24/11/2025
🚨 NEW EPISODE ALERT
In a new, essential episode of Relational Practice: A Social Work Podcast, we undertake a deep, gendered analysis of the tension between legislative reform and judicial default in family violence cases.
We focus on the social work imperative: to close the harmful gap where the law explicitly mandates child safety as paramount, yet court practice often defaults to "contact at all costs."
Key Focus Areas:
• The Paradigm Shift: Analyzing how new laws remove presumptions for equal time in light of risk.
• The Ethical Challenge: Questioning the rationale behind judicial orders for contact (even supervised) with violent parents, despite documented harm, which re-traumatizes protective mothers and children.
• Evidence-Based Necessity: Reviewing sobering ANROWS research that confirms intimate partner violence as a major risk factor for filicide.
We advocate that the judicial principle of "best interests of the child" must be urgently reframed through a trauma-informed lens to mean "safety at all costs" when violence is present.
Join us to explore the urgent need for systemic cultural change, enhanced risk assessment tools, and mandatory trauma-informed training for all judicial and legal professionals.
https://open.spotify.com/episode/4Bjwd4o9BgQ9SxGJaQCC3H?si=yE6AcUrERjOBbF9omYLYBA
Relational Practice: a social work podcast · Episode
