As CEO and creator of the Safe & Together Model, David Mandel has spent more than two decades pioneering approaches to understanding how domestic violence and coercive control impact children and families. In this Masterclass, he will examine how professionals across child-serving systems can better document and demonstrate the harmful patterns of coercive control that often go unrecognized. Mandel will share strategies for capturing how perpetrator patterns affect children's wellbeing, focusing on practical tools for practitioners to identify and respond to these dynamics within their specific roles. Through this presentation, he aims to equip professionals across multiple sectors with concrete methods for making coercive control visible and actionable, ultimately supporting decisions and interventions that prioritize child safety.

Many families impacted by domestic violence perpetrators’ behaviors have multiple, complex, intersecting issues. In the past, we might have referred to these as co-occurring issues. But the language of co-occurrence often doesn’t provide us with a sense of how these issues interact. Using an intersections framework, versus a co-occurrence framework, we increase perpetrator accountability, improve our ability to diagnose and treat each member of the family, and improve our ability to help the adult and children survivors. This course will provide guidance on how to understand the connections, or intersections, and make them work for us in our practice.

In this masterclass, participants will be introduced to the Principles, Critical Components, and other key aspects of the paradigm-shifting Safe & Together Model. Participants will learn how the Model’s concepts, skills and tools can transform individual practice, agency culture and systems, and cross-sector collaboration. Learn about partnering with survivors, keeping children safe and intervening with perpetrators as parents. Participants are guaranteed to leave the session with new practices they can implement immediately.