Designing for Safety: Preventing Domestic Abuse in Products & Services
Adapt your design, processes & safeguards to better protect users
From banking and general insurance to utilities, telco, tech and government services – abusers exploit loopholes across every sector.
This complimentary seminar introduces the hidden risks embedded in common platform and service design. It will outline the risks built into platforms, products, and systems – from identity verification and account access to data visibility and customer workflows.
Participants will learn how design choices can unintentionally enable abuse and harm, and how teams can identify red flags, strengthen safeguards, and embed safety-led thinking into products and operations.
Because when we design for safety, we don’t just prevent abuse. We disrupt it.
Attend this complimentary seminar to understand why recognising technology-facilitated abuse is essential for anyone involved in designing or delivering products, services or digital systems. You’ll learn how your platforms may be unintentionally enabling monitoring, control and harm.
What to expect
The support and guidance of an expert who has created blueprints across multiple sectors and services that are designed to disrupt harm and abuse
Walk away with a toolkit of resources to implement in your organisation
Learn how to minimise threats by anticipating, detecting, and eliminating harms before they occur
Alter your design ethos to invest in risk mitigation at the front end and embed user protections
Catherine Fitzpatrick, Founder & Director, Flequity Ventures
Catherine Fitzpatrick unmasks and disrupts financial abuse – exposing how domestic
abusers weaponise everyday products and advising governments, regulators and
businesses internationally on how to close the loopholes.
A former bank executive turned social entrepreneur, she pioneered financial safety by design after uncovering widespread abuse in online banking and leading industry-wide reforms to stop it.
Her Designed to Disrupt® reports and Respect and Protect™ campaign have driven world-first reforms across more than 10 sectors to ban product misuse and make 20 million customers safer.
Catherine Fitzpatrick
Catherine Fitzpatrick unmasks and disrupts financial abuse – exposing how domestic abusers weaponise everyday products and advising governments, regulators and businesses internationally on how to close the loopholes.
A former bank executive turned social entrepreneur, she pioneered financial safety by design after uncovering widespread abuse in online banking and leading industry-wide reforms to stop it.
Her Designed to Disrupt® reports and Respect and Protect™ campaign have driven world-first reforms across more than 10 sectors to ban product misuse and make 20 million customers safer.
A recognised global expert, Catherine is Adjunct Associate Professor at the University of New South Wales School of Social Sciences and co-founder of the One Generation business alliance against domestic abuse with not-for-profit Thriving Communities Australia. Her award-winning work challenges leaders to rethink risk and redesign for safety – because if you can map customer journeys, you can map misuse journeys too.
Key Takeaways
Understand how your product or service can be co-opted to enable coercive control and abuse
Spot high-risk system vulnerabilities before they cause customer harm
Gain practical safety-by-design actions relevant to your sector
Improve internal processes for responding to technology-facilitated abuse
This Seminar is for:
Banks, Utilities, Telco, Tech & Insurance Teams: Staff responsible for accounts, billing, hardship, alerts, access controls, and vulnerability & customer safety.
Product, UX & Service Designers: Designing platforms, tools or services that could be misused by perpetrators of coercive control.
Risk, Compliance & Fraud Professionals: Identifying and mitigating misuse of financial, digital, or service products in abusive relationships.
Safety, Security & Trust Teams: Developing policies, safeguards, and monitoring systems to prevent FDV-related harm.
Policy, Legal & Regulatory Teams: Embedding protections against coercive control and financial abuse in terms, codes, and standards.
Community & Support Organisations: Advising or advocating for victim-survivors, and understanding systemic risks in everyday products.
FDV Practitioners & Caseworkers: Supporting victim-survivors and families; understanding technology- and product-facilitated abuse.
Leaders & Decision Makers: Ensuring organisational accountability and embedding FDV-aware safety principles in product and service design.
This seminar is designed for professionals whose work intersects with family and domestic violence and who want to understand how products and services can facilitate abuse.
Agenda
Acknowledgement of Country & Opening remarks
Seeing the Hidden Harms
- Understand how everyday products and systems become tools of monitoring, control and harm
- Explore how design features can unintentionally enable abuse
- Recognise why spotting misuse matters—and why product teams play a critical role in safety
- Identify red flags in identity, access, notifications, data visibility and customer workflows
- Understand the mindset of abusers and how their tactics parallel scams and fraud
Designing to Disrupt – Practical Actions
- See the risk, fix the flaw, set the tone
- Explore proven interventions—real-time blocking, behaviour monitoring, safety terms and platform accountability
- Understand how industry-wide change is happening and what it means for teams, customers and safety outcomes
Extended question time
Close of seminar
Your live attendance is required for this event – recordings will not be made available. If you are unable to join us this time, stay tuned for details about our next complimentary seminar.
Encourages growth in knowledge on the topic and encourages introspective thinking.”
Kane Barker
Practitioner, Miwatj Health Aboriginal Corporation, December 2024
The seminars I have attended are insightful, relevant, and proactive in promoting positive and sustainable change. Presenters have been what I can only describe as powerhouses.”
Carolynne Fisher
Specialist domestic and family violence practitioner, ACT for Kids, Domestic and Family Violence Seminar Series 2024
This was one of the most engaging, insightful webinars I have attended for a long time. Timely, with the incredible complex experiences of families that we see daily, humanising, and a wonderful blending of evidence-based frameworks with practical implementation. Thank you!”
Rebecca Duggan
Team Leader, Family Life, Domestic and Family Violence Seminar Series 2024
This was amazing and insightful. Thank you for such well-presented and thought-provoking content.”
Yvonne Hunter
Men’s Behaviour Change Case Manager and Facilitator, Gateway Health, December 2024
Thank you for a wonderful event. I left inspired to see the unity and focus on the systemic changes required to address FDV. And I loved the depth of the information.”
Marina Pullin
Chairperson, Here for Good Foundation, May 2025
The webinar I attended was incredible. Very rich yet pragmatic.”
Samuel Cameron
Clinical Nurse, QLD Health, Domestic and Family Violence Seminar Series 2025
This was a brilliant and nuanced training to assist me in my work.”
Julia Packard
AOD Counsellor, Domestic and Family Violence Seminar Series 2025
Related Events
