Multi-agency risk assessment and management for children and families experiencing domestic violence

• Domestic violence risk assessment needs to address both adult and child victims.
• Risk assessment and management should be done with children and victims not to them.
• Co-location is used by agencies to embed domestic violence skills and knowledge.
• New models of interagency risk assessment are emerging in the UK and Australia.

This paper explores risk assessment and management in relation to children and families experiencing domestic violence; in particular, the communication and collaboration between child protection services, the police and independent domestic violence services. Four key themes structure our analysis of the challenges of risk assessment and management in this field: the question of who is the primary client and the focus of risk assessment; the issue of how the information to inform risk assessment is organised, including how it is collected, the tools that are employed, and the context in which information is collected; the position of the child, mother and father and whether risk is assessed and managed with them or to them; and the relationship between risk assessment and risk management, specifically whether risk management is restricted to families where levels of danger are identified as high or whether there are opportunities for support and safety planning for families where the risk is assessed as low. Finally, the paper examines some of the mechanisms that have developed as a means of resolving these issues, describing approaches to multi-agency risk assessment and management in this field that have emerged in both the UK and Australia and drawing on a range of studies undertaken by the authors.