to agreement, a not unfounded hope given the consensual decision processes in FGC. At the end of the conference, they saw everyone signing the plan in a ceremony of commitment. In summary, the focus groups identified similar issues to those raised by the advisory council and the other domestic violence program interested in piloting safety conferencing. All of these groups were keenly cognizant of the potential pitfalls of safety conferencing; nevertheless, they supported this approach as long as close attention was paid to the voices of women and children. None of these groups had difficulty moving from FGC in child welfare to envisioning safety conferencing in a domestic violence program. They readily identified that the child welfare focus was on child protection, whereas the domestic violence programs would focus on the safety of the women and children. In their discussions, they acknowledged the ongoing links with the batterers, particularly those who were the childrens father; and they sought to build new connections to help overcome the

Pennell, Francis / SAFETY CONFERENCING

687

isolation and secrecy governing the womens lives. All three groups assumed that the informal supports and formal services for the women and children needed to be at the conference, but always under the auspices of the domestic violence program. This stance correctly reflected the trust of the women who were abused in the shelter staff and their counselors wish to maintain control to safeguard the womens say over the process. In their eyes, the women, with support and guidance, would have the final authority over the plan. Some areas, though, remained in question: Should children attend, especially if they were quite young? Should the battering partner participate, especially if he was not the childrens father? Searching for answers, the three groups considered what supports children needed for taking part and how the batterers family and his intervention program could exert positive controls. In reaching out simultaneously to the informal and formal networks, all of these groups committed to stopping domestic violence began to construct alternatives toward a coordinated and inclusive response. A COORDINATED AND INCLUSIVE RESPONSE A collaborative approach was used to conceptualize how safety conferencing would be carried out. An advisory group representative of services outlined the underlying realities that inform a theory of change: continued connections with the batterer, isolation of survivors, difficulties in reaching all cultures, and the limitations of a coordinated response that includes only services, not victims and their close supports. The advisory group recognized that they needed to hear from abused women and front-line staff. And their thinking was confirmed and extended by focus groups with these two groups and later reflections by other domestic violence workers on the utility of safety conferencing in reaching out to diverse cultural groups. In both focus groups, members gently challenged the thinking of other participants and in this way compelled each other to think through thorny issues. The survivor and staff groups had many parallels in areas discussed but diverged in their language and the foundation from which they conceptualized safety conferencing. The survivors spoke from personal pain, imagined

688

VIOLENCE AGAINST WOMEN / May 2005

conferencing within their own support network, reached out to each other as sisters, and used the language of family. The staff spoke from the basis of understanding the dynamics of domestic violence, examined safety conferencing theoretically and pragmatically in the context of residents progressing through stages at the shelter, saw themselves as a team working closely in their current shelter and on safety conferencing, and applied the language of choice and empowerment. These divergences reflected their different circumstances as well as their priorities: family connections versus womens choices. More important, the convergences among the focus groups, advisory group, and other domestic violence program pointed to the potential of safety conferencing to create a coordinated and inclusive response. Here victims and survivors and their informal networks are at the center of planning, and formal servicesshelters, batterer intervention groups, law enforcement, and others support their efforts while continuing to safeguard women and children. It is one strategy for resolving the tensions between women who are battered and their advocates as to whether connection or choice is the path to safety. In a deconstructive twist, the battered womens movement sought to reverse the violent hierarchy (Derrida, 1972/1981, p. 41) of family connections over womens choices. This reversal, as articulated by the survivor of child abuse and domestic violence at the outset of this article, however, does not yield a sense of safety and strength. The safety conference, and more broadly a coordinated and inclusive response, is a way to displace assumptions. And it is a way to build the individual and collective strength to reshape connections, make sound choices, and promote the safety of women and children from diverse cultures. REFERENCES
Ahrens, L. (1980). Battered womens refuges: Feminist cooperatives v. social service institutions. Radical America, 14, 41-47. Allen, P. G. (1986). The sacred hoop: Recovering the feminine in American Indian traditions. Boston: Beacon. Bancroft, L., & Silverman, J. G. (2002). The batterer as parent: Addressing the impact of domestic violence on family dynamics. Thousand Oaks, CA: Sage. Burford, G., & Hudson, J. (Eds.). (2000). Family group conferences: New directions in communitycentered child and family practice. Hawthorne, NY: Aldine de Gruyter.

Pennell, Francis / SAFETY CONFERENCING

689

Burford, G., & Pennell, J. (1998). Family group decision making: After the conferenceProgress in resolving violence and promoting well-being: Outcome report (Vols. 1-2). St. Johns, Canada: Memorial University of Newfoundland, School of Social Work. Burford, G., Pennell, J., & MacLeod, S. (1995). Family group decision making: Manual for coordinators and communities. Memorial University of Newfoundland, School of Social Work, St. Johns, Canada: Family Group Decision Making Project. Available at social.chass.ncsu.edu/jpennell/fgdm/Manual. Bushie, B. (1997). A personal journey. In The four circles of Hollow Water. Hull, Canada: Aboriginal Peoples Collection, Aboriginal Corrections Policy Unit, Supply and Services Canada. Callahan, M. (1993). Feminist approaches: Women recreate child welfare. In B. Wharf (Ed.), Rethinking child welfare in Canada (pp. 172-209). Toronto, Canada: McClelland & Stewart. Campbell, J., Rose, L., Kub, J., & Nedd, D. (1998). Voices of strength and resistance: A contextual and longitudinal analysis of womens responses to battering. Journal of Interpersonal Violence, 13, 743-762. Carrillo, R., & Carter, J. [with Bayless, L. & Bird, C.]. (2001). Guidelines for conducting family team conferences when there is a history of domestic violence. San Francisco: Family Violence Prevention Fund. Combahee River Collective. (2001). A Black feminist statement. In B. Ryan (Ed.), Identity politics in the womens movement (pp. 59-66). New York: New York University Press. (Original work published 1979) Crampton, D. S. (2001). Making sense of foster care: An evaluation of family group decision making in Kent County, Michigan. Unpublished doctoral dissertation, University of Michigan, Ann Arbor. Derrida, J. (1981). Positions (A. Base, Trans.). Chicago: University of Chicago Press. (Original work published 1972) Edleson, J. L. (1999). The overlap between child maltreatment and woman battering. Violence Against Women, 5, 134-154. Edleson, J. L. (2004). Should childhood exposure to adult domestic violence be defined as child maltreatment under the law? In P. G. Jaffe, L. L. Baker, & A. Cunningham (Eds.), Ending domestic violence in the lives of children and parents: Promising practices for safety, healing, and prevention (pp. 8-29). New York: Guilford. Evans, S. (1979). Personal politics: The roots of womens liberation in the civil rights movement and the new Left. New York: Vintage. Francis, S. (2002). Results of focus groups with domestic-violence advocates. Unpublished paper, North Carolina Family Group Conferencing Project, North Carolina State University, Raleigh. Gondolf, E. W. (2002). Batterer intervention systems: Issues, implications and outcomes of a multi-site evaluation. Thousand Oaks, CA: Sage. Goodkind, J. R., Gillum, T. L., Bybee, D. I., & Sullivan, C. M. (2003). The impact of family and friends reactions on the well-being of women with abusive partners. Violence Against Women, 9, 347-373. Gunderson, K., Cahn, K., & Wirth, J. (2003). The Washington State long-term outcome study. Protecting Children, 18, 42-47. Hassall, I. (1996). Origin and development of family group conferences. In J. Hudson, A. Morris, G. Maxwell, & B. Galaway (Eds.), Family group conferences: Perspectives on policy and practice (pp. 17-36). Monsey, NY: Willow Tree Press. Helms, J. E. (1994). The conceptualization of racial identity and other racial constructs. In E. J. Trickett, R. J. Watts, & D. Birman (Eds.), Human diversity: Perspectives on people in context (pp. 285-311). San Francisco: Jossey-Bass. hooks, b. (1981). Aint I a woman: Black women and feminism. Boston: South End.

690

VIOLENCE AGAINST WOMEN / May 2005

Lupton, C., & Nixon, P. (1999). Empowering practice? A critical appraisal of the family group conference approach. Bristol, UK: Policy Press. Marsh, P., & Crow, G. (1998). Family group conferences in child welfare. Oxford, UK: Basil Blackwell. Martin, M. E. (1997). Policy promise: Community policing and domestic violence victims satisfaction. Policing: An International Journal of Police Strategies and Management, 20, 519-531. McGillivray, A., & Comaskey, B. (1999). Black eyes all of the time: Intimate violence, aboriginal women, and the justice system. Toronto, Canada: University of Toronto Press. Mederos, F. (1999). Batterer intervention programs: The past and future prospects. In M. F. Shepard & E. L. Pence (Eds.), Coordinating community responses to domestic violence: Lessons from Duluth and beyond (pp. 127-150). Thousand Oaks, CA: Sage. Merkel-Holguin, L., Nixon, P., & Burford, G. (2003). Promising results, potential new directions: International FGDM research and evaluation in child welfare. Protecting Children, 18(Special Issue, 1/2), 2-11. New Zealand Department of Social Welfare. (1999). Children, Young Persons and Their Families Act 1989 (Amended 1994): Information pack for NZCYPS staff. Wellington, New Zealand: Author. North Carolina Family Group Conferencing Project. (2002). Family group conferencing in child welfare: Practice guidance for planning, implementing, training, and evaluation. Raleigh: North Carolina State University, Social Work Program. Available at social.chass.ncsu.edu/jpennell/ncfgcp/pracguid Paterson, K., & Harvey, M. (1991). An evaluation of the organisation and operation of care and protection family group conferences. Wellington, New Zealand: Department of Social Welfare. Pence, E. L., & Shepard, M. L. (1999). An introduction: Developing a coordinated community response. In M. F. Shepard & E. L. Pence (Eds.), Coordinating community responses to domestic violence: Lessons from Duluth and beyond (pp. 3-23). Thousand Oaks, CA: Sage. Pennell, J. (1987). Ideology at a Canadian shelter for battered women: A reconstruction. Womens Studies International Forum, 10, 113-123. Pennell, J., & Anderson, G. (in press). Widening the circle: The practice and evaluation of family group conferencing with children, young persons, and their families. Washington, DC: NASW Press. Pennell, J., & Burford, G. (1994). Widening the circle: The family group decision making project. Journal of Child and Youth Care, 9(1), 1-12. Pennell, J., & Burford, G. (1995). Family group decision making: New roles for old partners in resolving family violence: Implementation report (Vol. 1-2). St. Johns, Canada: Memorial University of Newfoundland, School of Social Work. Pennell, J., & Burford, G. (2000a). Family group decision making: Protecting children and women. Child Welfare, 79, 131-158. Pennell, J., & Burford, G. (2000b). Family group decision making and family violence. In G. Burford & J. Hudson (Eds.), Family group conferences: New directions in communitycentered child and family practice (pp. 171-185). Hawthorne, NY: Aldine de Gruyter. Pennell, J., & Burford, G. (2002). Feminist praxis: Making family group conferencing work. In H. Strang & J. Braithwaite (Eds.), Restorative justice and family violence: New ideas and learning from the past (pp. 108-127). Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press. Pleck, E. (1987). Domestic tyranny: The making of social policy against family violence from colonial times to the present. New York: Oxford University Press. Ptacek, J. (1999). Battered women in the courtroom: The power of judicial responses. Boston: Northeastern University Press.

Pennell, Francis / SAFETY CONFERENCING

691

Rangihau, J. (1986). Pau-te-Ata-tu (Daybreak): Report of the Ministerial Advisory Committee on a Maori perspective for the Department of Social Welfare. Wellington, New Zealand: Department of Social Welfare, Government Printing Office. Rothman, S. M. (1978). Womans proper place; A history of changing ideals and practices, 1970 to the present. New York: Basic Books. Ryan, B. (Ed.). (2001). Identity politics in the womens movement.New York: New York University Press. Schechter, S. (1982). Women and male violence: The visions and struggles of the battered womens movement. Boston: South End Press. Schechter, S. (1999, January). New challenges for the battered womens movement: Building collaborations and improving public policy for poor women. Violence against Women On-line Resources. Available: www.vaw.umn.edu Social Services and Research Information Unit. (2003, June). The Dove Project: The Basingstoke domestic violence family group conference project. Portsmouth, UK: University of Portsmouth. Strang, H., & Braithwaite, J. (Eds.). (2002). Restorative justice and family violence. New York: Cambridge University Press. Sullivan, G. (1982). Cooptation of alternative services: The battered womens movement as a case study. Catalyst, 4(2), 38-56. Thorne, B. [with Yalom M.] (Ed.). (1982). Rethinking the family: Some feminist questions. New York: Longman. Trotter, C., Sheehan, R., Liddell, M., Strong, D., & Laragy, C. (1999). Evaluation of the statewide implementation of family group conferencing. Victoria, Australia: Department of Human Services. U.S. Department of Health and Human Services, Administration on Children, Youth and Families. (2000). Child maltreatment 2000. Washington, DC: Government Printing Office. Available at www.acf.hhs.gov/programs/cb/publications/cm00 U.S. Department of Justice, Bureau of Justice Statistics. (2002). Prisoners in 2001 (Bulletin NCJ 195189). Washington, DC: Author. Valverde, M. (1991). The age of light, soap, and water: Moral reform in English Canada 1885-1925. Toronto, Canada: McClelland & Stewart. Vickers, J. (1991). Bending the iron law of oligarchy: Debates on the feminization of organization and political process in the English Canadian womens movement, 1970-1988. In J. D. Wine & J. L. Ristock (Eds.), Women and social change: Feminist activism in Canada (pp. 75-94). Toronto, Canada: James Lorimer. Waites, C., Macgowan, M., Pennell, J., Carlton-LaNey, I., & Weil, M. (2004). Increasing the cultural responsiveness of family group conferencing: Advancing child welfare practice. Social Work, 49(2), 291-300. Walter R. McDonald & Associates, Inc. (2000). The Santa Clara County family conference model outcome report. Sacramento, CA: Author.

Joan Pennell, Ph.D., is a professor and head, Department of Social Work, North Carolina State University. She is the principal investigator of the North Carolina Family-Centered Meetings Project and was the principal investigator of the North Carolina Family Group Conferencing Project. Before her return to the United States, she served as a principal investigator for a Newfoundland and Labrador (Canada) demonstration of family group decision making in situations of

692

VIOLENCE AGAINST WOMEN / May 2005

child maltreatment and domestic violence and helped to found the first shelter for women who are abused and their children in Newfoundland. She cofacilitated support groups for women of European and Aboriginal descent who are abused. Stephanie Francis, MSRA, MSW, is director of Interacts Residential Counseling Program (shelter for women who are abused and their children) and a doctoral student in the School of Social Work at the University of North CarolinaChapel Hill. Her research interests include the overlap of domestic violence and child maltreatment within families and the development of child welfare interventions that focus on the safety of all family members. She participated in the North Carolina Family Group Conferencing Project as a research assistant, looking specifically at the issue of conducting conferences with families experiencing child maltreatment and domestic violence.