Two innovations supporting the paradigm shift in Dutch multidisciplinary cross-sectoral collaboration - underlying vision: a staged approach to recovery which starts with collaborating for actual safety

The overarching theme of this symposium is the paradigm shift in The Netherlands from risk assessment/management to safety assessment & safety planning in working with families or relationships with a high risk of relapse in... [ view full abstract ]

The overarching theme of this symposium is the paradigm shift in The Netherlands from risk assessment/management to safety assessment & safety planning in working with families or relationships with a high risk of relapse in violence, neglect or abuse. This has led to a restructuring of multidisciplinary cross-sectoral collaboration.

The vision underlying the triage-tool as well as the CAST method is that families with structural unsafety need a staged approach of interventions to break the pattern of violence or abuse. The triage tool selects relationships with structural unsafety. In these relationships the violence and the abuse must be stopped first and safety reestablished before risk driven care can be provided with effect. Then sustained safety can be established by risk-driven care after which the road to recovery is open. So the stages are: a. Safety-planning, b. Risk-driven interventions and c. Recovery. This can never be done by one organization or professional only. Professionals should be working within a network of organizations committed to work as an ad hoc team towards results for this target group. The collaborating professionals in the network focus on immediate and sustainable safety. Aided by the CAST method this is done by methodical step by step teamwork of generalists and specialists which can be drawn as needed in a particular family from child protection, police, school, pediatric and psychiatric care, traumaspecialists and offender therapists.

With a grant from the Dutch Organisation for Health Research and Development (ZonMw) the CAST is in the process of being implemented in one of the leading Dutch Child Advocacy centers.