High Risk Strategy

Over the past several years, the VAW community has become increasingly aware that not all domestic abuse cases pose the same level of risk to women. In 1999, the murder of Sandra Quigley by her ex-partner highlighted the urgent need to identify potentially lethal situations using key, proven indicators to create a coordinated and effective response.

Member agencies of the Woman Abuse Council of Toronto formed a High Risk Project Committee to develop a comprehensive strategy for identifying and responding to potentially lethal situations. The strategy included three main components:

Regular use of Risk Assessment Processes and Procedures to:

Identify key indicators for women who are at high risk of death or serious injury.
Encourage women and practitioners to jointly conduct risk assessments using developed tools.
Gain commitment from those involved to use and implement the safety planning kit.

See High Risk Assessment Tool (90.5KB)

Immediate Action in Cases of High Risk:

Convene a safety-planning meeting with anyone who is involved with the woman to share necessary information, and develop and implement a timely action plan that responds to the immediate needs of the woman. This plan will include ways to protect the woman and to monitor and constrain the partner's behaviour.

Case Consultations with High Risk Consult Team:

Consult on difficult cases with the multi-disciplinary High Risk Consult Team of experts. The team provides formal and informal consultation with practitioners to help assess difficult cases and determine appropriate interventions. Any of the sectors involved with an abused woman may initiate the consultation.

High Risk Consult Team

The High Risk Consult Team was a multi-disciplinary team of professionals. The team provided formal and informal consultation with practitioners to help assess difficult cases and determine appropriate interventions that increase the safety of women and children and constrain abusers.

When community members needed to bring a case forward to the High Risk Consult Team,they were asked to contact WomanACT office to arrange a telephone intake and assessment. The case would have been screened to determine its urgency. There were three possible outcomes of the screening:

Case identified as an emergency. Core members of the Team will be contacted to arrange for emergency telephone consultation.
Case identified as appropriate for the next monthly High Risk Consult Team meeting.
Case referred to one or two of the Consult Team members for a first level review. These cases are those in which timely intervention of a practitioner from one or two sectors would have a direct impact on the woman's safety.

High Risk Training

In addition, The Woman Abuse Council of Toronto provided free training to organizations on high-risk assessment. The purpose of the training was to:

Train practitioners to conduct a thorough risk assessment to determine safety risks or need for timely response.
Bring practitioners together to identify ways to respond to the safety of women in high-risk situations.
Develop a common safety plan with key partners to coordinate the safety of the woman and/or her children.

WACT would like to acknowledge the Ontario Trillium Foundation for its generous support of the High Risk Strategy Project.