Connections to domestic violence

Even though adolescent – to – parent violence happens outside of domestic violence, most of the cases you will work with involve some form of domestic violence between mum and her partner. The reason for this is that generally speaking, young people/families referred for adolescent violence generally have a number of support needs.

How do we screen for domestic violence if mum does not specifically identify any incidents?

Most of you will have some domestic violence screening/safety assessment at your workplace. However, understanding the connections and safety risks posed by domestic violence are so important that it is worth doing a practice intake with a mother.

Before we begin the practice intake, we need to share a definition of domestic violence to ensure we are all looking for the same characteristics.

Coercive Control

Much like adolescent–to–parent violence, domestic violence is a pattern of behaviour used to control a person in the relationship. This includes verbal, physical, emotional, financial, psychological and sexual abuse, as well as abuse of children (Stark, 2007).

Now, we all have assessments that may cover domestic violence and may have read about coercive control, but hearing from survivors is the best tool. We learned about this above but it’s good to get different voices, especially females and mothers.