Consultations with professional groups to improve filicide intervention

Consultations with professional groups to improve filicide intervention Professor Emeritus AM Thea Brown highlights the importance of education and resources among agencies to recognise warning signs of potential filicide and calls for better intervention strategies to protect children. In the last decade, filicide research has progressed to focusing on strategies of intervention. For example, Australian research studies have identified constellations of risks for each of the three major groups of perpetrators – mothers, fathers, and stepfathers – showing that no one factor leads to filicide but rather many factors, a constellation in fact (Brown, Tyson, Fernandez Arias, 2022). Each constellation includes factors specific to one of the groups of perpetrators, and the constellation can be viewed as red flags to alert professionals to the danger of potential filicide. Noting such red flags offers opportunities for intervention before a death occurs.