Appendix 5: MARAM Practice Responsibilities

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 service users, and 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 clients) to identify indicators of family violence risk and potentially affected family members.

Ensure staff understand when it might be safe to ask questions of clients who may be a perpetrator, to assist with identification.

Responsibility 3

Intermediate risk assessment

Ensure staff can competently and confidently conduct an 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 behaviour assessment through engagement with a perpetrator, including use of the Perpetrator Behaviour 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 risk assessment

Ensure staff in specialist family violence positions are trained to comprehensively assess the risks, needs and protective factors for Family Violence Multi-Agency Risk Assessment and Management Framework adult and child 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. This includes an understanding of situating their own roles and responsibilities in the broader system to enable mutually reinforcing interventions over time.

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, multi-disciplinary 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.