Crisis Intervention

A crisis is defined in several ways: a time of intense difficulty or danger, a time when important decisions must be made, or a turning point.

A domestic and family violence situation or incident can contain all these elements: People affected are at risk; workers must make important decisions; and it can be a turning point or opportunity to provide resources, services, and supports for change.

Crisis intervention services may be delivered online or by phone (through emergency helplines), through visits and outreach services, or through center-based services.

The priority when responding to a crisis is always to keep people as safe as possible. As the article in the previous example outlines, this may be done by providing advice and support by phone, attending the home with police, providing access to safe emergency accommodation, developing safety plans, and referring people to support services. In the first instance, any urgent needs, such as the need for medical treatment, moving to a place of safety, and acquiring urgent legal advice, should be addressed immediately.

Strategies to plan work practices

Conducting Thorough Risk Assessments: Assess potential risks and safety concerns associated with each situation to tailor your approach accordingly.

Establishing Clear Boundaries: Maintain professional boundaries to ensure your own safety and well-being while respecting the autonomy of others.

Clear and Empathetic Communication: Ensure open and honest communication, fostering a supportive and trusting relationship while respecting autonomy and confidentiality.

Clear and Concise Information Sharing: Provide clear and understandable information about available support services, referrals, and next steps to keep everyone informed and empowered to make decisions.

Collaborative Goal-Setting: Engage in collaborative goal-setting discussions, allowing individuals to take ownership of their journey towards their goals while considering their preferences and priorities.

Prompt Referrals: When necessary, promptly refer to specialized services or external agencies to ensure appropriate support and resources are provided.

Continuously Evaluating and Adapting: Regularly review and adjust strategies based on feedback and reflections to ensure ongoing effectiveness and alignment with best practices.

The role of a crisis intervention service includes:

• Offering the person choices about what action to take
• Providing information about rights, responsibilities, and available support services
• Discussing how to improve safety and develop safety plans
• Helping people access safe emergency accommodation
• Providing links and referrals to support services such as counselling, legal advice, and financial planning

Watch

Watch the following video: 'How to Interview Clients by Social Worker | Domestic Violence' by Jasmine Ama on YouTube

Answer the following questions in the forum.

1. What did you notice about how the social worker communicated? Give examples.
2. Do you think the social worker succeeded in establishing rapport with the client? Why? How did she do this?
3. How do you think the client was feeling? What did she do to communicate her feelings?

In practical terms, the first step in responding to situations of potential domestic and family violence is to assess whether or not DFV has occurred or is occurring through observation, questioning, and looking for key indicators.

This checklist provides an overview of risk factors and indicators that you can use to assess a crisis:

• Does anyone have any life-threatening or severe injuries?
• Have injuries increased in frequency and/or severity since your last contact with the client?
• Is the client pregnant or have they recently given birth?
• Is a couple involved, and are they thinking about separating? (This is a very dangerous time.)
• Does the perpetrator have access to weapons?
• Does the perpetrator use drugs or alcohol? Are they intoxicated at present?
• Has the perpetrator previously:
  • Used a weapon?
  • Threatened to harm or kill the person, children, or others?
  • Harmed or killed pets or other animals?
  • Threatened or attempted suicide?
  • Sexually abused the person?
  • Stalked the person?
  • Shown obsessive jealousy or controlling behavior?
  • Had a domestic violence protection order taken out against them?
  • Breached a domestic violence protection order?
  • Been diagnosed with or shown signs of a mental illness, especially signs of paranoia?

When assessing the person’s immediate physical and emotional needs, you should take into account:

• The person’s physical safety and the physical safety of children and others
• The person’s emotional safety and the emotional safety of children and others
• The availability of resources to support a practical safety plan
• Legal factors and the need for legal advice and support
• Medical factors and the need for medical advice and support
• Available accommodation
• Transport
• The needs of any children involved.

The key difference between crisis intervention and planning longer-term supports and services is the time factor. In a crisis, you must respond immediately to urgent needs. If there is a clear risk to safety, you might need to act promptly to keep people safe, which may involve dispensing with their consent to call emergency services, police, and other support. In a crisis, you will not have much time to establish a relationship with the person or to build rapport – you might need to leave this until later. However, it is, of course, still important to establish a degree of trust and to let the person know that you care about their well-being and safety.

When providing longer-term supports and services, you will have time to plan, discuss, set goals, provide information, and offer the person choices. You will also have time to build a trusting, professional relationship and work to engage the person in making choices and decisions about future actions, services, and supports.

Difference between Crisis intervention and long term support/intervention

Crisis Situation

In a crisis situation, immediate attention is crucial to address acute needs and ensure safety. Assessment focuses on immediate risks, prioritizing safety concerns. Emotional intensity is high, necessitating immediate interventions for stabilization. Stabilization efforts aim to reduce immediate danger and establish safety. Goal-setting involves short-term objectives aimed at achieving immediate safety and stabilization. Interaction frequency is initially frequent and intense, gradually tapering off with stability. Empowerment and autonomy may involve more directive interventions to ensure immediate safety. Support networks primarily focus on professional interventions to address immediate safety concerns. Flexibility and adaptability are essential for responding promptly to dynamic situations. Decision-making prioritizes immediate safety, sometimes with limited client input.

Long-Term Support

In long-term support, a sustained and comprehensive approach is taken over an extended period. Assessment considers broader needs, strengths, and goals for sustained recovery beyond immediate risks. Emotional investment is gradual and sustained, fostering trust and facilitating lasting change. Stabilization involves creating a secure foundation for ongoing therapeutic work and personal development. Goal-setting is collaborative, working towards comprehensive, enduring goals over time. Interaction frequency remains consistent and ongoing to support gradual progress and address evolving needs. Empowerment and autonomy emphasize empowering clients, fostering autonomy, and building skills for sustained self-efficacy. Support networks involve building broader, enduring support networks and engaging with various resources over time. Flexibility and adaptability are planned and adaptable to address evolving needs and goals over an extended period. Decision-making is collaborative, considering client preferences, values, and long-term goals to ensure comprehensive support and empowerment.

Watch

Below is a great resource to understand the journey people take for recovery after being in a narcissistic relationship.

Safety planning is an essential strategy for keeping people affected by domestic and family violence safe. Supporting a person in developing a practical, realistic safety plan is one of the most effective things you can do. There are many different templates and guidelines for safety planning, but they all have some common elements, including having strategies for different contingencies (if the person is staying, planning to leave, in the process of leaving or has left). The risks associated with each of these are slightly different, so they need slightly different strategies.

Staying

The main risks in this situation are that another violent incident may occur and the level of violence may increase. Key advice for a person in this situation includes:

• Send signals to supportive family, friends, neighbours or others to let them know you need help (e.g. texts or phone calls, leaving lights on or off, placing an object in a window). Also, tell them about your safety plan.
• Keep an 'escape pack' handy with essential items ready to go.
• Plan an escape route for yourself and your children and teach them that they must escape quickly and are not responsible for your safety.
• Keep potential weapons out of reach.
• Keep emergency numbers on your phone's speed dial.
• Keep a record of incidents, including dates, times, details and photographs. Include any texts from your partner. Leave this in a safe place.
• If you have pets, make arrangements for someone to care for them in case you have to leave.

Planning to Leave

The risks in this situation include the person’s partner finding out about their plans or discovering their escape pack. If the person has a trusted friend, they should leave essential items with them if possible.

People in this situation should keep their escape pack hidden in a safe place and include essential items in the pack, such as medications, prescriptions, keys, documents, money, their tax file number, Medicare cards, driver’s licence, passports and any other important documents and items such as their children’s birth certificates or copies of them.

Choosing the safest time to leave may mean waiting until the perpetrator is out, perhaps at work. This will avoid direct confrontation that may lead to further violence. It is also important to avoid providing opportunities for the perpetrator to follow or locate the person.

After Leaving

The person’s partner is likely to be very angry and volatile after the person leaves, so this is a very dangerous time. People should use all available support to protect themselves and their children. Key advice for a person in this situation includes:

• Apply for a protection order. If you have one, carry a copy of it with you and provide a copy to your workplace, your partner and your children’s school.
• Report to the police.
• Redirect your mail and use a post office box instead.
• Give your new address to people you trust only.
• Change your phone number and/or SIM card and upgrade your phone’s security settings. Consider a second phone for communicating with your ex-partner.
• Block your ex-partner on social media and be very careful not to disclose any sensitive details on social media.
• Do not follow the same patterns of movement around the community. Consider moving your children to a new school or daycare centre.
• Have good security systems in your new accommodation. If you have moved into a refuge, this will be a feature of the accommodation they provide.
• Tell trusted people about the situation and ask them not to disclose your address or other sensitive details.
• Continue to seek services and supports to help yourself and your children to remain safe and recover.

Case Study

Safety Planning

Work in pairs or small groups online in the forums. Read the following scenario and follow the instructions at the end.

Jemima

Jemima is twenty-one. She has three children under the age of four and a five-week-old baby. She lives with their father, Jake, and his brother Eddie. Jake and Eddie are methamphetamine users, and Eddie belongs to a motorcycle gang. Jemima used to use drugs but stopped when she was pregnant with her third child. Her relationship with Jake has always been a volatile one, with many violent incidents over the years. She has been hospitalised several times with broken bones and internal injuries after Jake has attacked her, but she has never reported this to the police or taken action to leave him. They live in a small country town in a rented house. Jemima’s family no longer live in the area, and she has lost contact with her mother. Jake and Eddie are from a large extended family who all live locally. Most of Jemima’s friends are partners of Jake and Eddie’s cousins. Susie, one of these friends, is sympathetic to Jemima and has offered to let Jemima stay with her and her partner if things ‘get too bad’. Since the birth of her fourth child Jemima has suffered from anxiety and depression. She has lost weight, has trouble sleeping and often feels tempted to take drugs, but she has resisted the temptation so far. Lately, Jake has become even more unpredictable and violent towards her. He tells her repeatedly that he is ‘fed up’ with her and her ‘whingeing’ and that she is ‘no fun anymore’. Yesterday, she woke after an afternoon nap to find him standing over her with a knife in his hand. Eddie has also been dropping hints that Jake is planning to ‘get rid of her’ and that she should be ‘very careful’ not to annoy him. Jemima is so afraid of what Jake might do to her and the children that she visits a local community centre asking for help. You are a worker at the centre.

1. Discuss the situation with your partner/group. Consider Jemima’s potential needs and goals.

   • What advice and information would you give to Jemima about your role?
   • What questions would you ask her about her situation? Why?
   • What do you think Jemima’s goals might be? What do you think she might want to do? Why?
   • Research domestic and family violence services and supports in your state/territory and in your local area. Would any of these be relevant to Jemima’s situation? Why?

2. Jemima decides that she wants to take action and leave Jake.

   • Outline her options, including what legal action she could take and what services and supports are available.
   • Draft a safety plan for this, identifying potential risks to Jemima and her children and strategies for addressing them. Think about why this is a dangerous time and what risk factors you need to be aware of.

3. Jemima decides she does not want to leave and that she wants to stay with Jake, but she wants someone to help ‘make him change’.

   • Draft a safety plan for this scenario, identifying risks to Jemima and her children and strategies to address them. Think about whether you should take specific action to protect Jemima’s children and what risk factors exist if Jemima stays.

4. What communication skills would you use to work with Jemima? Think about how Jemima is feeling and how you can express empathy and concern for her situation.

5. Role-play an interview between Jemima and the community centre worker.

   • Active listening to help Jemima tell her story
   • Strategies to engage Jemima and build rapport with her
   • An explanation of the worker’s role
   • Jemima’s rights and options
   • An outline of the available services and supports
   • The safety plans and how they work
   • The process of supporting Jemima to set goals and identify her needs