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

Abstract

ABSTRACTAustralia 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.IMPLICATIONSComprehensive 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.