MARAM practice responsibilities for professionals

Organisational leaders will support professionals and services to identify which victim-survivor and perpetrator-focused MARAM Practice Guides are relevant for their role and functions.

The Practice Guides have been developed for working directly with service users (victim survivors and/or perpetrators).

Responsibilities 1, 2, 5, 6, 9 and 10 as outlined below apply to all relevant professionals and services within prescribed organisations.

Some professionals also have a role in risk assessment and management at either the intermediate (Responsibilities 3 and 4) or comprehensive (Responsibilities 7 and 8) levels.

All organisational leaders in prescribed framework organisations are required to understand the roles and responsibilities of professionals and services within their organisation.

Identifying and mapping these roles within and across the organisation will support shared understanding of roles and responsibilities.

This will help professionals and services to work together to identify, assess and manage family violence risk through information sharing, secondary consultation and referral.

Remember

Professionals across a range of services and sectors have a role in working with victim survivors and/or perpetrators of family violence. The MARAM Practice Guides reflect what a professional should know to work with adult and child victim survivors, and adult perpetrators.

Table 1: Description of each practice responsibilities^[7]

Risk assessment and management responsibilities	Expectations of framework organisations and section 191 agencies
Responsibility 1: Respectful, sensitive and safe engagement	Ensure staff understand the nature and dynamics of family violence, facilitate an appropriate, accessible, culturally responsive environment for safe disclosure of information by victim survivor service users, and to respond to disclosures sensitively. Ensure staff recognise that any engagement of service users who may be a perpetrator must occur safely and not collude or respond to coercive behaviours.
Responsibility 2: Identification of family violence	Ensure staff use information gained through engagement with service users and other providers (and in some cases, through use of screening tools to aid identification/or routine screening of all service users) to identify indicators of family violence risk and potentially affected family members. Ensure staff recognise that any engagement with a service user who may be a perpetrator must also be culturally responsive and respond to coercive behaviours in a safe, non-collusive way.
Responsibility 3: Intermediate risk assessment	Ensure staff can competently and confidently conduct intermediate risk assessment of adult and child victim survivors using Structured Professional Judgement and appropriate tools, including the Brief and Intermediate Assessment tools. Where appropriate to the role and mandate of the organisation or service, and when safe to do so, ensure staff can competently and confidently contribute to risk assessment through engagement with a perpetrator, including using Structured Professional Judgement and the Intermediate Assessment, and contribute to keeping them in view and accountable for their actions and behaviours.
Responsibility 4: Intermediate risk management	Ensure staff actively address immediate risk and safety concerns relating to adult and child victim survivors, and undertake intermediate risk management, including safety planning. Those working directly with perpetrators attempt intermediate risk management when safe to do so, including safety planning.
Responsibility 5: Seek consultation for comprehensive risk assessment, risk management and referrals	Ensure staff seek internal supervision and further consult with family violence specialists to collaborate on risk assessment and risk management for adult and child victim survivors and perpetrators, and make active referrals for comprehensive specialist responses, if appropriate.
Responsibility 6: Contribute to information sharing with other services (as authorised by legislation)	Ensure staff proactively share information relevant to the assessment and management of family violence risk and respond to requests to share information from other information sharing entities under the Family Violence Information Sharing Scheme, privacy law or other legislative authorisation.
Responsibility 7: Comprehensive assessment	Ensure staff in specialist family violence positions are trained to undertake Comprehensive assessment of risks, needs and protective factors for adult and children victim survivors. Ensure staff who specialise in working with perpetrators are trained and equipped to undertake Comprehensive risk and needs assessment to determine seriousness of risk of the perpetrator, tailored intervention and support options, and contribute to keeping them in view and accountable for their actions and behaviours.
Responsibility 8: Comprehensive risk management and safety planning	Ensure staff in specialist family violence positions are trained to undertake comprehensive risk management through development, monitoring and actioning of safety plans (including ongoing risk assessment), in partnership with the adult or child victim survivor and support agencies. Ensure staff who specialise in working with perpetrators are trained to undertake comprehensive risk management through development, monitoring and actioning of risk management plans (including information sharing); monitoring across the service system (including justice systems); and actions to hold perpetrators accountable for their actions. This can be through formal and informal system accountability mechanisms that support perpetrators’ personal accountability, to accept responsibility for their actions, and work at the behaviour change process.
Responsibility 9: Contribute to coordinated risk management	Ensure staff contribute to coordinated risk management, as part of integrated, multidisciplinary and multiagency approaches, including information sharing, referrals, action planning, coordination of responses and collaborative action acquittal.
Responsibility 10: Collaborate for ongoing risk assessment and risk management	Ensure staff are equipped to play an ongoing role in collaboratively monitoring, assessing and managing risk over time to identify changes in assessed level of risk and ensure risk management and safety plans are responsive to changed circumstances, including escalation. Ensure safety plans are enacted.

The Organisation Embedding Guidance and Resources and the Responding to family violence capability framework provides information for organisational leaders on how to support their staff to identify the 10 Responsibilities that apply to their roles and services.

The relevant knowledge and skill indicators have been considered in the development of these MARAM Practice Guides for the MARAM Framework.

The MARAM Framework and Practice Guides should be interpreted to complement and build on existing practice frameworks, that will also continue to apply.

A high-level description of the MARAM Responsibilities and role descriptions are in Figure 2.

Figure 2: MARAM responsibilities and role descriptions

1. Professional role description

The professional’s role:
- Addresses universal needs of service-users
- Is not primarily related to a person’s experience or use of family violence.
- They are in a position to identify or screen for family violence.
MARAM responsibility level: Identification

All professionals:
- Foundation Knowledge Guide
- Responsibility 1: Safe engagement
- Responsibility 2: Identification
- Responsibility 5: Secondary consultation and referral
- Responsibility 6: Information sharing (as authorised)
(Led by Specialist Services)
- Responsibility 9: Coordinated risk management
- Responsibility 10: Collaborate for ongoing risk assessment and risk management
2. Professional role description:

The professional’s role:
- is associated with family violence risk but is not focussed on this risk alone
- engages with people in crisis situations or cohorts who are at high risk of experiencing or using family violence
- involves therapeutic intervention, a crisis service, case management support or broader needs assessment and management.
They can incorporate addressing family violence risk assessment and management in to their usual work.

MARAM responsibility level: Intermediate

In addition to the above: Responsibility 3: Intermediate risk assessment Responsibility 4: Intermediate risk management

3. Professional role description

The professional’s role:
- is directly related to increasing victim survivor safety or addressing perpetrator risk
- includes family violence case management, crisis services or family violence therapeutic interventions or provides sustained support including safety planning and risk management.
- They work with victim survivors and perpetrators of family violence in a specialist capacity.
MARAM responsibility level: Comprehensive

In addition to the above:
- Responsibility 7: Comprehensive assessment
- Responsibility 8: Comprehensive risk management and safety planning
Download 'Figure 2: MARAM responsibilities and role descriptions'

7.1 How victim survivors or perpetrators access the service system

Victim survivors and perpetrators of family violence can access or interact with the family violence service system in a number of ways including:

Table 2: Entry points and services

Entry points	Description of service types
Specialist family violence and sexual assault services	Specialist family violence services^[8] such as crisis refuge services and services that specialise in working with Aboriginal communities, diverse communities and older people experiencing family violence or using family violence Multi-Disciplinary Centres and sexual assault support services
The Orange Door	Specialist family violence services for adult and child victim survivors, child and family services, adult perpetrator services
Victim Support Agency	Specialist family violence responses for adult male victims
Prescribed justice and statutory bodies	Police, courts, tribunals and correctional services, services for victims of crime, Child Protection and legal services^[9]
Prescribed universal services	Education, social/public housing services, health services, maternal and child health services, state funded aged care services, mental health services, drug and alcohol services, disability services, financial counselling and community-based child and family services
Targeted community services	Services (in addition to community-specific specialist family violence services, above) with an expert knowledge of a particular diverse community and the responses required to address the unique needs and barriers faced by this group. Targeted services may also include community-specific services, such as ethno-specific, LGBTIQ and disability services that focus on primary prevention or early intervention.

Having multiple entry points to the family violence service system means people can access the services they need and also be connected to appropriate support in relation to their experience or use of family violence.

A broad range of sectors and organisations serve as entry points for victim survivors and perpetrators^[10] through risk identification, assessment and risk management, as appropriate to their role and the responsibilities embedded within their internal policy arrangements.

These sectors and organisations must also work with other services (such as specialist family violence services) to support coordinated and collaborative responses to family violence risk, such as sharing information to support risk assessment and management through secondary consultation.

Updated 21 July 2021