Case Studies: Social Services

An inter-agency response to family violence

• Case Studies: Social Services
• Making student loans work
• Reintegration of troubled youth
• An inter-agency response to family violence
• Systemic Approaches to Child Safety
• A strategy for developing strong families

Protecting children from family violence

Steeply rising demand from referrals by Police was swamping Child, Youth and Family's capacity to respond while raising deeper issues over the nature of the response that was needed.

ISSUE
Their challenge was to develop a systematic approach, usable at each operational location, that would both manage the demand on their limited specialist resources while maximising the impact that those resources could have as part of an interagency response to a complex social issue.

Synergia worked with Child, Youth and Family, Police and their NGO partner, the National Collective of Independent Woman’s Refuges, to develop a collaborative response system that combined each agencies unique perspectives, capabilities and resources.

SOLUTION
This work proceeded under demanding deadlines and involved working simultaneously at a number of levels:

• Analysing the components of existing partial solutions developed by different areas to develop a synthesis based on what was already in place and working; promoting a process of horizontal learning across the agencies involved.

• Taking a systems perspective to articulate the underlying logic of effective responses to reports of family violence, using this to identify potential leverage points of influence that would have the mix and magnitude of effect desired.

• Interrogating the literature of family violence to explore the evidence base for interventions that would make a difference.

• Using system and process design methods to weave together practical experience, system logic and the insights from the literature into a coherent design for an interagency response.

• Supporting each partner agency to work through the implications of their role and function within this interagency response for their own policies, systems and professional practice; making it mainstream and core to their respective organisations rather an isolated initiative.

• Supporting a process of national implementation based on local level interagency partnerships.

• Design of implementation frameworks, monitoring and audit tools to develop consistency of approach within the variability of each local setting and context.

OUTCOME
One of the major secondary benefits of the first phase of the process, described above, has been the sense of partnership developed between the three national agencies as they have collaboratively worked to design the ‘system as a whole’. By seeking to represent their interest in common outcomes Synergia has been able to facilitate the development of this partnership, with spin-offs being seen to emerge on a broad front as the partners prove that they can tackle the next wave of difficult issues to be resolved.

Implementation started in late 2006 with national roll out across all three agencies and all their respective locations. To date engagement has been high with most locations making rapid progress to implement a common system capable of improving the response to offenders, victims and children, where violence is reported to the Police.