A New Blueprint for Child Safety: 20 Years of Shifting the Focus

LONDON, UK – November 25, 2025 – This coming February, a pivotal virtual gathering will mark a quiet revolution two decades in the making. The European Coercive Control & Children Conference, hosted by the Safe & Together Institute, isn't just another industry event; it's a celebration and a strategic consolidation of a model that has fundamentally altered how social care, legal systems, and child protection agencies approach domestic abuse. As the Safe & Together Model celebrates its 20th anniversary, its core innovation—shifting the focus from the survivor's actions to the perpetrator's behavior—is gaining unprecedented momentum across Europe, fueled by new legislation and a growing demand for more effective, integrated solutions.

A Paradigm Shift in Accountability

For years, child protection systems often inadvertently penalized survivors of domestic abuse. A mother's failure to "protect" her children from a violent partner could become grounds for removing the children from her care, a devastating outcome that compounded her trauma and ignored the root of the danger. The Safe & Together Model, developed by founder David Mandel, introduced a radical but common-sense alternative: reframe coercive control and domestic violence not as a parental deficit on the part of the survivor, but as a harmful parenting choice by the perpetrator.

This perpetrator pattern-based approach equips professionals with the tools to analyze the specific behaviors an abuser uses and how those behaviors harm a child's safety and well-being. The goal is to partner with the adult survivor—the parent trying to keep their children safe under duress—and intervene directly with the perpetrator to hold them accountable.

The impact of this shift is not merely theoretical. Independent evaluations and government reports from the model's implementation in countries like the United States, Australia, and the UK have demonstrated tangible results. Practitioners report increased competency in identifying coercive control and a significant reduction in victim-blaming attitudes. Most strikingly, data from one implementation in Florida showed that domestic violence-related child removals plummeted from 20.6% to just 9.1% over an 18-month period. This represents thousands of families kept together safely, showcasing a system that supports, rather than punishes, survivors.

"Across Europe, agencies and practitioners are transforming their work through a perpetrator pattern–based lens," said David Mandel, founder and CEO of the Safe & Together Institute, in a recent announcement. "This conference celebrates that progress while strengthening our shared commitment to collaboration and innovation."

Europe's Unifying Legal and Collaborative Front

The conference arrives at a critical juncture for Europe. The continent is experiencing a wave of legal and policy reform aimed squarely at coercive control. In the UK, the Serious Crime Act of 2015, which criminalized coercive control, was recently amended to close a loophole and address post-separation abuse. More recently, France passed a landmark law in early 2025 explicitly enshrining coercive control as a crime, carrying severe penalties.

At a continental level, the European Parliament's 2024 Directive on combating violence against women, while stopping short of a unified definition of rape, mandates member states to criminalize various forms of abuse and encourages trauma-informed, integrated responses. This legislative momentum creates fertile ground for a framework like the Safe & Together Model, which provides the practical "how-to" for implementing these new legal standards on the front lines.

The upcoming conference is designed to be an engine for this integration. By bringing together practitioners, policymakers, researchers, and advocates from across the continent, it aims to break down the silos that have historically fragmented responses to domestic abuse. Sessions are focused on embedding perpetrator accountability in family law, improving case planning, and building multi-agency teams that can move beyond disjointed actions to create a cohesive, violence-informed system of care that analyzes and responds to the behavioral patterns of harm.

Deepening the Focus: Hidden Victims and Survivor Voices

A key strength of this evolving approach is its commitment to addressing the nuanced and often-overlooked dimensions of coercive control. The conference agenda highlights this by giving a platform to voices and topics that push the boundaries of traditional safeguarding.

Renowned domestic abuse campaigner David Challen, who successfully fought to have his mother's murder conviction overturned by proving she was a victim of lifelong coercive control, will share his lived experience as a child survivor. His powerful advocacy underscores the lasting intergenerational trauma of domestic abuse and the critical need for systems to recognize coercive control's devastating impact on children. His presence reinforces a central tenet of modern, effective practice: policy and interventions must be shaped by the authentic experiences of those who have survived the abuse.

Similarly, the inclusion of Maya Badham, founder of The Centre for Animal Inclusive Safeguarding, brings a vital and often-ignored tactic of abuse into the spotlight. Perpetrators frequently use threats or harm against beloved companion animals to manipulate and control their partners and children. Badham's work on "animal-inclusive safeguarding" argues that protecting animals is inseparable from protecting people, demanding a whole-family response that recognizes pets as family members and targets of coercive control.

This holistic view extends to the core focus on perpetrator behavior. Rasha Hamid, a training consultant with the Institute, will lead a workshop on improving perpetrator visibility through better data and multi-agency collaboration, tackling the systemic gaps that allow abusers to remain invisible while their partners are scrutinized. This reflects the model's future direction, emphasizing leadership on men's behavior and perpetration as a core strategy for ensuring child safety.

The Future of Safeguarding: Digital Tools and Systemic Change

As the Safe & Together Model enters its third decade, its leaders are looking toward digital innovation to scale its impact. While the Institute already utilizes an extensive online learning portal to train its global network, future advancements could involve more sophisticated data analytics to track perpetrator patterns across systems, digital tools to help practitioners with risk assessment and safety planning in real-time, and secure platforms to enhance multi-agency collaboration.

However, the path to systemic change is not without challenges. Research has shown that successful implementation of the model requires sustained managerial support and a culture that is willing to challenge established norms, particularly within legal settings where the perpetrator-focused approach may be questioned. Ensuring high-quality documentation and effective, direct engagement with perpetrators remains an ongoing area of focus for improvement.

The European Coercive Control & Children Conference, therefore, serves as more than an anniversary. It is a strategic forum for tackling these challenges head-on, sharing best practices, and reinforcing a shared vision. By uniting a diverse group of European professionals, the event aims to accelerate the adoption of a more just and effective approach—one that keeps children safe by holding perpetrators accountable, empowering survivors, and building systems that are truly informed by the complex reality of domestic abuse. The work is about transforming not just practice, but entire systems for the next generation.