CHANGE Men's Programme
The
groupwork programme
CHANGE developed has been documented and published as:
Men who are
Violent to Women: a groupwork practice manual.
Background
CHANGE’s central aim has been to provide a criminal-justice
based re-education programme for men convicted of offences
involving violence or abuse towards their wives or female
partners. The programme aimed to complement the work of Women’s
Aid and others with the survivors of domestic violence by
challenging men to take responsibility for their violence and
offering them an opportunity to change their violent and abusive
ways.
The establishment of the Project represented the outcome of
several years’ efforts by a steering group comprising academics,
activists and other interested individuals committed to piloting
a scheme working with violent men that took its model from best
practice available elsewhere. Largely this came about from
concern that work with men was already happening in other
countries, using a variety of models, some of which gave cause
for anxiety to activists and practitioners in the field of
domestic violence. Such work was likely to be replicated in
Britain, and there was known to be interest from a range of
agencies and individuals. In particular there was concern that
the work should be placed in a criminal justice context and that
it be informed by, and accountable to, women.
Perspective
The perspective which CHANGE adopts on male violence is that it
is intentional, albeit not always conscious, behaviour that men
use to maintain power over and to control women in intimate
relationships. It stems from the historic and cultural legacy of
patriarchy whereby men are socialised into believing they are
superior to and have rights over women.
Institutional responses
Institutional responses to men’s violence had, until relatively
recently, largely served to bolster the belief that violence to
women in the home is somehow different to other forms of
violence; that it is a private matter, not as serious, or is
justifiable in some way.
Prompted by arduous lobbying and campaigning by women’s groups
and their allies, there has been a recognisable shift among
agencies of the justice system to improve their practice in
relation to men’s violence to women. In fairness, many in the
justice system recognised the limitations of their responses but
felt that current measures available had little to offer women
by way of resolution.
Programme goals
The programme that CHANGE was charged to set up aimed to impact
on institutional responses and the wider community, as well as
on individual men. By offering a programme that focused on the
offending behaviour, sentencers had an option that focussed on
addressing violence. By working closely with social workers and
placing the programme in the context of a probation order this
would both signal the seriousness with which such offending was
regarded and offer an opportunity to monitor the offender’s
behaviour while on probation. Emphasising the criminal nature of
domestic violence and placing the responsibility on the man to
change that behaviour would also help to demonstrate to the
community in general that this type of behaviour is criminal and
unacceptable.
Beginnings
The Project originally had three members of staff; two Joint
Co-ordinators; a man and a woman, and an Administrator. A
constitution placing responsibility for the management of the
staff with a Management Committee was drawn up and submitted and
subsequently accepted by the Inland Revenue granting the
organisation charitable status. The Committee was made up of
local people from a range of backgrounds who are concerned with
the issue of men’s violence. In addition an Advisory Group,
comprising representatives of local statutory and voluntary
agencies was formed whose task has been to provide advice and
information to staff and the Management Committee. In 1997
CHANGE became a charitable company limited by guarantee, the
board of which is now the managing body.
For the first six months the focus of the work was on liaising
with other agencies whose co-operation would be required, and
drafting the men’s programme. Firstly this meant holding
discussions and drawing up working agreements with those
agencies. Unlike the acknowledged ‘best practice’ model in the
USA (The Domestic Abuse Intervention Programme of Duluth,
Minnesota), CHANGE did not start in the context of a
co-ordinated community structure for tackling domestic violence.
Indeed one of the Project’s goals was to work towards this with
others involved. Instead the Project had backing from Central
Region Social Work Department who sponsored and supervised it;
support from local and Scottish Women’s Aid and the interest of
one or two key individuals within other agencies of the justice
system. Much time was spent therefore in discussions with Social
Work managers, the Police, Procurators Fiscal and Sheriffs. As
the main referral sources for the men’s programme were to be the
three Sheriff Courts in Central Region, systems for referral and
assessment were agreed and referral frameworks were devised for
Courts’ use. Leaflets providing information for sentencers were
sent regularly to Sheriff Clerks for distribution to visiting
and temporary sheriffs.
Developing the programme
In developing the content of the programme, CHANGE benefited
from the contacts already made by members of the steering group
with model programmes in the USA. The Project was launched by
holding a one-day conference with contributions from Donna
Garske and Hamish Sinclair, from Marin County Abused Women’s
Services, California. This was followed by four days’ intensive
staff training from Hamish Sinclair based on the Manalive Men’s
Programme. The training gave CHANGE staff a basic grounding in
how a men’s programme operates, but the staff were also keen to
learn from other examples of men’s programmes.
Subsequently the CHANGE team was sent to visit three model
programme centres in the USA. During a packed ten day trip the
team visited the Domestic Abuse Intervention Programme, (DAIP)
in Duluth, Minnesota; the Domestic Abuse Project, (DAP) in
Minneapolis, and EMERGE, in Boston. All these organisations were
generous with their time and experience, and freely gave copies
of all sorts of materials, many of which CHANGE drew on or
adapted in developing this programme. Ellen Pence and Michael
Paymar from DAIP were guest speakers at another CHANGE
conference later that year, and undertook three days of workshop
training for CHANGE staff and others interested in this work.
An extensive trawl of the literature on a range of intervention
programmes for offenders, and discussions with those currently
doing or planning similar or related work were then undertaken
as the programme began to take shape. The development of the
programme was also informed by visiting local Women’s Aid
refuges and talking with the women there. As the shape of the
planned programme was sketched out, feedback was sought from
members of CHANGE’s Management Committee and Advisory Group, and
from local Social Work Area Teams.
Programme approach and content
The content and shape of the men’s programme has constantly been
revised over the time it has been used, in the light of
developing experience and evaluative feedback from participants,
but the goals remain consistent. The approach adopted can
broadly be described as cognitive-behavioural in as much as
emphasis is placed on starting from men’s own understanding of
their behaviour and helping them to look at it from another
viewpoint. Emphasis is on challenging attitudes and beliefs -
about self, about men and women’s roles - as they relate to
actions. The expectations men carry as a consequence of their
beliefs about how others, and women in particular, ought to
behave; these root expectations are what men need to confront
and change if they are going to act differently. To do so, this
change needs to be seen to have value; thus men need to weigh
the gains and losses, or relative merits of changing or refusing
to change. In order to change also, men must see that change is
possible, and that it is something over which they have choice.
It is an irony that so many men who feel compelled to exert
control over those around them feel often so little in control
of themselves: instead they often perceive themselves as victims
of others’ actions.
Apart from content, there were a number of other considerations
to be taken account of. In running a court-mandated programme a
percentage of the men referred, despite the fact that they had
agreed to participate, would nevertheless be likely to resist
the ideas and demands the programme made of them. Each session
was organised therefore in such a way as to decrease men's overt
resistance, draw them into undertaking the work of the group,
and gain their compliance and co-operation.
The most efficient and accountable way to organise this work was
in the form of modules. A man had to attend as many sessions as
were necessary to complete all the modules in order to fulfil
his probation requirement with CHANGE. He had to be present in
the group for the didactic presentation of a module, i.e the
‘taught part’. He was required to contribute to any
‘brainstorming’ or other exercise which might follow, and he
also had to undertake homework related to the module concerned.
By April 1990 CHANGE was able to start undertaking assessments
of men’s suitability for the programme. Courts and Social
Workers were informed that the first group programme would
commence as soon as a sufficient number of men was ready to
commence. The first group began in May 1990. It must be stated
that the men CHANGE has worked with during this time have been
exclusively working class and white. This was not out of choice,
but reflects the profile of those who come into the criminal
justice system.
Services to women partners
CHANGE was also charged to build into its work systems to ensure
the safety of women partners and services for them. The Project
has attempted to offer support and to be accountable to women in
a number of ways. These have involved working with other
agencies, notably Women's Aid and Social Services, to develop
materials and working practices. The system evolved over a
period of years, and was informed largely by feedback from women
to the programme and comments from women taking part in the
formal research evaluation.
Evaluation
Although the CHANGE men’s programme was devised drawing upon
what was known at that time about effectiveness, the research
evidence then was skimpy and none related to UK practice. Thus
CHANGE was designed to operate as a pilot programme and has been
subject to a formal research study. Together with a similar
men’s programme piloted in Lothian Region, (DVPP), the impact of
the CHANGE men’s programme was compared with other criminal
justice sanctions such as fines, probation and prison. The
findings of the three year Scottish Office and Home Office
sponsored study were published as a research report (Dobash,
Dobash, Cavanagh & Lewis (1996) Research Evaluation of
Programmes for Violent Men, The Scottish Office Central Research
Unit, Edinburgh). Subsequently the
research findings informed the book Changing Violent Men, by
Dobash, R.E., Dobash, R.P., Cavanagh, K., & Lewis, R., and
published in London by Sage in 2000.
The researchers analysed the elements and processes associated
with change, and there is a notable correspondence between the
goals of the programme and that process. Change in the men was
backed by evidence provided by women partners on the grounds
that theirs’ was more likely to provide a stringent test of any
change.
The report is lengthy and detailed and cannot be reproduced
here, but an important finding for the future of this work is
that:
‘a significant proportion of the
offenders who participated in the men’s programmes reduced
their violence and associated controlling behaviour and
their women partners reported significant improvements in
the quality of their lives and their relationships with
these men.’
