Family DOORS Everyday
Family DOORS Everyday is a free, digital version of the Detection of Overall Risk Screen (DOORS) screening tool. It is designed to enable practitioners and other helping professionals (e.g., family law practitioners, counsellors, psychologists and social workers) to detect and evaluate the risks of their clients using DOORS before they escalate and supports them to develop a tailored response.
The Family DOORS App allows:
- Self-register with their own work email address.
- Easily send a DOORS link to a client.
- Easily send a DOORS link to more than one client at a time.
- Access and send different versions of DOORS depending on their clients situation.
- Receive their clients results (DOOR 1 & DOOR 2), in PDF format directly and securely to their nominated email address.
Family DOORS screening tool
The original Family Law DOORS screening tool (McIntosh, 2011) was created by Professor Jennifer McIntosh, Director of Family Transitions. The DOORS screening tool is a three-part framework that assists separating parents and helping professionals to detect and respond to both well-being and safety risks. Professor McIntosh piloted earlier versions of this screening tool with Relationships Australia SA.
In contrast to specific domestic violence screens, the DOORS takes a broad definition of risk, covering adult, infant and child well-being, conflict and communication, parenting stress, and collateral stressors, encouraging the practitioner to evaluate the contribution of all these factors to imminent personal and interpersonal safety risks
What the DOORS offers:
- Support for cross-disciplinary understanding of factors that combine to create a climate of elevated risk for families
- A common screening framework that can be used across multiple services
- A tool for systematically identifying multiple risks at the client’s point of entry into the service, including being at risk of physical or psychological harm, or of perpetrating harm. In the case of infants and children, the tool screens for developmental harm
- Associated response planning resources
- An annotated risk assessment resource list for specialist follow up
- A Family DOORS App to streamline analysis
The DOORS tool can be completed via the Family DOORS App, on paper or a mixture of the two.
Family Law DOORS E-Handbook
The Family Law DOORS screening tool is complemented by the Family Law DOORS E-Handbook. This E-Handbook, written by Professor Jennifer McIntosh (Family Transitions) and Dr Claire Ralfs (CEO, Relationships Australia SA and Director, Australian Institute of Social Relations) (McIntosh & Ralfs, 2012), supports practitioners in using the DOORS screening tool. The e-Handbook provides a review of the evidence underpinning DOORS, including the ten risk domains for which the tool screens. It also provides information regarding follow-up response tools and decision-making support, and discusses effective strategies for engaging clients in relation to risk evaluation and response.
Click here to learn more about the authors of the Family Law DOORS and the Family DOORS App.
The Family Law DOORS. Copyright © Commonwealth of Australia 2012 and Family Transitions 2011, as detailed here.