Do our policies and practices follow the most comfortable, familiar path to child safety: through the mother?
Batterers are a very difficult and scary population to deal with. This is true for battered women, their children and the social workers that are sent out into the field to protect them. Having gone out on a child protection investigation, I have some sense of the challenges and risks that social workers in the field face on a daily basis. At the same time it appears hypocritical to tell a battered woman to keep a batterer away from their children when the social worker is not able or willing to confront and/or work with the batterer directly. This is not about assigning blame. This is about acknowledging the truth that when child protection agencies do not develop sound batterer accountability strategies, good and well meaning social workers and supervisors focus their attention on the mother. Working with the mother is familiar and comfortable for most social workers. In domestic violence situations this translates into a greater emphasis on the service agreement the mother signs wit
