June 2020 Webinar
A SAFeR Approach to Child-Related Decision-Making in Family Court
Family court professionals generally agree that domestic violence comes in many different shapes and sizes and affects families in many and varied ways. They also agree that one-size-fits-all solutions can lead to over-restrictive or under-protective outcomes that fail to address the specific circumstances of domestic violence within families. The challenge comes in differentiating the nature, context and implications of abuse – and accounting for those differences in parenting arrangements and dispute resolution processes. This workshop introduces participants to a SAFeR approach to child-related decision-making in family court, together with a set of practical tools designed to help them recognize, evaluate and respond to domestic violence in a variety of legal settings.
At the conclusion of this workshop, participants will be better able to:
Apply a framework for identifying, assessing and responding to DV across legal settings;
Utilize tools designed to enhance their ability to respond to domestic violence;
Develop legal responses that account for the nature, context and effects of DV in specific cases.
Free for members / $25 for non-members
Speakers
Tracy Shoberg is the Deputy Director of the SAFeR Project with the Battered Women’s Justice Project. Before joining BWJP, Tracy was a family law staff attorney at Southern Minnesota Regional Legal Services serving low-income clients in eleven southeastern Minnesota counties. She worked under the Office of Justice Programs grant representing victim-survivors in civil matters, including orders for protection, harassment restraining orders, custody, and divorce cases. While at SMRLS, Tracy also assisted Goodhue County in drafting their first Safe Harbor Protocol as part of the countywide effort to respond to the needs of human trafficking victim-survivors. Tracy attended the University of Wisconsin-Madison, receiving BAs in English and Gender Studies, and the University of Minnesota Law School, graduating in May 2016. Tracy returned to BWJP in 2020 after interning in the summer of 2014. She has committed herself to this work since 2012 when she began working at End Domestic Abuse Wisconsin (formerly the Wisconsin Coalition Against Domestic Violence).
Gabrielle Davis is a Legal & Policy Advisor with the Battered Women’s Justice Project. Before joining BWJP, she was a Clinical Professor of Law at the University of Toledo College of Law where she founded and directed a domestic violence clinic, developed curricula, and taught courses in gender violence and feminist legal theory. She chaired the local DV coordinated community response and fatality review teams, conducted community-based research, and helped shape local domestic violence policy and practice in the civil and criminal justice systems. She has published extensively in the field and currently serves on the editorial review board of the Family Court Review. She co-developed the SAFeR model for DV-informed decision making, as well as training curricula to support its broad implementation, and regularly presents to local, state, national, and international audiences. Her community work has been recognized by numerous awards, including a 2009 Jefferson Award for Public Service and a 2018 Fulbright Specialist designation.