I would like to see us working together, sitting in the same room to talk about what we are doing with families. We must examine policies and procedures that agencies use. For example, a new worker in a family based program or child welfare agency should be taught that before seeing parents together, the mother, at least, should be interviewed separately about domestic violence and child abuse. We could design policies and practices to make it safer for battered women to tell us about domestic violence. This represents differences from work in communities that are comparatively resource rich.
Practice needs to be adapted to different settings.
The problem is that there have been no resources given to this effort. I see this as a triangle that needs to be complete with someone with domestic violence expertise, someone with a family based approach, as well as someone with a traditional child protective approach. Many agencies have added experts to act as specialized consultants in areas such as chemical dependency and sexual abuse treatment. But you don't see them in domestic violence. One person does not have to be responsible for both the child and the mother, it's sometimes difficult for one person to take care of both.