Feminist perspectives on multi-agency cooperation, risk assessment and safety planning and the role women’s shelters and other women’s support services. （女性觀點：多機構合作、風險評估、安全計畫、庇護所女性角色與其他支持服務）

From the beginning over 40 years ago, women’s shelters and women’s centers focused on the safety of women victims of violence and their children. Early in their evolution, they knew that they could not provide safety to women and children on their own and started to work in partnership with police, the justice system and other agencies in the community. ‘Coordinated Community Response’ (CCR) was born, in the 1980-ies, with the Domestic Abuse Intervention Program in Duluth,Minnesota and the charismatic Ellen Pence. The Duluth Model of Coordinated Community Response became one of the main models that inspired many similar initiatives globally, such as the Domestic Violence Intervention Center in Vienna. The identification of risks and safety planning with survivors was at the center of the work. Over the years multi-agency work became a standard method of community response referenced as a best practice international documents, reports, policies and laws. Risk assessment instruments were developed, such as the Danger Assessment tool by Jacquelyn Campbell, and many others. Where do we stand now regarding these developments? Have multi-agency initiatives and risk assessment tools increased safety of women survivors of domestic and partner violence? There are mixed messages around this topic. Risk assessment can be important when used as a step to safety planning, but it can also be used to “downgrade” the level of support to survivors. Multi-agency work can be empowering to victims, if their rights and needs are at the center of the work. It can also be disempowering if a range of often powerful institutions get together to decide what the survivor must do independent of her voice. How can we counter “the risks of risk assessments” and the development of “high risk teams”? How can we ensure that multi-agency work serves us as survivors and not the system? What are the experiences of feminist organizations with risk assessment and multi-agency work? What requirements are being included ininternational law and policy.? Can multisector collaboration be successful when agencies don’t share a feminist analysis or are reluctant participants?
The workshop aims at bringing together experts from various regions of the world to discuss these questions and to identify challenges and successes in establishing safe and empowering support for women victims of violence and their children in the context of risk assessment and multi-agency work.