Special Episode: A Safe & Together Expert at Your Side: The Digital Coach and Insight Engine

Most AI in social services promises efficiency and speed. The Safe & Together Institute cares about something much harder: helping practitioners make behaviourally accurate, domestic abuse–informed decisions when the stakes are child safety, custody, and survivors' lives.

In this special episode, Safe & Together Institute cofounders Ruth Reymundo and David Mandel introduce what they've spent the past year building: the Safe & Together Digital Coach and Insight Engine. Developed through SafetyNexus—their technology development company and sister organisation to the Safe & Together Institute—this guardrailed, practice-first AI platform is designed to help professionals apply the Safe & Together Model long after the training ends.

The conversation begins with a moment many practitioners know well. You leave training energised and inspired. Then you return to a desk full of complex cases, competing priorities, limited supervision, and organisational pressures. Suddenly, applying what seemed so clear in the training room becomes much harder.

The Digital Coach is designed to bridge that gap. Acting as an on-demand Safe & Together–trained guide, it helps practitioners map perpetrator patterns, strengthen survivor partnership, document child impact, prepare court-ready communication, practice difficult conversations through private role-play, and work through challenging cases without losing sight of perpetrator accountability.

Ruth also shares the founder story behind SafetyNexus—what frightened her as she watched social-care systems rapidly adopt AI, and why, as a survivor, she believes technology must never reinforce victim-blaming, perpetrator invisibility, or biased decision-making. Together, she and David explain how the platform's guardrails, survivor governance, and practice framework set it apart from generic copilots, transcription software, and "shadow AI" tools.

The episode also explores the Insight Engine, which helps practitioners, supervisors, and leaders identify practice-quality trends, strengthen supervision, measure improvement over time, and better understand the real impact of their work—without replacing professional judgement or turning AI into the decision-maker. Along the way, Ruth and David discuss governance, ethics, worker wellbeing, and why responsible AI should support—not replace—the relationships, critical thinking, and accountability that good practice depends on.

If you're curious about what responsible AI can look like in child protection and domestic abuse practice, listen now, share the episode with a colleague, and let us know what you'd want a digital coach to help you do next.

Now available! Mapping the Perpetrator’s Pattern: A Practitioner’s Tool for Improving Assessment, Intervention, and Outcomes The web-based Perpetrator Pattern Mapping Tool is a virtual practice tool for improving assessment, intervention, and outcomes through a perpetrator pattern-based approach. The tool allows practitioners to apply the Model’s critical concepts and principles to their current case load in real

Check out David Mandel's new book Stop Blaming Mothers and Ignoring Fathers: How to Transform the Way We Keep Children Safe from Domestic Violence.

Visit the Safe & Together Institute website.

Start taking Safe & Together Institute courses.

Check out Safe & Together Institute upcoming events.

Transcript

Ruth Reymundo 1:06

And we're back.

David Mandel 1:07

We're back. Hi.

Ruth Reymundo 1:08

Hello. Hello. Hello.

David Mandel 1:09

Hi. We haven't done one of these in a really long time, I don't think.

Ruth Reymundo 1:14

You mean just you and I? Yeah. Yeah. We have a like a huge interview roster that we've been working our way through. Even some recordings that we're waiting to send out to you all, you know.

David Mandel 1:31

Well, this is quite delightful. I've been listening to some of our older shows where you and I just chatted. I and I'm really happy to be doing one again. So if you're just joining us and you have no idea who we are, welcome. But you just stumbled on us. But we are partnered with a survivor. And I'm David Mandel.

Ruth Reymundo 1:50

And I'm Ruth Reymundo.

David Mandel 1:52

And we are coming to you today as co-founders

Welcome Back And Why Now

David Mandel 1:56

and developers of a new thing. I don't know. A new thing. A new thing. So anyway, and we're coming from Tungus Masako Land is often, but not always.

Ruth Reymundo 2:08

Yes. In the Farmington Valley.

David Mandel 2:11

Yes. It is a rainy, rainy day here, warm and humid, mugy, as my mother used to say.

Ruth Reymundo 2:17

And we're sending our regards to the traditional custodians of the land, past, present, and emerging.

David Mandel 2:26

Right. And before we dive dive into things, you know, if you you're liking this podcast, we're like on season seven. We had 200,000 downloads. Please keep sharing, liking, you know, following us on all your platforms. You know, we're really we didn't think we'd be here seven years later.

Ruth Reymundo 2:43

It's it's a little bit amazing.

David Mandel 2:45

And now we're opening up.

Ruth Reymundo 2:46

And that's thanks to all of you all listening. You know, it's always amazing to me when we get fan mail or when we hear from people around the world that they've been listening to the podcast. And language transcription has made it much easier for people in other languages to also enjoy and benefit from the pod. I think the highlight of my year was doing the podcast in Japanese. That was super, super awesome. What a what an amazing experience.

David Mandel 3:22

One of the highlights for me is when I go someplace and people look around and go, where's Ruth?

Ruth Reymundo 3:28

Yeah.

David Mandel 3:29

Why isn't Ruth with you? And I'm like, and they then they fangirl and I'll make get them to make your little video, or you know, so anyway, I love when people fangirl over you.

Ruth Reymundo 3:39

Yeah.

David Mandel 3:39

So all right. So today's episode is about the safe and together digital coach and insight engine.

Ruth Reymundo 3:53

Yeah.

David Mandel 3:54

It's a mouthful.

Ruth Reymundo 3:56

We learned a lot of words.

David Mandel 3:59

So I'm going to say that again. This is about the safe and together digital coach and insight engine.

Ruth Reymundo 4:05

Yeah. Okay. All right. But in order to explain what it is, should we tell people what it is and then go back into the story of how it came to be? Or describe for them what it is first?

David Mandel 4:20

Uh let me try to paint a picture. Let me try to paint a word picture.

Ruth Reymundo 4:23

Paint a word picture, Mandel.

David Mandel 4:25

Okay. Imagine that you are a child protection worker or

The Problem After Training Ends

David Mandel 4:31

domestic violence worker. And let's say for argument's sake, you've taken the safe and the other training.

Speaker 4:37

Right.

David Mandel 4:37

Okay, a core training four days, and you loved it and you felt filled up and with ideas and practices and how to do perpetrator pattern mapping and pivot to the perpetrator and partner with survivors and multiple pathways to harm, all these things that are that are really central to practicing the model. You leave that training with 39 of your other peers, and you sit down at your desk and your mind is blank. Or you everything that seemed because I've had people say this to me, like it was so clear when I was sitting with you, but then I got back to my desk and I tried to apply it to a case.

Ruth Reymundo 5:17

It was very confusing.

David Mandel 5:17

And it was very confusing. I struggled or how does it work for it?

Ruth Reymundo 5:19

Or my manager or supervisor didn't support me or the organization, though they had paid for the training, that's right. Did not create the environment for that training to really to become the practice.

David Mandel 5:34

Or how does this apply in this situation with this family, with with a mom who's a drug user, or you know, just any of these real life scenarios.

R 5:46

Or how do I explain it to a president officer or how do I explain it to a colleague who wasn't there?

David Mandel 5:51

Or how do I write a letter based on Safe Or Together to uh to a court?

Speaker 5:54

Right.

David Mandel 5:55

And so imagine you you magically could bring me or Ruth or one of our trainers to sit there on your shoulder and to give you guidance.

R 6:06

Sit on your shoulder.

David Mandel 6:07

Sit on your shoulder. We're not that heavy.

R 6:09

That sounds a little heavy.

David Mandel 6:10

Sit by your side.

R 6:11

Sit by your side.

David Mandel 6:12

Sit by your side and and answer your questions. How do I partner with a survivor in this situation? How do I talk to her about her situation without blaming her? How do I identify her strengths? How do I document that? How do I map this case?

R 6:30

How do I how do I map the impact to child functioning and safety?

David Mandel 6:36

That's right. How do I take care of myself emotionally, mentally? How do I deal with the fact that I grew up in a household where my dad was violent to my mom? And this guy reminds me of that that of my father.

R 6:49

How do I deal with the fact that nobody taught me how to work with men as parents? That's right. Particularly, nobody taught me how to work with violent men as parents, and I'm afraid and I don't know how to do it.

David Mandel 7:01

Right. Yeah. So imagine we were, you left the training room and we came with you, and we were there at your side on demand every step of the way, whether you were in the field or in your office, we could look at your case files with you. We could share information, help you understand, and put it into practice.

R 7:23

David and Ruth by your side. David and Ruth by your side, eyeballing your historical case files and flagging where you have gaps in information or where there's victim blaming or there are no perpetrator patterns of behavior.

David Mandel 7:37

That's right. So helping you review case files that came in once upon a time for domestic abuse and now are coming in for mental health and putting the pieces together. Trevor Burrus, Jr.

R 7:47

Or substance misuse.

David Mandel 7:48

Trevor Burrus, Jr.: So for the frontline workers, the digital coach does exactly that. The safety of the digital coach does exactly that. Trevor Burrus, Jr.

R 7:56

Now, how is this different than a lot of the AI-powered tools that are in practice environments right now, particularly in child protection or domestic violence services or mental health and substance misuse services or fit child and family services. How is this different?

David Mandel 8:16

Well, I think we're seeing technology being used and and we're going through breathtaking changes right now. And I think even if you listen to this in six months, this is August

A Coach At Your Side

David Mandel 8:25

2026. If you listen to this in six months or a year, this could be drastically different.

Speaker 8:29

Right.

David Mandel 8:30

But but what we're seeing is a couple of things. People are focusing on things like transcription software.

R 8:36

Magic notes.

David Mandel 8:37

Magic notes would be it was would be one. And and those are efficiency tools.

R 8:42

They're not practicing. They're not practicing. They don't give context.

David Mandel 8:44

They don't give context. They just capture. Right. They they're supposed to speed up the the selling point, and I I want to give it props, is if I have transcription going on while I'm meeting with a

Why Typical AI Tools Fail Practice

David Mandel 8:56

family, I can suppose to be pay attention to the family. And I spend less time writing my notes down. Writing my notes down.

R 9:02

But it doesn't guide you in how to do your practice.

David Mandel 9:05

It does not guide you in practice.

R 9:08

Right. What about Microsoft 365, which we hear a lot of child protection, a lot of child protection agencies have invested in and now are having a lot of trouble with.

David Mandel 9:19

Well, you're talking about copilot, which is sitting inside the Microsoft Suite, and that doesn't have a point of view and a practice point of view, and isn't trained on something like safe and together. And we'll talk about the the digital coach and its details, but but whether it's it's it's magic notes, whether it's co-pilot, or whether it's going out to the web and using Shadow AI. And I love you, you're the one who introduced me to that.

R 9:43

Well, this is actually an industry term. It's called Shadow Tech.

David Mandel 9:48

Shadow Tech.

R 9:49

Where people are using Chat GPT or other GPTs to write their notes and then copying and pasting them and dropping them into their official note-taking documentation environments within places like child protection. And it is really problematic because those note-taking environments have no training around what to do in practice. And if they're pulling practice-based guidance from the web, they could be hallucinating. And also, too, that is not the totality of the Safe and Together model. Whatever you may find on the web, the principles and components, if somebody is taking those and dumping them into a GPT, the GPT is doesn't have the safety, the security, or the guardrails which can be accurate.

David Mandel 10:45

Which is just to be clear for those of you who have access to safety of the material, that it's it's it's illegal to get for the intellectual property rights. Yeah. But what what we're describing here with the digital coach is that it's it's focused on practice. It offers efficiencies. I think it's going to speed up practice.

R 11:05

Yeah.

David Mandel 11:07

But its focus is what we call, and we'll talk about the journey to get here in a minute, safety of the plus plus, right? Which is not available publicly, which is not in the core training. There's so much that's not there.

R 11:19

It's not like we just took the core training and dropped it in there. So day is done.

David Mandel 11:24

We created, it's, it's, it's referred to as a semantic layer, it's it's guardrails, it's it's an intelligence layer that uses large language models to, which is sort of the underlying reasoning that has been so fantastically developed with AI, but all guardrailed, all controlled by the safety of the perspective.

R 11:43

So it's not open to the open web.

David Mandel 11:44

Not open to the open web. So if you try to victim blame on an open AI system like ChatGPT or Copilot. It'll probably it'll go with you eventually. If you keep pushing it, if you keep pushing and putting documentation in this, and we've tried this, you know, and eventually it will make the perpetrator invisible. It will victim blame.

R 12:04

Especially if you accuse the victim of having a substance misuse problem or a mental illness.

David Mandel 12:08

And it'll do it sometimes in a very nice, sort of very like what we see, like very will will appear to be trauma-informed.

R 12:14

Veneer of trauma informed. That's right.

David Mandel 12:15

And be like, well, we should be talking about her and her service.

R 12:17

Veneer of trauma-informed is a real danger.

David Mandel 12:21

Because it's it's out there looking at this biased information. If if many of us know that if you pick up the news, you you look in the web, you're gonna get a lot of biased information about women and about about systems and stuff like that. So the digital coach, what it does, and we're gonna talk about the backstory after we talk about the inside engine. The digital coach is is a safe and together trained person at your beck and call 24-7 at your desk in the field where you can ask questions and get coaching.

R 12:52

So this is where the co-founder thing comes in.

Speaker 12:54

Right.

R 12:55

So we're gonna move from the the product that we're creating and we'll go, we'll talk a little bit about the pilot site that we have. We can't give specifics.

David Mandel 13:03

And the insight engine. We haven't talked about the inside engine yet, but go ahead, talk about the co-founder journey.

R 13:07

Okay. Do you want to talk about the insight engine, the data and analytics first? Okay, go for it. Go for it.

David Mandel 13:13

So so the digital coach, so it's got two names, right? The safety of the digital coach and insight engine.

R 13:21

Because we needed to be complex about it.

David Mandel 13:23

Well, we're trying to solve a lot of problems at once. And so the digital coach is exactly what it sounds. It helps support coaching, role play, checking in with you about your well-being, helping you think through issues, the mapping tool right there at your fingertips to map cases, behaviorally, audit-based, all these things, right? The Insight Engine is a series of dashboards for the user, the frontline worker, their supervisor, their manager, and the administrator to capture themes, use of the tool, how many hours, well-being of the worker and the teams, an audit node that tracks quality of work and lets us look

Inside The Digital Coach

David Mandel 14:03

at quality of work.

R 14:04

So it audits case files?

David Mandel 14:06

If you put it in, if you put it in and it's with permission, just like just like your supervisor now can pick up your case file and look at it. It's all within the context of what's normal practice, right? It doesn't surveil you. Your chats are private, so you can chat on the front side without being surveilled by anybody else.

R 14:25

But it escalates those to them. That's right.

David Mandel 14:27

And and so what we're doing is creating practice quality data and insights into practice quality

The Insight Engine Dashboards

David Mandel 14:34

that do not currently exist anywhere in the world without a tremendous amount of work.

R 14:41

Anywhere.

David Mandel 14:41

And when it's done, it's often done with with a hu at a huge cost in terms of time and people.

Speaker 14:46

Right.

David Mandel 14:46

Part of one-off research projects. This is going to allow us, say, for instance, you to take two of your cases.

Speaker 14:52

Right.

David Mandel 14:53

One from three months ago, one from now, and say, hey, tell me how I've gotten better or what I need to work on. And it'll compare those two cases. Right.

R 15:01

So And it can be it can be regionalized, localized, and it can be integrated with other practice-based and risk assessment models that are being used locally.

Speaker 15:13

Right.

R 15:14

So this sits side by side along with them, takes them into its context, works with the worker around what their what their actions are, what their responsibilities are in the case and the case file and the investigation. And it helps them to do that all with domestic abuse-informed, trauma-informed, and child welfare-informed practice.

David Mandel 15:37

That's right. And so this is for us. We looked at and listened to what people said. We want to embed the model. We want it to be sustainable. We've invested in training. What's next? This is what's next. Right, right. If if we're looking at transformation of systems, it has multi-user mapping, which people have been asking me for for since ever we kind of created the online version of the mapping team.

R 16:07

D1 is going to have something that I love to say over and over again. Interoperability.

David Mandel 16:16

This is a conversation you and I have. It's a word you you introduced to me, and I'm like, interoperability. I even have a hard time saying that.

R 16:24

That's right. Interoperability is really important for multi-risk teams.

David Mandel 16:28

Would you explain what interoperability means?

R 16:30

Interoperability means that this is a practice system, a documentation system that can exist between entities, which means that multi-risk teams can all be mapping the same case at the same time, doing their part and collaborating on a case in the same space. To be able to offer that amount of knowledge and documentation sharing with entities that are mandated to collaborate with each other for the safety and well-being of both adult domestic violence survivors, but also ch children in particular.

David Mandel 18:50

So let's talk about so this is a little bit about the platform. You know, and I think about we use it as a platform, we describe it as a tool. But let's talk about the story behind the story.

Speaker 19:03

Rewind.

David Mandel 19:04

That's right.

R 19:04

Everybody needs to rewind a thing to the pandemic, right?

David Mandel 19:08

Yeah, how do we get here? Because and and as Ruth said, that we're we're equal co-founders, and that's important on a number of different levels. So would you start with kind of from your perspective, the the origin story of this?

R 19:20

Well, I joined you at the institute about eight years ago, I believe it was. Yeah.

Speaker 19:26

Right around there.

R 19:27

Yeah. And, you know, you were a training organization that was making real change. And I traveled with you and I did a lot of listening. I sat in in a lot of interdisciplinary research projects. I think Christy or Patricia was happening at the time that I started working right around there. And and communities of practice was happening in Australia, and I sat in the room and I listened. And I love doing that, by the way, just being a fly on the wall. And I really heard that people in the room across many different siloed sectors and disciplines saying how the model gave them language and tools to do their jobs in a way that they had never had them before, and allowed for them to collaborate and work with community partners and stakeholders in order to really achieve their goals, their mission, keeping children safe, keeping domestic abuse survivors safe. And that practitioners in particular, frontline practitioners, felt not only relief because they'd never been trained in how to do these things, to work with men as parents who are violent, to partner with survivors and get behavioral pattern information about the risk and the dangers, particularly to children and for children, to land those behaviors in real, concrete, multiple impacts to children and their safety, their stability, their permanency, their well-being, and their connection to

Origin Story From The Pandemic

R 21:22

their protective parent, to their kin, to their community. So I was blown away in that first year of just traveling and listening, and I had come from the medical field where I had been training uh medical practitioners in holistic therapies in an environment where insurance heavily mandates what your practice can be. This is in the United States, which is very insurance-driven. And it was and the and the the the spaces that I was training in were just sort of transforming their practice from from manualized paper and pen documentation to computer-based documentation. And it was really rocking people's worlds and making it also difficult for holistic practitioners to practice because now they had to run every single decision through these patient management systems, these patient record systems. And it was a really big lift for people. And having worked in that medical field environment, I knew that patient medical records and medical health record management systems didn't actually improve practice, that you needed a practice layer embedded in those technologies to guide practitioners in how to be trauma informed, in how to work with populations that may have patterns of violence within the medical context, because that's a real thing. Violence against medical workers is a real thing and it's on the rise. And I really got that as the social care sectors began to transform and digitize their practice and put it into AI, we went out and we met a few of those organizations that were doing that, and we saw their internal guts of what they were doing, and it frightened me. I can actually still feel the fear in my body. Because what I what what I saw was them taking historical system actions and a lot of victim blaming focused material and just dumping it into a dashboard and then setting the practitioner loose on this information in a way that they thought was more efficient, but it didn't change the way the information was focused, it didn't change victim blaming. It didn't guide the worker in how to gather more information, patterns of behavior. It didn't tie in the practice layer into the information layer. And it made efficiencies in areas where they were already very dangerous, domestic abuse destructive decisions being made, particularly around child removal and child protection. And that just superpowers bad decisions. And in the United States, we're aware that a lot of early adopters of AI and predictive analytics have been sued because of deaths, child deaths, adult deaths, removals that were based off of biased information. And we also are aware that early adoption in child protection organizations of things like Microsoft Copilot, that investment has led to a lot of liability because of information leaks, because of workers putting protected information into the copilot that they're not supposed to, because they have no practice layer that's secure to have that conversation. And so I was really committed to creating something that would feel very supportive to the workers, to the managers and supervisors,

What Scared Us About AI

R 26:09

to the team leaders, and to the top levels of administration with the data and analytics to prove the ROI of the actions and behaviors of their workers while also supporting the worker through very difficult traumatic work where there's a lot of turnover in the industry. And trying to retain those workers through really good support and really good practice and reducing the cognitive load that they are under daily alone and making of decisions which are really life or death decisions. I did not want workers to feel like they were struggling alone with that. And I wanted the the data and evidence to support their work, but also to reflect back to these organizations what their actual impact is, not what their presumed impact is, not what their impact is based off of very narrow measures, not what their impact is based off of their funding, not what their impact is based off of their board of directors wishes, but what the end user, the family and the children say is the impact, and what the worker says is the impact of them having to do those practices.

David Mandel 27:41

So starting from that experience with medical systems, looking at the safety of the model and seeing the potential around systems change, seeing the pain points of the systems, seeing the limitations of the other things, can can you connect that up to because I know you, know you well in many ways, that inside the story or next to it or behind it or top of it, around it, is also what's important to you as a survivor.

R 28:11

Yeah.

David Mandel 28:12

Can you connect the dots for everybody about what you just said with that part of it? Because that's the part you actually didn't say yet. You said all the like, I want to see that change, I want to see this, I want to see that. I see I want to help workers help families, I want systems to get better practice and not and not reproduce bias. I I see the Safe It Together model approach as a way to do that. Talk about that other level, that other part of it, you know, for the for everybody.

R 28:37

Yeah. You know, as a survivor, I know that that system response and professional response can make the situation a hundred times more dangerous. It can remove somebody's rights, their self-determination, their custody without any recourse. To me, that's a really serious thing. I believe in good evidence. And behavioral patterns that can be gathered and can be proven are concrete evidence. And a lot of our removal decisions are not based off of things beyond system responses. They're not truly based off of the criteria and the factors in the family. And so tying those decision making back to that behavioral evidence, that pattern-based evidence, so that we can really help survivors and children be safe in that context. And we can also reflect back to the perpetrator, their decision making and behaviors, and say, hey, hey man or hey woman, if you want to be a good parent, see these behaviors, these exact patterns of behaviors, this is what needs to change, and this is what you should consider doing in its place. None of that is happening now. Leaving families totally alone and often worse than alone, triangulated by professionals who blame domestic abuse victims and excuse and ignore domestic abuse perpetrators as parents and as partners and co-parents. And I really, really want to see us offer people the help that they need. I believe that it is a kindness to look somebody in the eye and say, you're causing your own pain, these behaviors are doing it, you have an opportunity to change. Let's help you do that. And and really, at the end of the day, there's very few people who are truly doing that practice. Very few people, even in child protection, who are assessing the perpetrator

Survivor Lens And System Harm

R 31:09

and whether or not they're willing and capable of change.

David Mandel 31:13

So with that backstory, I want to tell people where we are in the process of developing this. Because this isn't just an idea. It's actually happening. It's happening right now. Right now. So about over a year ago, Ruth and I sat down, formed another company, a sister company, Safety Nexus. That's kind of a footnote in some sense to the story because Safety Nexus was a is a vehicle.

R 31:41

Development partner.

David Mandel 31:42

Yeah, development vehicle for this safe and together digital coach and insight engine, which which will be available through the Safety Other Institute, is already available through the Safety Other Institute and will be available directly. And we pulled together a very small, lean team.

Speaker 31:59

Yes.

David Mandel 32:01

And we started looking at developing what's called the proof of concept. And we trained it and we programmed it and we developed it, and we created a user interface, all these things that tech, tech, tech, tech words, tech word, tech words, and and then brought that proof of concept out into the world. And what that meant was doing demos with people, often Safety Institute partner agencies, and saying, hey, take a look at this and tell us if you like this.

R 32:31

Play with this.

David Mandel 32:31

Play with it. Play with it. We'd show it to them, give them access for two weeks.

R 32:35

Yeah.

David Mandel 32:35

We'd gather the data on it, we'd analyze the conversations they were having, we'd fine-tune it, we'd keep training it, we'd do more development with it. And we do this all over the world, from Japan to Canada to Scotland, to Australia, to New Zealand. And uniformly, people said to Spain. To Spain, right? We love this. How do we get it? How do we get this? And we're like, wait, wait, wait, we're not even selling. We're not even done yet. We're not even done yet. Like so they're like, no, how can we have this? And they would even start giving us use cases that we hadn't thought about, rural workers and after-hour workers. And could we use this to write a letter to to a lawyer? And could we use this to help with difficult conversations with our supervisor? And answer was yes. Could we could we have this and could we could we set that level of difficulty for role-playing with the perpetrator?

R 33:27

Can we make it culturally specific?

David Mandel 33:28

Can we make it culturally specific? Yes. Can we have this in Japanese?

R 33:32

Yes.

David Mandel 33:32

Yes.

R 33:33

We like to say yes. Yes, we like saying yes.

David Mandel 33:34

We've got a team that says yes.

R 33:36

We have a spirit of generosity. We're going to try to say yes.

David Mandel 33:39

And and so uh many, many conversations,

Proof Of Concept And Global Demos

David Mandel 33:44

analysis, refinement, and then we said, well, we need to really test this further. So we decided to offer a beta pilot period. Now, if you listen to this in in the summer, well, uh this is not summer, everywhere, August of 2026, or you know, or thereabouts, and you hear this, and you've got an organization that might want to be part of a beta pilot. We still have slots open right now. Right now for a brief period of time.

R 34:11

And we'll explain what that means because version one is coming soon.

David Mandel 34:15

Soon. And this is only available for organizations and for the foreseeable future. So again, I'm sorry if you're an individual listening.

R 34:22

Sorry, man.

David Mandel 34:23

Sorry, you know, but your organization can sign up and get on a wait list for V1.

R 34:28

Yeah. Or they can do a pilot.

David Mandel 34:29

Or they can do the beta pilot. So what we did was we put a call out and we had conversations with agencies of all sorts: health, child protection, domestic violence, education. Yeah. And we're right now engaged with the first beta site. We can't tell you who they are. We can't tell you who they are. Sorry. They're child protection agencies. Yeah, they're sorry. And we we just started the customization and localization period. And I'm I'm really proud of us because we're really one of the frustrations is we've done amazingly well. I'm gonna just say this thing too. We have 100 plus partner agencies, 500 plus certified trainers, three major global regions. We do our best to create localized material to support a local application, different populations, different contexts, different legal settings. It's it's super hard. I'll just say that.

R 35:22

And we're also a very small team.

David Mandel 35:24

Yeah.

unknown 35:25

Yeah.

David Mandel 35:25

If you don't know, the institute is like less than 25 people.

R 35:28

Yeah, we are a small team.

David Mandel 35:31

And so for me, there's so much of this platform, the the digital coach and insight engine, that that is like a dream come true. Because we can sit down with this site and other sites and say, give us your forms, give us your policy, tell us your priority issues, tell us what you're concerned about, and we're gonna train your version.

R 35:53

Your local cultural context.

David Mandel 35:55

We're gonna train your version, adapt this to your local context. Now, the next beta site or other customers, they're gonna get their own adapted version. Now we can't guarantee level adaptation later on, by the way. Just want to say this to people.

R 36:09

That's why we that's why we're letting people know about the pilot. Yeah. Because the level of adaptation during the pilot is very high. Yeah.

David Mandel 36:16

Once we create version one, it's gonna be more leaner processes.

R 36:21

We're gonna be able to customize and localize and acculturate, but it's not gonna be as comprehensive. That's right. And it's gonna be different.

David Mandel 36:27

So we can't, we're we know what we're gonna do now. We don't know what the future holds. And so we're doing three months of talking about that, inputting stuff. Talking about governance, and I just want to linger here for a second, because as powerful as as this platform is gonna be, and as powerful as as AI-driven tools are across the board, there's there's something that needs to be said. They're only as ethical and powerful as the organizations and individuals using it.

R 36:59

And the governance.

David Mandel 37:00

The governance. I just was writing a piece on LinkedIn about I won't name the company, software that's tied to license plate reading in the United States for law enforcement. And there was an article written about this, another article is about police officers abusing that technology to stalk women. Stalk women, girlfriends, ex-girlfriends, partners. And while the company that's doing it is is trying, it has said we're sending up these kind of things and audit notes and abilities to check and filters, they're voluntary. So which means that the law enforcement law enforcement agencies have choices about whether they use them, and then when they find how hard they look for transgressions, and then what they do when they when those happen. We know the law enforcement officers abuse power, whether it's it's pointing a weapon at a civilian they shouldn't be, or a partner threatening, using their relationships, using their knowledge of the law, using technology. And then it's up to the departments who employ these folks to manage and govern these things, including the technology. So the same thing's gonna be true for this. We're we're having conversations with the beta site, and we're gonna have how do you use this, how do you guardrail it, how does it fit within your policies, how do you direct your workers to use it, when to use it. Right. And the bottom line is the outputs you own. You own the inputs you own the decisions you own and the outputs you own. The the answers are only as good as what you give it.

R 38:32

Yeah.

David Mandel 38:33

And it's not magic. And and I've been saying to our own team about using AI is you can't take your hands off the steering wheel.

R 38:41

Right. So I want to go back.

David Mandel 38:43

Yeah.

R 38:43

I want to go back. Because that's a lot of technical stuff for people right there.

David Mandel 38:48

Taking your hands off the steering wheel is technical.

R 38:53

Yeah, but it's it's it's so funny because we're creating tech and I'm like the audit nodes and the blah blah blah. Yes.

David Mandel 38:59

The thingy.

R 39:00

The thingy.

David Mandel 39:01

The thingy. You press the thingy and then the this happens.

R 39:04

But the reality

Beta Pilot And Localization

R 39:04

is that even with the proof of concept that we have, which is what we're beginning the pilot with, and as we're working through these pilots, version one is being developed. Even with just that proof of concept, we are getting a lot of data back. You talk a little bit about the data we're getting back.

David Mandel 39:28

What we're finding is that that one of the most common usages people want to afford is coaching. Coaching, particularly about uh interviewing perpetrators. What we're also seeing is that it's people asking for help around difficult conversations with colleagues and peers.

R 39:45

You mean role play?

David Mandel 39:47

Role play, that's right.

R 39:47

Everybody loves a good role play.

David Mandel 39:49

Role play, but but roleplay not in front of a group of your peers. Role playing in private with a coach and computer, where the computer plays the perpetrator or the survivor.

R 39:58

Some people love those role plays in front of their peers.

David Mandel 40:01

I don't okay. I They're concerned. Almost 40 years of leading roleplay. Yeah. What I love is like people say, no, no, I hate roleplays. And then in the evaluations afterwards, somebody will say, I wish there were more role plays. But but but this allows you to practice techniques, it guides you, it gives you feedback, it's really gentle, but it's it's as you know you did this.

R 40:25

You can tell the roleplay if you want to be more difficult. The person you're interviewing to be more difficult or less difficult, or yeah.

David Mandel 40:33

And and it because it's trained in the safety together model, it's gonna keep you focused on perpetrated as parent. It's gonna challenge victim blaming. And so if you're a manager or you're a team leader or you're a minister saying, we're investing in safety together, but but we want reinforcement. We want continuous learning. We want to know, and I'll say this we want a critical friend. And I'll say this to our champions, who have we we've tested it with people who don't know the model, who are passionate champions for years of the model, and they'll look at it and go, I wish I had this when I was a new worker. Somebody said that to somebody who's an AI skeptic said that to us really recently.

R 41:08

Yeah, I wish I had this when I was a new worker.

David Mandel 41:10

You have people, I'll say to them, I want you to really be honest. Do you, as a safety of the champion, somebody's committed to building a domestic abuse-informed organization? Do you feel comfortable leaving the room with the worker with this platform? And they've said yes. And so this is the real-world feedback we're getting, which is what we we want.

R 41:33

Some of the other data that we're getting back is that is that the the digital coach and insight engine is being used to prepare for a lot of meetings, team meetings, multidisciplinary team meetings, and to help the worker to work through different organizational challenges, either internal to their system, talking to their supervisors about a difficult case, or external with community partners and stakeholders. And and one of the things that we know about the model, and this is this has been researched, is that it creates a common language and it creates collaboration and consensus because we can all agree, we hope we can all agree, that children deserve to be safe and together with their protective

Governance And Ethical Use

R 42:28

parent, kin and community, and that perpetrators as parents should be held accountable as parents for their behaviors and harms to their family, and that we should partner with the adult survivor to help keep that child safe. We can all agree upon those things.

David Mandel 42:45

That's right. And this tool, this platform, sits in the sweet spot of the emerging research around AI and social work. And so we're really, Ruth and I read the literature, we're talking to people, you know, Ruth to the early kind of looking into the limitations and problems of predictive analytics, which is really this I love this saying, this Bebo, bias in, bias out. If the data, historical data, which we know is biased based on race, class, gender, other things, if you train a tool on that, you're gonna bias out, which has been the problem.

R 43:21

This bo and then there's vivo, victim blaming in, victim blaming out. Vivo and vivo live prominently in a lot of social care technology right now.

David Mandel 43:32

And what's different with this is it's it's a transparent, like the model, it's a show your work behavioral analysis approach using the model. So it's not going back and saying, oh, we're correlating these decisions before. We're looking at this case based on this framework, saying what are the behavior patterns. And just like in real life, if if I was sitting in your roof or one of our trainers or staff was sitting in you, we wouldn't prejudge this case based on gender, sex, sexual orientation, demographics. We'd say, describe the behaviors.

R 44:06

Describe to us the pattern of behaviors. And so that's what this tool does. That's right. That's what we do.

David Mandel 44:12

So we we step around this bias issue through the power of the Safe and Together model framework, which has been proven through research, through practice, but an uptaken across the globe. And we're bringing it in a way with fidelity and consistency.

R 44:28

And that to me But we're also expanding out just to be very clear.

David Mandel 44:33

Yeah.

R 44:34

From the base of the the trainings and tools that the Safe and Together model has, which is not just the core training. Right, that's right. A lot of training and tools that have either been used in the past, that were retired, that we weren't teaching, audit tools, organizational and system assessment tools, all of these have gone into this, plus plus.

Speaker 44:54

That's right.

R 44:54

Plus trauma-informed practice, plus child welfare-informed practice. You know, and and and if you've worked in child protection or in domestic violence services or social services, you know that there is a severe gap around the words trauma-informed practice and the actual practice of it. That's right. Or the the words child welfare informed practice and the actual practice of it. So we're really trying to close that loop.

David Mandel 45:25

That's right. So one of my favorite parts of the coaching part, the front-end part, which then ties into the inside engine to the data, is the well-being node. And we have these different functionalities built in. So

What People Use It For

David Mandel 45:39

you don't, you don't, you don't, as the user, don't push a button and say, I want to use the well-being node. As it recognizes your patterns of discussion or issues, and with guidance with with for use cases, you know, you can go and say, I'm struggling with this case. As soon as you say, I'm struggling with this case, the well-being node kicks in. The well-being node kicks in and programming there.

R 46:00

I'm very, very proud of the well-being node. I feel like it's my baby.

David Mandel 46:04

And and the well-being node, which Ruth took leadership on, really is meant to attend to the the emotional safety and well-being of workers. Of workers. Because we know that this work is difficult. We know that line between survivors and professional is. Or non-existent.

R 46:24

And perpetrators and professionals. And perpetrators and professionals. That's right. It's real.

David Mandel 46:28

And that that m I know from experience that professionals will say these are some of my most difficult cases.

R 46:35

Yeah.

David Mandel 46:37

And so what we want to do is offer built-in, always-on support, which can really help.

R 46:43

And when we're talking well-being, no, we're not talking something that comes back and says, take a breath, breathe, you know, do circular breathing. Go take a bath. Take a bathroom. That's not what we're talking about. This is this is very organizationally focused well-being. That means what is your role? Yeah. What do you need to do your role? Who who is supporting your role?

Speaker 47:03

Right.

R 47:04

And how can we support you in feeling safe? So if you're about to go as a frontline worker to do a home visit, and you have concerns because you know that there's domestic violence involved and that the person, the home that you're going to, that that perpetrator has threatened to kill police officers or anybody coming to the home, you really need support. You really need well-being support and you need practice support and you need safety support in the moment.

Speaker 47:37

Right.

R 47:38

You're you may be standing outside that door and you may be like, How do I, how do I the perpetrator is home. How do I safely engage with conversing with this survivor while he's in the home? I think the perpetrator is on the other end of the Zoom call. How do I safely

Reducing Bias And Victim Blaming

R 47:56

engage with this person? How do I bring in the perpetrator into the conversation and begin the conversation about their pattern of behaviors and its impact on their children?

Worker Well Being Node

R 48:07

How do I do that? Here's the case information, here's prior statements of that person towards professionals because we have that documentation a lot of times.

David Mandel 48:20

And so what I want to say is, you know, that's often going to be guidance. Remember, this is guidance. This is not decision making. This doesn't tell you what to do. No. It doesn't replace line supervision, reflective supervision, it and all the got the got the guidance and policies of the organization. But what it may say is, you know, that sounds like a really difficult conversation. Have you spoken to your supervisor about it and asked for help?

R 48:47

And it will help give context about how to safely do that within the context of safe and together mindset.

David Mandel 48:52

That's right. And it may say, and if you say, well, yes, but I don't know how to bring it up because I'm worried if I say I'm scared, they're gonna think I can't do my job. Which I which I've heard directly to me. Right. And so it would coach you on how to bring it up to your supervisor. Right. And what I was just listening to data on use of AI and and how how much more people are using, will ask questions of subject matter, online subject matter experts, AI-driven database and stuff like that. Then they'll talk to their supervisors. I think it lets people pre-digest. Yeah. It lets, and I think it actually my goal, this is my goal, one of my goals, which is to elevate those human conversations, not replace human-to-human contact, whether it's with families or or with your colleagues. But but you can come with the mapping tool already done in this platform and say, I've seen these things. How do we want to deal with them? Or you come having practiced the conversation to make you more successful. So we're really looking. I'm really, I want people to hear this. I think because people get afraid it will we'll hear this. Is it gonna replace the the our certified trainers? No. Is it replace supervision? No.

R 50:06

But it but exactly But it will give supervision context.

David Mandel 50:10

It will make it more powerful.

R 50:13

Yeah.

David Mandel 50:13

It will make it, it will make it more useful. We know time is precious, and so imagine that you get to pre-work these things with with this platform. Right. And go into a meeting more prepared. You can even say, how do we prepare for this meeting? That's who's gonna be there. Right. And and how do I say to this person who says that's not important? How do I help them understand it's gonna be important?

R 50:37

It's really interesting. We I was looking at some some transcripts and and there was right now we can see the specifics of the transcripts and the proof of concept. So we're telling everybody don't put a not don't put sensitive information. You get your if we send you the proof of concept to play with, don't put sensitive information into it. All of the things we can see with the version one, we won't be able to see those. It will escalate things to themes, pre-agreed upon themes that that that we'll you know we'll be able to see. But one of the conversations was actually with a an education worker, and they were frustrated because they were they were working with a child where the other education organization was really doing bad practice around communication with the mom and the dad, and it was causing a lot of danger. It was causing agitation, it was inflaming the perpetrator, and it was putting all the pressure on the mom. And so there was conversations about how do I help this school, this this very specific person in this educational setting understand that they have to do it differently in this case, and how do I support them in that? And these may seem like small conversations, but two survivors two survivors, an institution like a school or child protection or a child and family service communicating in a way which supports or inflames a perpetrator is extremely dangerous and extremely common. And it puts a lot of impediments and challenges in the way of that family and often incites further coercive control and violence against that child and that adult survivor.

David Mandel 52:36

So what we're hoping to do is putting the hands in these individualized circumstances because the training gives you the concept, the training gives you if you could do the core training, but the coach helps you apply it in the moment to specific circumstances, help you build up skills, help you, help you think about this, help be a critical thinking, a safe together trained critical thinking partner. How do I do this? How do I have this conversation? Can I role play it? Can I practice it? I mean, it's it's actually very eager. It offers things for you. It's very eager to offer you help. So let's wrap up by just saying if you're listening in in in August 2026 or or soon afterwards, that we have still have a few beta slots open. And and what all you need to know at this point is we can do it with 20 people in an organization, we can do it with 50 people in an organization. It's it's a time limited, no more than six months, we would engage you. You know, so so if you're interested, reach out to us, keep an eye on our website.

R 53:39

Yeah. And you can also reach out to us to to play with the proof of concept right now and get a little taste of it. Once we come out with version one, there it will be customizable and and localizable and you know, and culturizable, culturizable, twistalizable, whatever you like. It's not a word. I mean I can make of words. Um but it's it is going to be different. Right now, the beta pilot sites are really helping us. We're learning through the beta pilot sites, and they are setting the framework for version one. And those beta pilot sites that are participating with us do get a 20% discount on the first version.

David Mandel 54:26

Right.

R 54:27

Yeah.

David Mandel 54:27

So for me, just to kind of wrap up my perspective on it, is is this about creating transformational value. You know, I think you and I have have really, you know, have our sights set on on creating real change for organizations that impacts families, that keeps kids safe and together, that embeds and solidifies in ways that are measurable.

R 54:59

Measurable.

David Mandel 55:00

Measurable. And we're going to talk more about measurable in future future discussions. Measurable in a way that it hasn't before, that safe and together is keeping kids safe and together, that that workers are using it. Right. That it is may affect and reduce attrition and reduce turnover, which is very expensive. You know, you know, $50,000 US, let's say that number per worker is a is a nice kind of you know number to kind of throw around is or reducing out-of-home care is is saving, you know, thout tens of thousands, if not hundreds of hundred thousand dollars per kid. Yeah. You know, and we really want to start measuring that because once we start tying this data in the practice tool and the dashboards

Measuring Real Impact And Closing

David Mandel 55:43

to this other data systems have, I think the sky's the limited understanding, the impact we're having.

R 55:50

Yeah.

David Mandel 55:50

Anecdotally, we believe it. We have processed.

R 55:54

And I'm not just interested in the impact we're having. I'm interested in the impact that organizations are having on children in the world. That's right.

David Mandel 56:01

Well, that's that's what that's what I'm saying. That through through them, like that that kid, but but also in this new era that's coming, yeah, no longer should funding metrics, board of directors metrics, and mandates be the only measure of employment. No, no.

R 56:23

That's that is not acceptable. And so we are reaching for real impact. What is your real impact?

David Mandel 56:32

And get to those families. And I I guess I'm speaking to the part that when I say value, the pragmatism that if we want organizations to invest in this, to engage in this, to deepen, they have the right to know that safety other is making a difference. Absolutely. And then together we define that difference isn't just retention of workers, worker satisfaction. That's important.

R 56:54

Worker safety.

David Mandel 56:55

Worker safety. But that kids are staying with families. Yes.

R 56:58

Safely. Safely.

David Mandel 56:59

With kin and communities.

Speaker 57:01

Yes.

David Mandel 57:01

You know, that we're helping those perpetrators who are willing to be helped be better parents.

Speaker 57:05

Yeah.

David Mandel 57:06

Safer parents. That that we're helping people understand the complexity of substance use and mental health and domestic abuse and deal with those that complexity well.

R 57:15

That we're identifying the perpetrators who are incapable or unwilling of change and are very dangerous.

David Mandel 57:22

And and putting those guardrails on them and make and giving the documentational language and support to communicate to courts that have the power to law enforcement that have the power to say this is the person who's creating the harm. Yeah. And this is and and for us, that's what this is about. So keep your eye out. This is the beginning of our communications around this. Safing together, digital coach, and inside into. And you'll hear the word safety next in the background.

R 57:50

It's just a safety next is the company David and I created to develop this.

David Mandel 57:54

That is that is you know has survivor governance at the top.

R 57:58

Right at the top. Right at the top. Right at the top, baby.

David Mandel 58:01

And I'm really excited about that. And you'll be learning more and we'll be talking more. And stay tuned. So with that, with that, we are we wait, you need to know I gotta do the commercial. Check out our website, safety of the instrument.com. Check out our our website, SafetyNexis. That's right, to check out that. And follow us on social media, share, do all those things that we do when we when we kind of wrap up. And with that, we're out. We are out.