From ANROWS research project RP.14.19 - The PATRICIA Project: Pathways And Research In Collaborative Inter-Agency working

As part of the PATRICIA Project's Perpetrator Accountability component of research, a review of 20 child protection cases from five Australian states was conducted using a set of tools developed by the Safe and Together Institute. It is the first national level review
conducted in Australia or elsewhere. The aim of the case reading process was to use the Safe and Together™ model to identify strengths, gaps, and needs, with a view to improving
policy, practice, training, supervision, and services where there are children living with domestic and family violence and coming to the attention of child protection. The process
engaged workers from child protection and specialist domestic and family violence services in joint training about the Safe The PATRICIA Project: Summary of the Safe and Together case reading and Together approach to child welfare and its deployment in reading case files to elicit patterns of documented child protection practice.

It has the potential to build cross-agency and internal agency capacity through the knowledge transfer activities of those who participated in the case reading process. The process of case reading aims to (1) assess the extent to which domestic and family violence (DFV) is being effectively identified and (2) assess the quality of case practice from a DFV-informed perspective, as documented in the case file. A DFV-informed perspective on child welfare practice means that DFV policies and practices are "consistent, dependable, and used throughout the child welfare system" as opposed to DFV-destructive child welfare practice, which increases the harm to adult and child survivors and/or makes it harder for
them to access support (Mandel, 2016, p.90).