Season 2 Episode 21: Minisode Series on Worker Safety & Well-Being: When workers are targeted by the perpetrator

Partnered with a Survivor: David Mandel and Ruth Reymundo Mandel

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In this second installment of the multi-part minisode series on worker safety and well-being, Ruth and David explore the important topic of workers being targeted by domestic violence perpetrators. In a few minutes , David & Ruth discuss different ways workers are targeted including:

• Manipulation, intimidation and bullying
• Threats of or actual lawsuits and complaints lodged with managers, professional boards, or courts
• Implied or real threats against family members
• Stalking (online or in real life)

Ruth & David also discuss how misogyny, racism or other forms of discrimination can be factors in the targeting of workers.

David & Ruth finish the brief episode with specific suggestions about basic safety and support strategies that agencies can put in place to respond to the behaviors of perpetrators. These include:

• Explicitly widen out the concept of worker safety to include intimidation, manipulation, not just explicit threats or acts of violence
• Make this wider definition of worker safety a regular part, preventative (not reactive) supervision in cases
• Ensure that staff that handle client complaint or review boards are educated around coercive control and pattern based assessments
• Performance reviews and human resources procedures need to be consider the impact of threats and intimidation on a worker's performance

About the worker safety and well-being minisode series
The goal of the series is to address the critical issues of worker safety and well-being as a critical aspect of domestic violence-informed systems. This is a series for frontline staff across child protection, mental health and addiction, courts and other systems. We hope it will validate their experiences. This is also a series for human resources managers and organizational leadership. Setting policies and procedures to address worker emotional & professional safety in the context of domestic violence cases is essential to creating a domestic violence-informed agency.

Topics in the series include:

• When workers are targeted by the perpetrator of one of the clients
• The connection between worker safety in engaging perpetrators and mother-blaming practice.
• When workers are being targeted by their own perpetrator (through the workplace and at home)
• When workers own experience of abuse are triggered by their work with families
• Managing your own fears, as the worker, about the safety of the family.

Listen to the introduction to the series
Read the Safe & Together Institute’s white paper on worker safety
Take an online course on worker safety related to domestic violence

Check out David Mandel's new book "Stop Blaming Mothers and Ignoring Fathers: How to transform the way we keep children safe from domestic violence."