Multi-Agency Family Safety Meetings

Aims

The overall aims of a Family Safety Meeting are to:

• Determine whether the perpetrator poses a significant risk to the person.
• Jointly construct and implement a multi-agency Positive Action Plan that includes risk management, provides professional support, and reduces the risk of further harm to the person.
• Support a Criminal Justice System response to perpetrators.
• Reduce repeat victimisation.
• Reduce re-offending by the perpetrator.
• Improve agency accountability.
• Improve support for agency staff involved in high-risk domestic violence cases.

Your role

Your role in the Family Safety Meeting (FSM) is to facilitate, monitor and effectively share information to enable appropriate actions to be taken to increase the safety of people at risk.

Each agency participating in the Framework must register an agency representative and proxy to attend each scheduled FSM.

On successful registration, the FSM agency representative will be granted access to the meetings and relevant FSM case information on the Portal.

The Portal stores information relating to each FSM referral, including all agency information provided by representatives, Positive Action Plans, and outcomes.

When a new referral has been accepted to the FSM agenda, representatives will be prompted via email to access the portal and provide any relevant agency case information and suggest actions for a Positive Action Plan.

Representatives will also be prompted via email to update case information and action progress on prior cases before attending their next scheduled meeting.

For more information about how to use the Portal, please refer to the Family Safety Portal User Guide.

Meetings

• Family Safety Meetings (FSM) occur fortnightly and may occur sooner at the direction of the Chair.
• A SAPOL Officer Chairs each meeting, co-ordinating the meetings and monitoring actions of each of the cases as well as assessing and accepting referrals onto the agenda.
• There are currently 17 FSMs operating state-wide.
• Referrals to a FSM are generally made by practitioners or agency workers who are working with the person at risk, their children, and/or the perpetrator of the domestic family or sexual violence.
• The FSM results in a multi-agency Positive Action Plan designed to support the reduction of risk for each person/family discussed.
• It is the responsibility of each agency on the FSM to complete the actions assigned to that agency in the Positive Action Plan.

Meeting Process overview

The process of the Family Safety Meeting (FSM) is as follows:

1 Risk Assessment

Any practitioners or agency staff concerned about potential harm to a person at risk or their children, will conduct a risk assessment using the Domestic Violence Risk Assessment Form (DVRA) located in the Family Safety Portal.

2 High-Risk Cases

The worker must submit a referral when:

• a person is assessed as being at high risk of experiencing serious harm (the risk is ongoing and/or escalating); and
• the harm is judged as likely to occur soon.

Both the completed DVRA and FSM Referral Form are submitted through the Portal to the SAPOL Family Violence Investigation Section (FVIS) or SAPOL FSM Chair.

The person at risk should be informed of the referral where it is safe to do so.
(see Consent to Share Information)

3 Referral becomes a case on the Family Safety Meeting

On receipt of the referral and Domestic Violence Risk Assessment (DVRA), SAPOL will further assess the referral and determine if the case is appropriate to be placed on the Family Safety Meeting (FSM) agenda.

• When a referral is accepted on the FSM the referrer will receive advice through a system-generated email.
• If the case is not appropriate for the FSM, the referrer will receive an email informing them that the referral has not been accepted and the reason/s why.
• Should SAPOL require more information to consider the referral, a request for further information will be emailed to the referrer.

4 Escalation of non-accepted referrals

If a referral is not accepted for the FSM, the referrer can contact the Chair for further discussion.

In the absence of mutual agreement, the referral will be added to the appropriate FSM for a resolution by FSM representatives at the next available meeting date. In these circumstances, the referrer is encouraged to escalate within their own agency for support and guidance as required.

5 Information collection

Family Safety Meeting representatives will receive an email notification of any new case/s in their approved region and will be requested to provide a summary of relevant case notes to be entered into the Portal. Representatives are encouraged to suggest potential actions for their agency ahead of the meeting which can be considered at the meeting.

6 Information sharing

Before the FSM:

Agency representatives must enter relevant case information into the Portal, and ensure all actions have been addressed and recorded.

At the FSM:

All representatives of the FSM have access to case information for their region or regions via the portal. At each meeting all cases listed on the FSM are discussed and all information relevant to the case shared in order to inform a Positive Action Plan.

After the FSM:

At the conclusion of an FSM a meeting report will be available for representatives to download for their own Agency records.

7 Positive Action Plan

Development

During the meeting, actions are proposed, discussed and agreed. Those actions are then added to a Positive Action Plan for the person at risk. (See Consent to Share Information)

Responsibility

FSM representatives are responsible for progressing actions assigned to their agency between meetings and must provide action updates into the portal prior to the next meeting.

The person at risk should be informed of the outcomes of the FSM and the Positive Action Plan where it is safe to do so. The worker/practitioner/clinician supporting the person should also provide an update after each meeting where it is safe to do so (See Consent to Share Information).

8 Monitoring

All cases presented at Family Safety Meeting (FSM) are reviewed by meeting representatives to determine if the case/s continue to present high risk. Where the high risk is ongoing, cases stay on the FSM agenda and representatives continue to provide updated case information and proposed actions. If the representatives assess that a case is no longer deemed to be high risk, the case may be removed from the agenda. Removing cases from FSM agenda is performed by the Chair.

The Chair will record on the Portal the reason that the case has been removed. The referrer of the case will be notified.

The person at risk should be informed of the outcomes of the FSM and the Positive Action Plan where it is safe to do so. (See Consent to Share Information)