Partnering for Safety

What is the Partnering for Safety Approach?

The Partnering for Safety approach is a collaborative, safety-focused and family-centred approach to child protection assessment and planning that is based on the premise that good outcomes for children and families require genuine and meaningful partnering. The Partnering for Safety approach (PFS) draws on evidence-based and innovative methodologies and tools from around the world, including Solution-Focused Brief Therapy, Narrative Therapy, Strengths-Based practice, Family-Centred practice, the Signs of Safety Approach, the Resolutions Approach, the “Three Houses” Information Gathering Tool, the Safe and Together Model, Response-Based Practice, Motivational Interviewing, Family Group Decision-Making, Appreciative Inquiry and the latest thinking from Implementation Science. The name "Partnering for Safety" was coined by Sonja Parker and Philip Decter to describe this integrated approach.

The Partnering for Safety approach also integrates the use of Structured Decision Making® (SDM) tools, which have been developed by Evident Change (previously the Children's Research Center). Structured Decision Making® tools bring the best of child protection research and aggregate data into tools that can be used by caseworkers to ‘check’ their thinking and intuition at key decision-making points to ensure these immensely important decisions are consistent and congruent with research, best practice and organisational policy.

The “Partnering for Safety” approach is designed to help all the key stakeholders involved with a child - the parents, the extended family, the child protection worker, supervisors and managers, lawyers, judges and other court officials, even the child him/herself – to keep a clear focus on assessing and enhancing child safety at all points in the child protection process. It is organised around a collaborative assessment and planning framework that is developed collaboratively with children, families and their networks. This collaborative assessment process provides the focus for the family, professionals and safety and support network to then work together to develop and implement detailed safety plans that describe the day-to-day changes that families and their networks will put in place to ensure the enduring safety and wellbeing of the children.

The Partnering for Safety approach incorporates an approach to ongoing learning and development that focuses on the latest learning from implementation science, and that emphasizes the importance of action learning, reflective practice, appreciative inquiry and quality supervision to support skill development and to elicit and deepen good practice. More detailed information about the PFS approach is included under the 'About' tab.

Implementation

The Partnering for Safety approach is being implemented in a number of countries and jurisdictions, including Queensland, New South Wales, South Australia, New Zealand, Singapore, Taiwan, Japan, USA, Romania, Denmark, Sweden and Belgium. We provide whole system implementation support, as well as consultation and training.