Transcript for
Child-aware practice in families where there is violence

Narrator [00:00:02] Welcome to the Emerging Minds podcast.

Sarah Wendt [00:00:08] You’re with Sarah Wendt, and today I’m interviewing Dr Carmela Bastian about child-focussed practice in situations where there is family and domestic violence. Carmela is currently a postdoctoral research fellow and lecturer at Flinders University. She has over 20 years’ experience in the field of Child Protection and Human Services as a social work practitioner and academic. Carmela is a member of a Social Work Innovation Research Living Space or SWIRLS, where she is involved in research projects that use co-design to build collaborations at the intersection of domestic and family violence and child protection. Her practice experience, engagement with the Child Protection and Domestic Violence service sector, and knowledge emerging from research projects, is utilised to inform contemporary practise approaches in the complexities in working with children and families. In today’s episode, we talk about what child-centred practice means in the context of domestic and family violence, including what works as well as the barriers for being child-centred. Carmela draws on examples of her practice to share insights into being child-centred when faced with complexities of domestic and family violence.

Sarah Wendt [00:01:16] So, Carmela, we’re talking today about domestic and family violence. And of course, this is a really complex issue that’s getting a lot of attention at the moment. However, we’re also needing to give attention to children and how children experience domestic and family violence. And so, we’re really interested in hearing from you. You know, as a practitioner, how have you maintained a focus on children when faced with the complexities of domestic and family violence?

Carmela Bastian [00:01:44] Yes, it is a really complex issue, particularly because of the dynamics of power and coercion that exist in that family. So, there are multiple areas that we need to consider. So, we need to consider the safety of children and for children and their wellbeing. We need to consider the mother situation and also the relationship of the mother and child, and we also need to assess the tactics of the perpetrator and hold him accountable, but also visible in the process. So, what informs child-centred practice is that we need to have an understanding of children’s rights. We need to understand their basic provisions, their right to be safe and protected, and also their right to be heard and visible in their families and communities. And also, we need to understand child development because we know that children need many opportunities to reach their full potential. And the other important element is that children’s rights and development can’t occur unless it’s in the context of relationships.

[00:02:49] So relationships are absolutely critical to children’s ability to thrive and flourish. So being child-centred is about understanding who the child is, understanding their experiences and their development and wellbeing, but understanding those within the context of the family and environmental factors. And also, part of that is not only understanding those areas, but it’s about observations as well. So, observing them as individuals, but also observing their interactions with their parents or people around them.

[00:03:26] So if I’m if I’m working with parents where many of us are adults who have children, we still need to even though the children aren’t in the room, we still need to make sure they’re present in the conversation. So, we might be talking about a couple or we might be talking with a mother and a father separately. So, what we need to do in those conversations is keep bringing them back to how that’s impacting on the child. For example, if there’s an argument or there’s violence occurring, where is the child? How are they feeling and what do you think the impact is? So, we need to keep asking questions so it brings, it ensures that the child is central in the conversation and it also challenges them to think about what is happening for the child during those times. So in circumstances when you might interview a parent or parents and the children are in the room, one of the things that I made a point of in my practice is that I always introduce myself to the child, no matter how old they are or what they’re doing, I tell them my name, I tell them who I am and where I’m from, and I always ask their name and ask them about something they might be doing or, you know, make a comment. So, it’s about respecting them as individuals and recognising that they’re present in the room as well. And I always, one of the things that I always did as a practitioner is, I always had some paper and pencils in my bag. So, if there was a young child, I would sit with that child during an interview and just ask them to draw a picture while we’re having conversations, obviously. It’s a non-threatening way of engaging with the child, it’s a role modelling, but also recognising their presence. So, the other important element is that interviewing children on their own. [Yes]. So, it’s an important part of that practise, particularly in my role as a child protection practitioner, I had to do, you know, that was really critical. So, in interviewing children, we always firstly get the permission of the parent where that’s possible, sometimes it wasn’t. But also, when wanting to speak to a child, we would always ask their permission because they might you know, they might not want to talk to you. I mean, we’re asking children to talk about things that are really difficult and why should we expect them just to talk about difficult things, because it’s difficult for parents or adults as well.

Sarah Wendt [00:05:59] I think that’s a really good point as well, Carmela, because domestic and family violence, there is power displayed just in that phenomenon in and of itself. But there is also power displayed with adults’ parents between the children, and then we as workers and adults that are entering that child’s life and wanting to talk about this. So there are multiple layers of power sitting in and around that child. [Yeah]. So I think your point about practise that centres the child thinks about the rights of the child and thinks about that child as an individual. The sheer basic question of asking for their consent that, “would it be okay if I talk to you?” Don’t go some way maybe to addressing some of that power sitting in the room.

Carmela Bastian [00:06:45] Yeah and recognising that there are other ways of interacting with them. [Yes]. And children know that if they speak up, that there will be consequences. Consequences for them [Yes] possibly, but also for their mother, who in a lot of situations, especially older children, that they do feel a sense of responsibility to protect them as well. So sometimes we ask a lot of children, so we need to be really mindful.

Sarah Wendt [00:07:12] So that’s a that’s actually a really good point. So, Carmela, there, it is one thing to ask for permission to speak to children, but how have you created environments where they can safely do that with you knowing that sometimes there could be consequences and children will know the consequences if they start to talk about the violence and abuse for mum or for themselves. So, do you have thoughts about how in being child-centred when exploring the complexities of domestic and family violence, how do we create that safe space for children to be able to do that?

Carmela Bastian [00:07:43] So one of the things that I always did is I told that, you know, explained to them what my role was, that there was an absolute confidentiality. So, we would have a conversation, and, you know, once we develop a relationship and they would speak to me. What I always ask them at the end is that, well, I thank them for sharing the information, but I also ask them, what is it they want me to tell their parents about the conversation”. So, I would never say to a parent, you know, your son said this or your son said that, but I would seek the permission from the child about what is safe for me to tell your parents, because some information would place them at risk if the parents knew what, what was being disclosed. So it’s about them trusting me with that information and making sure that I’m not putting them in a precarious situation so that they can’t go home and that they don’t feel safe or they’re very scared to have to be with their parents again because what they’ve said to me, and also in understanding how they’re feeling or their experiences in living in that context, it’s about what’s happening for them. So really finding out when violence actually occurs, where they are and what they’re feeling and really trying to get a real, a real sense of what’s occurring for them at that particular time from their perspective. Because I think if we use a rights-based approach, we’re asking them to participate in this narrative. [Yes]. We’re asking them to also give their opinions and views about what needs to happen so that, you know, mum’s safe, they’re safe and that dad’s violence can stop. So, they have quite clear views and I think children sometimes are more insightful than adults because they don’t have the life experience that adults have. So their views are much more not simplistic, but they’re much more foundational, I think.

Sarah Wendt [00:09:55] Yeah that’s a good word. Foundational.

[00:09:57] And I think, like you said, the rights-based kind of lens then values what children have to say and so valuing their interpretation, valuing their experience, valuing their story around what’s happening and giving that presence in the complexities of domestic and family violence is a, is a good example of how a rights-based approach can be put into practice.

[00:10:23] So, Carmela, we’ve been talking, you’ve given us some wonderful practice examples of being child-centred and the work that you’ve done directly with children in the context of domestic and family violence. But also, before you mentioned that you can be child-centred even when you’re engaging with and having conversations with parents. And so from your point of view, being a practitioner, working at the interface of child protection and complexities of domestic and family violence, what do you think you need to know to have child-centred conversations with parents when we’re dealing with domestic and family violence?

Carmela Bastian [00:10:59] Well, I think one of the complexities of domestic and family violence that we need to really acknowledge is that children sustain injuries that aren’t visible. I think in many other, some situations when children are injured physically or they experienced sexual abuse, their injuries that are visible, and I think if I’m going to talk like a child protection practitioner there forensically, you can collect evidence. So, what, what is difficult about domestic and family violence is the injuries are sustained at a social, emotional and cognitive developmental level, which it’s not obvious to some people that that’s what’s occurring for them. So, we need to have a really good understanding of child development and a really good understanding of all the elements of child development around social development, emotional development, cognitive development and also physical development. So that’s really core. And I think that’s one area, and we’ll talk a little bit more about the challenges later, but it’s one area that I think social workers haven’t been schooled in, if you like, or integrated into our training. And it has come through in some reviews that have been done internationally. So, with this knowledge, it’s important to, when talking to parents, is using that knowledge then to ask those questions. But of course, every child’s development or the impact for children is going to be quite different depending on their age, their vulnerability and also the severity of the violence and the pattern of violence. So, they’re all the things that we need to consider. So, one of the most important issues I think, that need to be assessed is the quality of the parent child relationship, in the first instance. So, we know that development occurs within the context of relationships. So, if a child has a very good relationship with a parent, you usually find particularly if there’s been quite strong attachment, you’ll find that developmentally, they’re more resilient in some ways. But with violence, we know that the tactics used by perpetrators could undermine that relationship. But in assessing that relationship, asking the questions of the mother about the impact or the development of the child, you can get a sense of her connectedness to that child and also in the connectedness, women who are most connected to their children, you will see that they are put in protective strategies to minimise as much as possible the violence or the experience of violence. But also, you need to assess the quality of parenting between the father and the child as well, because we need to think, you know, they’re both parents. So, it’s not just about focussing on the mother, but it’s also focussing on the father. In many situations, you find that there’s a minimisation of impact and not recognising the violence and the impact on the children. Many children are worried about their mothers. I think that’s something that some, they take that on, and it is an unreasonable burden for children to have. And children in many situations don’t have the social or the cognitive abilities to deal with that burden. So, what happens is that children will exhibit their distress in an overt way. So, they might be labelled as behaviourally difficult, they might be labelled as naughty, or they could be aggressive to other children. Of the other extreme is they could be socially, so socially isolated and withdrawn. And I think when children behave in that way, what we need to be doing is we need to be asking, we need to be very curious about that behaviour and we need to be asking questions about how do parents understand that behaviour and what they think might be contributing, and how might it change for the child. So, it’s really taking the whole picture, but really focussing on what’s happening for that child and what and how they’re exhibiting that injury, if you like. So, it is an injury, but it’s an emotional injury, yes.

Sarah Wendt [00:15:30] So, Carmela, you also mentioned before and I would like to ask you some more questions around this, is that having child-centred conversations with parents, you mentioned the importance of having a conversation with the mother, but also the father. [Yes]. And we are now learning in the sector that when you’re navigating child safety in the complexities of domestic and family violence, trying to have a conversation with mum about that, practitioners often fear that they might be blaming mum. So how, how do you open up conversations about the child’s safety and engaging her to think about that with you and balancing that fine line between those discourses that often can unintentionally invite us to start saying what her roles and responsibilities are, and we could then slip into what she’s not doing or what she’s doing and that can move us down into blame. [What she needs to do]. Yeah. So what is that tension like, Carmela? Have you experienced that, and how can we balance those tensions of safety but not blaming mum?

Carmela Bastian [00:16:34] I think they’re really important conversations, and I think we need to always remember that child safety is paramount. But in domestic and family violence, it’s very difficult to separate the safety of the child and the mother. [Okay]. So, one of the things that’s really important is to align yourself with the mother, to really build a relationship with her and the child but understand what it’s like for her. Assess the violence that she’s experiencing, the tactics and strategies used by the perpetrator, but also really understand the experiences and how that’s impacting on her as a parent. So, it’s really linking those factors to parenting capacity, but not in a blaming way. It’s more in a curious way, you’re trying to understand what’s happening in that family and what’s happening for that child and also for her. And the other part of that is understanding, what is she doing to, what or what does she put in place to protect the child? Because I think when we delve deeply, is mothers will have already quite clear strategies to protect children. So, you know, I know that some I’ve heard they know when the keys put in the door what the father is going to be like, what mood he’s going to be in. And so when she picks up on that mood, she will send the children to bed very early, for example, so that in her way, the children are still home. But that’s a way that she finds that she can protect children or her children. So, it’s understanding what’s already occurring for her, that she’s protecting her children and building on that, and also acknowledging how hard it is because parenting, when she herself is not safe, is an extraordinary situation to be in. So, we need to really align ourselves and also help her more and build the capacity that’s already there and build the resilience. She’s obviously – for someone to be in that situation and have put profound strategies in place is recognising there’s quite an element of strength and resilience there.

Sarah Wendt [00:18:57] I think that’s also a really important point that you picked up on Carmela about in balancing that fine line between enquiries of safety and potential blame, the sheer practice point of acknowledging the difficulties of parenting in a domestic and family violence context and what that does to a child, what that does to a woman and what that does to the relationships and making that visible, the difficulties and the complexities of it, that climate of fear might offer that kind of level of engagement with a mum that’s not necessarily blaming. So, you’re, as a practitioner, acknowledging her survival, acknowledging what she’s, how she’s, you know, forming relationships with her children in that context. And just by naming the difficulties of that and her resilience in surviving, it is maybe one way to move away from blame to now let’s try and address this together and in partnership for her, but also for the, for the child.

Carmela Bastian [00:19:52] And it’s about building that safety with her together. As we, we know that many women don’t wish to leave the relationship. And if they choose to continue, then we need to increase the safety and really put quite secure plan so that, you know, if there are situations when they may decide to leave eventually, but that needs to be their decision. Obviously, the safety of the children is an important consideration, but it’s about really building that safe capacity that there is there. But never asking the woman to control what’s happening for the violent behaviour of her partner because she can’t control by virtue of the dynamics that’s occurring, we can never put demand in a safety plan. We cannot say to her, you need to control his entrance into the houses or stopping from having contact with the children because she doesn’t have that power in that relationship. So even in safety planning, we need to engage the perpetrator in providing safety for the children in the first instance. And then, you know, when trust is built, then you can start having conversations about his behaviour towards the mother as well.

Sarah Wendt [00:21:13] So I want to turn to that, Carmela, because we’ve been talking a lot about child-centred practice in terms of how we engage mum. Perhaps this for workers is maybe this is the more difficult and that’s how do you have child-centred conversations with dad or the perpetrator?

Carmela Bastian [00:21:34] In working with domestic and family violence, we need to engage the mother and the father and the child. The whole family needs to be, the intervention needs to be directed at the whole family, not at one member, and not held holding the woman accountable. Talking to men about violence is really challenging, and there have been instances where I myself have felt quite threatened in terms of how a person, how a man responded to me by asking questions. But I think it’s about really challenging him in a gentle way. Obviously, once you get to know him, you need to firstly focus on him as a parent, cause if you’re there as a child protection worker, then you need to be focussing on his impact of violence and how that’s affecting children and bringing that presence of the child into the conversation all the time. For example, when he might use the word arguing, which is always minimising the situation. But okay, so when an argument is occurring, where is your son or daughter? How do you think the arguing is impacting on them? If there are issues at school, bring those issues in. And why, why is your child exhibiting angry behaviour at school? How do you make sense of that? So again, it’s always bringing the behaviour and linking it to what’s observable, what’s happening for that child and challenging them a little bit, and what needs to happen if your son is aggressive to children at school, what do you think needs to happen to address that aggressiveness and then bringing it back to his behaviour. So they’re always critical conversations to have, but they need to be had. And I think we really need to develop a workforce that has the confidence and capability to do that.

Sarah Wendt [00:23:33] So, Carmela, also you talked about, you know, bringing, of course, children’s experiences and behaviour into the conversation to engage him. Before you also mentioned safety planning. So for mums, a safety plan could look quite different. Like you said, it’s not about, you know, telling her what she needs to control or manage, it’s about the protection of her and her children. Do you have any thoughts about how you might engage a father in having conversations around safety and bringing that back to being child-centred?

Carmela Bastian [00:24:06] So obviously, we’re talking about families that are living together. Because I think they’re the situations that people worry most about, particularly if there’s high-risk situations. So what I’ve done in the past is actually sat them both down together. And the focus of the discussion is about the safety of the child, so really not taking a blaming stance, but really saying I’m here to make sure that your child is safe and laying out why we don’t think you know what’s going on, too, that’s impacting on that child’s lack of safety. And then what do you need to do or what do we need to do as a team to then make sure that your son or daughter is safe? So then that some that becomes a joint agreement with the father. But just looking back, there’s a particular family that really sticks in my mind, is that they worked really hard, they were really committed to stay together. The young girl, she was about 12 at the time, but we sat, as I sat with the parents and we really worked together as a team, but the focus of the discussion was about her safety. So we made an agreement about, you know, his behaviour, what you know, what he needed to do. And that was about not only understanding the dynamics or the times that were critical in that family, but he needed to engage with other services as well. So I think one of the things because of the complexity and we talked earlier about domestic and family violence requires a whole family approach. It also requires a multi-agency approach because it is complex, and it requires someone specialised to be working with father. We need to maintain our alliance with the mother and really support her resilience and strengths and continued ability and strategies to protect her daughter in this situation. But we also need to maintain a very close connection with the child, and I remember with this young woman, I met her quite regularly and I always met her when dad was out of the house. So, when he was at work. So, she didn’t feel threatened in that way. And for the very first few sessions, we sat for an hour each session and she just talked about what I thought were very superficial things. We talked about makeup and dresses and her favourite movie stars, and it was all very nothing to do with family. So, you know, I persisted, it was my role, and so that went on for about three sessions. And she made a really huge point at the end of saying, and I don’t want you to tell mum anything that I’ve told you today. And I thought, well, that was really odd because she didn’t tell me anything. We just talked about girly things, if you like. So that was fine. And then the fourth session, she said, okay, I know I can trust you now, and then went on to disclose quite significant abuse that was going on at home, the violence. So for me, she was really testing me. She wanted to know whether she could trust me. And even though we talked about seemingly superficial things, she wanted to know whether I was going back to her mum and telling her everything that we talked about. So that notion about being child-centred in that context of violence is really about persistence and really listening and developing that relationship. Because what happened, the sessions after that, we found that the level of violence was much more serious than we had anticipated.

Sarah Wendt [00:28:12] So I think what that example has demonstrated, if we are moving back to picking up some of the practice principles around being child-centred is what you’ve drawn out, Carmela, is the importance of establishing a trusting relationship with the child. So investing that time and energy, so bringing their lived experience into the room and bringing them as a valued individual into the room. That then enabled you to talk to the child about when can I speak to mum building up that trust, therefore, you could create an alliance.

[00:28:44] Carmela, we just wanted to ask from your opinion, reflecting back in as a practitioner in child protection and of course, domestic and family violence, that is an issue that’s present in many families that you may have worked with. What do you think are some of the common barriers to being child-centred? Why might practitioners find it hard when dealing with domestic and family violence to be child-centred?

Carmela Bastian [00:29:08] I think one of the, one of the first barriers is a little bit of a misunderstanding about the concept. So, I think when people think child-centred, we’re thinking just the child. But if we remember, if we use the knowledge around children’s rights and child development, children can’t thrive and flourish without relationships. They don’t just hang without anyone around them. So, when we think about child-centred practice, it’s also about their family, people who are close to them and other important relationships in their lives. And that’s for some children, that might not be their biological parents. It may be their aunties, it may be teachers. And we know in Aboriginal communities, we have a kinship system, so there may be some other family members that might be quite close. So, relationships are absolutely critical to being child-centred, and I keep saying that to my students and I think they get really sick of me by the end of the semester. Another significant barrier is the lack of knowledge. I think we need to as effective social workers into practice in a child-centred way, we do need to have an in-depth understanding of what children’s rights are, what child development is, and I think child development is quite a complex concept, and so we need to understand and we also need to understand that the impact of domestic and family violence has a different impact depending on age and vulnerability of a child. So, child development is really important as well, but lack of knowledge in this area not only impedes the discussions that we have with parents and carers, but it also impedes that type of intervention that we might engage in. So, knowledge is really important. I think another consideration is that people feel more comfortable talking to adults. Let’s face it, you know, we’re adults and we feel much more comfortable. So sometimes engaging with children is not something that comes as second nature to us. So, it’s something that we need to ensure that social workers, whether it’s in the organisation or whether through our training, is that they interact with children, they learn to interact. So, if you’re working with a three-year-old, obviously that’s going to be different to how you would work with a 15-year-old. So, it’s knowing, again, that development knowledge about child development comes into that. And I think the other common barrier is, is time. People say they don’t have time because the workload issues and engaging with children is something that slips off from their workload, you know, their tasks or what they need to do very quickly. And I think that’s something that comes through in many reviews and many enquiries, is that engagement with children is something that needs, we need to be doing more of. But I think we need to be thinking about developing systems or institutions where we start with the child, not with the system. And I think in doing that, it’s a different way of thinking. But I think we need to start with the voices of children. And I think then we can be really, truly child-centred.

Sarah Wendt [00:32:43] So, Carmela, just to, like, finish up, we would like you to reflect on your career and perhaps just give us a summary from being a child protection worker. For you, what has worked in successfully engaging with children?

Carmela Bastian [00:32:59] Okay, that’s a really big question. And I think, unfortunately, I don’t have a cookbook recipe that I can offer because that will be great. I think it’s about people finding their own style. But I also, one of the things that I had, have made a commitment throughout my career is engaging professional development. So, I feel comfortable working with children and understanding who they are in their development. So, I have invested in education for that. But I think in understanding their development and just recognising them as individuals, you just shape your intervention to who they are as, as you would as an adult. So, whether it’s sitting down with a child in play, so if they’re playing with toys, it’s actually, you know, if they’re a young child, well sit on the ground with a young child and really engage with them. For teenagers, I worked in quite a few years with teenagers. I found taking them out for a coffee or for a meal, talking over food for some reason, worked really well with teenagers. So, I think really, it’s getting to know them as people. They are, they are individuals like adults are, they have their own personality. And it’s really investing that time to get to know them.

Sarah Wendt [00:34:31] And I think that’s a really lovely point, to, to kind of summarise in terms of being child-centred. And when you value the experience and get to know a child or young person and what they think and feel, then when you come across issues as complex as domestic and family violence and we know the seriousness of that issue, once we know a child, can we truly learn the impact that that is actually having on the child.

Carmela Bastian [00:34:58] And they will trust you once you develop that relationship, they will trust you and really tell you what’s going on for them.

Sarah Wendt [00:35:06] And then safety and with the child and planning for the child becomes much more possible.

Carmela Bastian [00:35:11] Yes.

Narrator [00:35:15] Visit our website at www.emergingminds.com.au to access a range of resources to assist your practice. Brought to you by the National Workforce Centre for Child Mental Health, led by Emerging Minds. The National Workforce Centre for Child Mental Health is funded by the Australian Government Department of Health under the National Support for Child and Youth Mental Health Program.