Blame doesn’t make families safer—clarity does. We sit down with Scottish survivors and practitioners from Equally Safe Falkirk to explore how a survivor-centered, perpetrator-focused, child safety–driven approach changes practice, confidence, and outcomes. You’ll hear how validation replaces tick-box culture, how naming protective parenting restores mothers’ confidence, and how raising standards for fathers reframes accountability as a set of concrete parenting choices.

Nicolla and Emma walk us through building a service with lived experience at its core—co-designing groups like Serenity and Women Unite, challenging harmful language. While survivors Steph and Lita share raw, powerful stories of experiencing moving from professional and systemic victim-blaming and invisibility to being believed and partnered with. Their accounts reveal what happens when professionals consistently pivot back to the perpetrator’s behavior, document survivor strengths, and stay curious instead of prescriptive. The result isn’t just better engagement; it’s safer children, stronger parenting, and more effective multi-agency work.

We also dig into the tough stuff: working with fathers who cause harm without colluding, addressing trauma and substance use without excusing abuse, and building the skills to challenge, contain, and guide change over time. Tools like the Choose to Change Toolkit help dads interrupt escalation, but the heartbeat is consistent messaging: Your behavior is a parenting choice with consequences for your child’s physical and mental health. Leaders will hear a clear call to invest in rigorous training, align language across agencies, and normalize accountability for fathers as a core child protection standard.

If this conversation challenged you or gave you a new tool, share it with a colleague, subscribe for more survivor-centered practice, and leave a review with the one insight you’ll use this week.

Send us a text

Now available! Mapping the Perpetrator’s Pattern: A Practitioner’s Tool for Improving Assessment, Intervention, and Outcomes The web-based Perpetrator Pattern Mapping Tool is a virtual practice tool for improving assessment, intervention, and outcomes through a perpetrator pattern-based approach. The tool allows practitioners to apply the Model’s critical concepts and principles to their current case load in real

Check out David Mandel's new book Stop Blaming Mothers and Ignoring Fathers: How to Transform the Way We Keep Children Safe from Domestic Violence.

Visit the Safe & Together Institute website.

Start taking Safe & Together Institute courses.

Check out Safe & Together Institute upcoming events.

Send us a text

The weaponisation of immigration status has become a powerful tool in the arsenal of domestic abusers. For migrant survivors, the choice between enduring abuse or risking deportation represents an impossible dilemma that traps them in dangerous situations.

Meena Kumari, a domestic abuse practitioner with 21 years of experience in the UK, shares how the situation for migrant survivors has deteriorated rather than improved over her career. Where once migrants needed to wait two years before applying for indefinite leave to remain, they now must wait five years—creating a dangerous window where abusers can exploit immigration vulnerabilities through coercive control. This pattern isn't unique to Britain; similar dynamics play out across the globe.

The conversation explores how "honour-based abuse" is often misunderstood and racialised, with certain communities facing heightened scrutiny while similar patterns of violence in white Christian contexts go unlabeled. This structural racism compounds the challenges facing migrant survivors who must navigate not only their abuser's tactics but also systems that may report their immigration status rather than prioritise their safety.

Most disturbingly, we examine how the recent rise in anti-immigrant sentiment and far-right activity weaponises concern for women's safety while ignoring that most violence against women occurs behind closed doors, perpetrated by someone known to the victim. These movements position themselves as "protectors" while creating conditions that make migrant survivors less likely to seek help.

The episode concludes with hope through Kumari's work with perpetrators from South Asian communities, demonstrating how accountability and cultural competence can work together effectively. Through programs that acknowledge cultural contexts while firmly challenging harmful behaviours, practitioners are creating pathways to meaningful change.

If you're working with survivors across cultural contexts or seeking to understand the complex intersection of immigration and domestic abuse, this episode offers essential insights for creating more effective, equitable responses. Share this episode with colleagues committed to survivor-centred practice that truly meets the needs of all communities.

Now available! Mapping the Perpetrator’s Pattern: A Practitioner’s Tool for Improving Assessment, Intervention, and Outcomes The web-based Perpetrator Pattern Mapping Tool is a virtual practice tool for improving assessment, intervention, and outcomes through a perpetrator pattern-based approach. The tool allows practitioners to apply the Model’s critical concepts and principles to their current case load in real

Check out David Mandel's new book Stop Blaming Mothers and Ignoring Fathers: How to Transform the Way We Keep Children Safe from Domestic Violence.

Visit the Safe & Together Institute website.

Start taking Safe & Together Institute courses.

Check out Safe & Together Institute upcoming events.

Send us a text

Religious teachings wield profound influence over family dynamics and human behaviors, sometimes enabling abuse under the guise of spiritual teachings and guidance. This raw and revealing conversation confronts the troubling legacy of religious parenting methodologies that promote violence, rights removal, and coercive control rather than nurturing safe, consensual connection.

Ruth shares her personal experience growing up under the influence of James Dobson's parenting teachings, exposing how these "Christian" parenting strategies actually originated from eugenicist theories of the 1930s. David and Ruth dissect how these methodologies create detailed systems for child abuse by advocating for escalating physical punishment, demeaning, demanding affection after violence, and treating children as inherently manipulative or "demonic." Most disturbing is how these approaches specifically target vulnerable children, with neurodivergent and LGBTQ+ youth suffering disproportionately under these regimes of violence and control.

The conversation explores how religious justifications for violence extend beyond parenting into marital relationships, where men are positioned as divinely appointed authorities with the right to abuse and control women. This creates intergenerational patterns where violence becomes the primary coping tool for men and women for managing anxiety, fear, and situations where one feels out of control. David and Ruth challenge these distortions of faith, emphasizing that "coerced faith is not faith" and that true spirituality requires free will and personal dignity.

For professionals working with families, this episode highlights the importance of going beyond trauma-informed approaches to understand how religious values shape family dynamics and entitlement for coercion and abuse. For those currently practicing these methods because they believe them spiritually necessary, there's an invitation to question whether these approaches truly reflect deeper values and support healthy, long-term connections to partner, parent, and pastor or simply perpetuate trauma and harm.

Join this eye-opening discussion on how we can recognize, resist, and heal from religiously justified abuse while creating healthier spiritual environments for ourselves and future generations. Visit safeandtogetherinstitute.com to learn more about domestic abuse–informed approaches that create safety and dignity for all family members.

Now available! Mapping the Perpetrator’s Pattern: A Practitioner’s Tool for Improving Assessment, Intervention, and Outcomes The web-based Perpetrator Pattern Mapping Tool is a virtual practice tool for improving assessment, intervention, and outcomes through a perpetrator pattern-based approach. The tool allows practitioners to apply the Model’s critical concepts and principles to their current case load in real

Check out David Mandel's new book Stop Blaming Mothers and Ignoring Fathers: How to Transform the Way We Keep Children Safe from Domestic Violence.

Visit the Safe & Together Institute website.

Start taking Safe & Together Institute courses.

Check out Safe & Together Institute upcoming events.