CHANGE 1994-1995 Annual Report   Convenor’s Report On behalf of the management committee I am pleased to introduce the fifth Annual Report of the CHANGE Project. The Project continues to offer the men’s programme as a service to the three sheriff courts within Central Region. In 1994 the management committee recruited two sessional workers to help run the group sessions. Once these workers had completed a period of intense training the co-ordinators were able to take time out from the groupwork, which they had undertaken constantly for five years, to concentrate on developmental work on the long-term future of the Project. The co-ordinators have sustained and consolidated their skills in consultancy and training, areas vital to the survival of the Project when current funding ceases. The evaluation feedback from course participants verifies their continued development in this field. Other interesting developments have been the provision by the Project of a modular course for inmates of a local prison and the setting up, in partnership with other agencies, of a support group for women partners of men on the programme. In the last year two high profile media campaigns have sought to change the public’s perception with regard to domestic violence nationally. The Scottish Office funded a television and poster campaign focusing on domestic violence, and in Central Region the Zero Tolerance Campaign included domestic violence along with other forms of male abuse. CHANGE, along with other agencies, was consulted with regard to both these campaigns. In November 1994, Dale Hurst, a community psychologist from Melbourne, Australia, gave a talk in which he discussed the results of media campaigns in his locality. The research he quoted evidenced that real changes in people’s perception of domestic violence can be achieved when campaigns are carefully targeted. Staff and members of the management committee have continued to plan for the cessation of Urban Programme Funding in September 1996. This work is difficult and complex as, like many others, we find ourselves operating in a context of uncertainty due to local government reorganisation. Despite this we retain a strong commitment to a continuation of the work which we view as valuable and necessary. Finally, as I come to the end of my term as convenor, I would like to thank David, Dorothy, Monica and the members of the management committee for their support. I wish my successor well and hope they find the role of convenor as challenging and rewarding as I have.   James McCormick Convenor The CHANGE Project The CHANGE Project was established in September 1989 following the committed work of a number of individuals from Women’s Aid and the legal, academic and social work professions, whose efforts had been successful in securing Urban Aid Funding through the sponsorship of Central Regional Council Social Work Services. The main aims of the Project are to deliver a criminal justice based re-education programme for men who have been violent to their wives or female partners, to encourage collaborative interagency practice over domestic violence, to offer training and consultancy to other professionals working in this area and, through publications, the holding of conferences and contributions to other conferences, to raise general awareness of the issue of domestic violence.   Staffing and Management CHANGE is staffed by two co-ordinators and an administrator. From September 1994 two sessional group workers have been employed. Staff are responsible to a management committee comprising individuals who are concerned to achieve the goals of CHANGE. A Constitution lays down the objectives and functions of the organisation. Management committee meetings are held on a six-weekly cycle. In addition, an Advisory Group comprising representatives of local statutory and voluntary agencies meets occasionally to provide advice and information to the management committee.   The CHANGE Perspective on Men’s Violence CHANGE’s position is that men's violence towards their female partners stems from a fundamental inequality in the male/female relationship which is rooted in patriarchy, and engenders men's need to secure and maintain power and control in relationships. From this perspective men's abuse of, and violence towards, women is seen as learned and intentional behaviour rather than the consequence of individual pathology, stress, alcohol abuse or the fact that he lives in a 'dysfunctional relationship'. Traditionally, men have been assumed to have the right to exercise power and control over women and children, both in general terms as well as in personal relationships. Ultimately, the wider responsibility for solving the problems of family violence relies upon a change in social attitudes and in the way in which our institutions respond to these manifestations of male power. Within this context, programmes for men who abuse women are viewed only as one aspect of a wider responsibility for society to change. Referrals to the Men's Programme During the last year CHANGE has come to be used increasingly regularly by local courts, being requested to undertake assessments at one stage at the rate of one man per week. CHANGE staff felt gratified that such a referral rate demonstrated that the confidence of the courts has apparently continued to grow. By late spring 1994 three separate groups were being run, one in the afternoon to accommodate those men working shifts, and two in the evenings. However, faced with this continuing demand for assessment and the associated work of the programme the co-ordinators, in discussion with CHANGE management committee and Central Region, felt it necessary to request a temporary freeze on court referrals during the summer months, generally a time of lower rates of referral. Courts were notified fully of CHANGE's reasons for doing so and kept regularly informed as to when the programme could resume. By September, two of the three groups which had been run over the summer were coming to a close and two sessional workers had been brought on board to assist in the direct running of the men's groups. CHANGE informed courts that they were able to resume conducting assessments later that month and indeed these quickly returned to the steady rate experienced earlier. The presence of sessional staff with whom CHANGE co-ordinators co-worked throughout the autumn allowed the co-ordinators the space necessary to stand slightly back from the direct work being undertaken in order to refine and improve various techniques and approaches used to engage with the men as well as commencing the long discussed task of undertaking the development of the manual which continues apace. CHANGE has sought since the beginning of the Project to be accountable to the various other agencies with whom we are involved in improving practice in relation to domestic violence. One way we have done so and which has possibly helped us gain the active co-operation of sentencers has been by communicating clearly with them not only through providing explicit assessments, but also by offering feedback directly to sentencers on each man who has completed the CHANGE Programme. Independent Research Report In addition to our own monitoring of men's progress and reports to social workers and sentencers CHANGE has been subject to independent research which has been jointly funded by the Home and Scottish Offices. We look forward to that report being published sometime in the autumn of 1995.   Feedback from programme participants In September 1994, two men who had recently completed the programme agreed to be interviewed on videotape about their experience of it and the impact it had had on them. They both gave their permission for the video to be used for CHANGE's conference and training work. Some of the sound-track is transcribed below. All names have been changed to protect confidentiality.   Q. What were your early impressions of the programme? John: At the beginning I thought this was the easy way out, you know. I thought they can't really get on to me; I've only hit my wife once. That was the only time I was violent at all to her. But after the first few weeks and that; and after the definition of the word violence - you cut it down to cover not just physical, but mental and everything - I realised it did apply to me. It was just the first few weeks that I felt the programme didn't apply to me. Q. The time we introduced the Power and Control wheel, that made a big impression on you . What was it? John: It had all the definitions on it, and the definitions were defined, and that made it even more interesting to me. Like 'play mind games', 'emotional blackmail', all that. And as I went round it I thought, I've done every single one of them - in the past, like, you know - I've used all of that against my partner. At the time of doing them, I didn't actually realise I was doing them. Like - I'm using 'mind games' again because that's one form of abuse I used - and I thought, aha, I've done that. But at the time, to me it was a joke. But after realising it is abuse, I thought, you know, I wasn't such a nice character. I mean, I was cruel to Mary. Q. What stuck out for you Alex? Alex: Timeouts. Q. Tell us about it. Alex: Before I was even on the CHANGE programme it felt, well, if we had an argument or a blow-out, then it could get nasty. Then I came onto the CHANGE programme and found out about the Time-outs, at first it kind of sounded like an excuse when anything got difficult. I had to try to help my partner understand it wasn't just an excuse for me to walk out and get away from the situation; it was taking time for to let the situation calm and to let your mind clear about exactly what was going on. If you're in the middle of a heated argument, then things get said and you forget about what you started arguing about in the first place. But taking a Time-out gave you time to think about how the argument started, and look at where it's went to; from nothing into really something. If you took about an hour to go out, and then go back to the house. Well, it depended on how your partner was feeling. If you'd cooled down and she was wanting to maybe talk, then you could listen and hear what she had to say. Well, it worked for me. Q. What other things stuck in your mind from the programme? Alex: Communication. Communication has improved one hundred per cent. Before the CHANGE Programme, any problems I just wouldn't talk about them. Through the homework I learned to be able to let my problems out, and not bottle them up, and thereby put pressure on myself. It allowed me to control myself - talking about problems that were arising not just from me, but from Susan, and in-laws, and work and money. I could talk and Susan could talk to me, and I could listen. It really gave us an area in our life that we hadna really had. We'd talked before, but no like we talk now. If there's something bothering Susan about me she comes towards me and tells me and I try to do something about it. If there's something bothering me about Susan then I'll tell her. And that's how we deal with all our problems now. John: What stuck in my mind was 'Self-talk'. What I said to myself when a situation arises. And also the 'Early Warning Signals', recognising them and being able to put the lid on them before it gets to the stage where I do blow. Q. Did the programme affect other areas of your life? John: As the programme went on I realised that what I was learning didn't just apply to me and my wife. It was the same in my whole life - with family, friends and strangers. I was like that all the time. What I was learning was useful not just for the way I had treated Mary but I was using it with ordinary people - in the street and the rest of it. Alex: A lot of the things that Susan did or said that really got me going; I don't even notice them now. They don't upset me now. Q. Why did they before? Alex: Cos I was pretty crabbit; bad tempered, a grumpy old sod. I was bad tempered. The slightest thing set me off. There were things I felt that Susan should have been doing that I was annoyed that she wasn't doing them. But at the same time there was a lot of things about the house that I wasn't doing. Before, I sort of divided it up. I work and Susan looks after the child, the house and everything. But now I take more responsibility. As far as my daughter's concerned, I spend a lot more time with her than I used to. Like housework, I haven't really taken all the housework away from Susan, but I've started doing,.. well, maybe not my fair share, not quite, but more that I did. Q. Does that bother you? Alex: It bothers me less. Before I'd come home from work and think 'she hasn't tidied up, the bairn's toys are lying all around.' But now I'll either come in and tidy them up myself, or leave them. See, before, I'd come in and slump down in front of the telly and sit and watch the telly, not taking an interest in anyone that was around me. When I come in now we talk. We talk all about my work, what happened today, or about Susan's day, or the wee one; whether she's been bad or good. So there's these things I'm more interested in now than the floor being tidy. That doesn't bother me in the slightest.   Partner Work This year has seen more developments in our efforts to provide information for the partners of men on the programme and to accommodate their needs. Working jointly with Social Work Services and with Clackmannan and Falkirk & District Women's Aid, the four information leaflets under draft at the time of writing last year's report are now finalised and in use. These contain brief summaries of the work the men are doing as they progress through the curriculum, and the leaflets are sent out at spaced intervals of four to six weeks. Together they form a picture of the whole programme content. In addition we successfully set up a special meeting to which partners of men just starting the programme were invited to meet each other and a representative from each of the three organisations involved in this work. This came about due to some women in the past saying that they wished there had been such an opportunity for them. All the women welcomed this initiative and attended this meeting. Attempts to follow this with subsequent meetings for this group proved unpopular, largely for practical reasons to do with women's commitments. In future all partners of men beginning the programme will be offered the opportunity of such a meeting.   Prison-based work During the early part of this year CHANGE, working in co-operation with a small group of prison officers, set up and ran a seven week course for a number of prisoners in Glenochil Prison. Entitled 'Resettlement and Relationships', this pilot programme worked with a group of eight prisoners. The group looked at the various family and partnership problems which can arise as a result of imprisonment and also concentrated on how men themselves make many of these worse due to the various pressures which they put on their partners. Focusing on themes such as 'gender training - pressures on men, pressures on women’; ‘men and emotions - rules and anger’; and ‘power and control in personal relationships' was sometimes uncomfortable for the men in the group. It required them to face up to some aspects of their behaviour which in prison often go unacknowledged, such as the use of telephones not simply to maintain contact, but to bully or control partners. Despite this a number of the participants commented that they had found the group helpful in getting them to re-examine some of their fundamental expectations about being a man and how men should treat women. Tommy: “To communicate with your partner, your partner has got to have an opinion. In my house my wife never had an opinion." Q. Why was that? Tommy: “Because I never allowed her to have an opinion. I didn't think that any of her ideas could be sensible. I can think of many occasions where she's tried to put an opinion over and my defences went straight up." Following the pilot, a report has been prepared providing direct feedback to Glenochil. This has been a valuable experience for CHANGE, enabling the further development of training for prison officers interested in this field and in other forms of groupwork, as well as allowing us to adapt and introduce similar 'resettlement and relationship' courses in various other prisons and young offenders institutions both in Scotland and beyond.     Dale Hurst Seminar One visitor to the Project over the last year was Dale Hurst, a community psychologist from Melbourne, Australia, who was then travelling extensively on a Churchill Fellowship studying and comparing programmes for men throughout the USA, Canada and Europe. During his whistle-stop tour, Dale gave CHANGE staff a fascinating talk on his direct work with men in Melbourne, who were referred to him both through courts and health centres. He also advised us of a large upturn in men's apparent concern about their use of violence which followed a public awareness campaign entitled, ‘Violence is Ugly’. As Central Region had at that time recently commenced their Zero Tolerance campaign and the Scottish Office was screening a television advert proclaiming the criminality of men's violence, CHANGE invited Dale Hurst to undertake a seminar to a formally invited audience here in Stirling. The basis of Dale's presentation was that while men need to be confronted with violence through initiatives such as criminal justice-based men's programmes, there also needs to be provision for the large majority of men whose violence never reaches the courts. The well-known concerns about 'voluntary' programmes, namely that they have a high attrition rate and that they tend to deal with men only when they are in crisis and then lose them thereafter, were not borne out in Melbourne said Dale. “For example, our research indicates drop out rates of some 27% compared to rates of 50-70% in many mandatory groups overseas. We are also identifying that these men who drop out are higher drinkers, and have lower education than those who complete programs. We now know that despite many men being initially mainly interested in just ‘getting her back’, with better assessment and engagement techniques, many of these men can be effectively engaged in working on their issues. This is a relatively new area of development in this work.” The reasons for this appear to be threefold. Within the state of Victoria there was a broad based government campaign which involved many elements of the media and which targeted men to think more deeply and to take responsibility for their behaviour; women not to put up with it; and the community not to turn a blind eye. There were also on-going attempts to ensure the criminal justice system was more responsive to the safety needs of women and that services were more co-ordinated. There had also evolved a statewide network of services for men who were concerned about their behaviour and were willing to seek help to change. This network was ideally positioned to be able to respond to the increased demand by men seeking services as a result of the ‘Violence is Ugly’ campaign. The general effect of the above was that men sought out services in large numbers (e.g. 500 men responded to some newspaper advertisements and wanted to change their violent behaviour). Dale's seminar and presentation of the 'Violence is Ugly’ videos was well attended. Fifty guests representing various voluntary and professional backgrounds, including academic staff from Stirling University, the judiciary, police, social work, psychiatry, the Scottish Office, as well as Zero Tolerance and local authority officers and politicians, took part in the lively debate which followed afterwards. Dale's seminar topic and the findings he referred to will be the subject of a full report on which he is presently engaged. CHANGE maintains a regular correspondence with him meantime. Teaching, Training and Conferences We continue to have teaching commitments for social work and psychology students. This year we added training of prison officers to our experience, contributing to the first of what we expect to be a series of training courses at the Scottish Prison College at Polmont. Despite a decision not to actively seek outside training engagements this year, two were undertaken. Firstly we were pleased to be invited back to South Yorkshire Probation Service to undertake a further two-day training for Probation staff on working with domestic violence offenders. This enabled us to refine the training programme in a way which took account of the evaluation comments received from the year before. Some comments from this year's evaluation are printed here.    A 1. What did you hope to gain from the training days? That the work can be positive and the ideas given can be taken forward and used within our own workplace. 2. Were the days successful in these terms? Yes. All of the work I feel I wanted was covered. 3. How do you plan to make use of the training in your work? On a one-to-one basis, as domestic violence appears to be on the increase in terms of PSRs (Pre Sentence Reports).   B 1. What did you hope to gain from the training days? Information about CHANGE, your perspective, approach and history. Practical information about how to go about work with men. 2. Were the days successful in these terms? Yes. You've shared lots of experience which has been very useful. You gave a lot of ideas, background and methods of working with men, with lots of examples of how to do this, what the dynamics will be and potential problems. I felt your training is 'hot off the press', i.e. very close to the work you're doing and fed by it. Very well informed and valuable for us. 3. How do you plan to make use of the training in your work? It has deepened my understanding. It's another building block to setting up work here. You've been very accessible and respecting trainers.   C 1. What did you hope to gain from the training days? Increased knowledge about working with perpetrators of domestic violence, particularly group work which I know there is a need for. Practical ideas and tools for one-to-one work. 2. Were the days successful in these terms? Yes. I came in cynical about the training due to past experience but am leaving with increased motivation, some ideas, a lot of questions and some well formed plans for the next steps. Although a fast and furious two days, I found the input and exercises clear and useful.   3. How do you plan to make use of the training in your work? I feel I have increased my skills for one-to-one work and formed plans for developing group work.   The other engagement was an invitation to the Channel Island of Jersey. The visit combined a day's training for the island's probation team on working with domestic violence offenders and an invitation to address a planning conference called to develop and co-ordinate a range of responses to the issue of domestic violence. The two-day conference was the culmination of a year's planning by the Jersey Network to Prevent Abuse and Violence in the Home. This is an inter-agency forum with representation from, among others, the police, the justice system, probation, the health service, the education service, the Children's Office, the women's refuge and the Samaritans. CHANGE was one of three mainland organisations invited to share their experience with around one hundred islanders, the others being the co-ordinator of a West Yorkshire women's refuge, and The Geese Theatre Company.                  A charitable company limited by guarantee registered in Scotland No 183989             Scottish Charity No SCO18322          CHANGE acknowledges funding from the Scottish Executive