Practitioner Perspectives on Collaboration across Domestic Violence, Child Protection, and Family Law: Who's Minding the Gap?

ABSTRACT

Australia has two legal systems that address safety where children have been exposed to domestic violence: the state- and territory-based statutory child protection systems and the federal family law system. Numerous reports and recommendations have attempted to address the jurisdictional gap between the state and territory systems of public law and the federal system of private law that result in different approaches, which have implications for survivors of domestic violence attempting to establish safe, post-separation parenting arrangements. This article describes the findings of 5 focus groups with 54 domestic violence, child protection, and family law practitioners in both front-line and managerial positions. These focus groups explored participants’ perspectives on the opportunities for, and barriers to, collaboration for children’s safety across the three sectors in response to calls for improving service integration. While common ground from which to build collaboration was identified, there were different views about the potential role of child protection services in cases involving the family law system. This indicates the need to build common understandings of the nature and risks to children of post-separation domestic violence.

IMPLICATIONS

• Comprehensive responses to children exposed to domestic violence require the collaboration of the child protection, family law, and domestic violence services.

• Efforts to enhance service integration need to address both cross-jurisdictional legal barriers and to build common understandings of post-separation domestic violence.

澳大利亚有两套法律体系处理遭遇家暴儿童的安全问题，一个是州及领地法律的儿童保护体系，一是联邦家庭法律体系。有不少报道和建议试图解决州/领地的公法系统与联邦私法系统之间的司法空隙。两个系统取径不同，会影响到家暴受害者为得到安全的、隔离后抚养的安排所做的努力。本文描述了5个焦点小组，涉及了54例家庭暴力、儿童保护以及或一线或管理位置上的家庭法律实践者。关于三个领域整合服务、联手致力于儿童安全都有哪些机会、哪些困难，焦点小组调查了参与者对此的看法。虽然找到了建立协作的共同基础，但对于涉及家庭法律体系的儿保服务机构的潜在作用则众口纷纭。这就需要就隔离后儿童遭遇家庭暴力的的性质和风险取得共识。

KEYWORDS:

• Domestic Violence
• Family Law
• Child Protection
• Intimate Partner Violence

Acknowledgements

The authors acknowledge the financial and other support it has received from Australia's National Research Organisation for Women's Safety (ANROWS) towards this research and, through it, the Australian Government and Australian state and territory governments. The findings and views reported in this paper are those of the authors and cannot be attributed to ANROWS, the Australian Government, or any state or territory. The authors also gratefully acknowledge the input from the Project’s Advisory Group and participants in each state’s case study research.

Disclosure Statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the authors.

Notes

1 This conceptualization of the jurisdictional issues under discussion was initially proposed in 2008 by Daryl Higgins and Rae Kaspiew.