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.
