Safety Planning

Using the Power & Control and Equality Wheels for Safety Planning

The Duluth Model Power & Control and Equality Wheels enable practitioners to assess abusive behaviours and articulate the safe non-abusive behaviours. The abuses perpetrators use are wide and varied but those represented in the Power & Control Wheel claim to be the most common. You can find more information on the Duluth Model website Understanding the Power and Control Wheel - Domestic Abuse Intervention Programs (theduluthmodel.org). The Equality Wheel represents the alternative safe behaviours or the goals for safety.

Good perpetrator safety planning will align with the safe behaviour goals found in the Equality Wheel and linked back to the abuses in the Power & Control Wheel. For example, a man who has used physical violence, name-calling and threats to suicide towards his partner, we can see in the above diagram that those behaviours are highlighted on the left and the corresponding alternative safe behaviours are highlighted on the right. Those alternatives are the man's goals to achieve - Non-violence, Respect and Negotiation and Fairness. Those goals are 'the what' he will achieve and the safety plan is 'the how' he will achieve them, which is created in a collaborative process with the practitioner. The Eric-go-round and Preston's Path are safety planning activities that can be used for this purpose, which are respectful and effective.

Safety plans will include specific and measurable positive actions such as "I will respect my partner's feelings and the children's feelings and leave their presence when I am being scary" or "I will attend and participate in a men's behaviour change program to learn to make safer choices with my partner and children". Avoidance and suppression strategies are not encouraged, such as ‘walking away’ or ‘time out’ on their own because this has proven to lead to escalations, similar to the avoidance and suppression of thinking and feeling attempted when using alcohol. Engaging in solitary pre-occupation is also not encouraged and it is best that when removing himself from his family’s presence this is achieved in association with others who are supporting him.

The monitoring of a safety plan and the perpetrator’s adherence should be done in consultation with the man’s partner and/or his support members whom the worker can rely upon for accurate information. The worker needs to maintain an awareness that the perpetrator may be continuing his patterns of coercion and control by silencing his partner and/or safety network people.

Safety planning with the perpetrator is a separate (but related) process that focuses on what he can do to create safety for his family. When case managing a family where family violence is detected, a separate safety plan for the family is required, which is sometimes known as a personal safety plan. The personal safety plan is essential when the perpetrator cannot be engaged effectively and when we are planning for a relapse in the perpetrator safety plan.

All learning programs for engaging perpetrators of family violence include more detail about the safety planning process.