Domestic abuse considerations in safety planning

Effective safety planning will depend on practitioner-applied awareness of:

• the child’s trauma from abuse, and from seeing and hearing abuse
• physical, emotional, educational, developmental, social, behavioural impact on child
• the non-abusing parent’s need for a safe space to talk and a safe way of receiving
• information (away from perpetrator)
• the perpetrator’s pattern of coercive control
• multiple impact on income, housing, relationships, health
• how support for non-abusing parents will also support children
• when a non-abusing parent’s ability to parent has been compromised
• protective factors in the child’s world relevant to safety plans
• the children’s needs for advocates that they trust
• potentially heightened risk following separation
• multi-agency approaches that keep victim’s and children’s needs at the centre

Police must always be notified of a threat to life or injury of a person. When a child is affected or is likely to be affected by such a risk, police will immediately consider the need for an IRD; and an IRD would normally be expected unless there is clear and sufficient evidence to discount the risk of significant harm deriving from such a threat.

Additional guidance on domestic abuse is provided in Part 4 of the National Child Protection Guidance.