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CHANGE 1996-1997 Annual Report
Convenor’s Report
On behalf of the Management Committee I am pleased to introduce CHANGE’s seventh Annual Report.
In September 1996 CHANGE reached the end of its Urban Programme funding and moved from Stirling University to new premises in Grangemouth. In September too, the CHANGE Administrator, Gaynor Davenport, left to take up a college course and the Management Committee would like to extend their appreciation to her for her cheerful diligence and hard work during her time with us. CHANGE's director, Monica Wilson was granted 9 months study leave to complete a university counselling course. At present (March 1977) Monica is employed by CHANGE one day per week until the completion of her course in the summer. Despite her limited time, Monica has managed to fulfil training commitments to local Criminal Justice Services, to attend conferences and the National Practitioners’ Network and to liaise with other agencies regarding future training contracts.
During the last year, CHANGE 's direction has continued towards training and consultancy work. Monica Wilson and CHANGE's former joint co-ordinator, David Morran, have now completed the CHANGE Practice Manual and we commend them for their dedication in producing such a thorough and comprehensive document.
In October 1996 the Management Committee were pleased to see the publication of the Scottish and Home Office sponsored research study which evaluated the effectiveness of the CHANGE Project, together with the similar Lothian Domestic Violence Probation Project. The results of the research were extremely positive, concluding that the two projects "are more likely than other forms of criminal justice interventions to reduce or eliminate violence and intimidating behaviour".
CHANGE no longer receives a regular income and it has, of necessity, reduced its scale of operation during the last year. However, Monica has worked tirelessly throughout, often helped by Gaynor on a sessional basis, and the Management Committee would like to extend their sincere thanks to her. We look forward to CHANGE’s continued development.
Sue McLaughlin
Convenor
Director’s Report
This last year has been a significant one for CHANGE in that our Urban Programme funding ceased at the end of September and we removed from the University to our present address. Since then we have had no regular source of income.
The first half of the twelve months covered in this Report were spent finalising the Training Manual and fulfilling training commitments to our social work sponsors. This took the form of three one-day awareness-raising sessions on male violence which were offered to all social workers in the three local authorities of Falkirk, Stirling and Clackmannanshire, during May 1996. These were followed by a succession of three intensive 6 day training courses for criminal justice workers over the next three months. This exercise was of great benefit in revising the Training Manual and in refining the training package relating to its use, which is now being marketed more widely to other agencies and authorities.
At the end of September Gaynor Davenport, CHANGE administrator, left to take up further college studies and I was granted 9 month’s study leave to undertake the full-time Diploma in Person Centred Counselling at Strathclyde University. I hope to complete that by summer 1997. In the interim I am working one day a week for CHANGE running the office and planning for the future with the management committee.
CHANGE’s future would appear to be lie in developing its training and consultancy roles. The manual will form the basis for that training and the research findings lend support to the wider development of this type of intervention with men.
As this Annual Report marks the end of seven years Urban Programme funding, we are taking the opportunity to summarise what CHANGE achieved over that time.The text of this year’s Report therefore comprises an overview of that seven years’ work.
Monica Wilson
Director
CHANGE: A Summary 1989-97
Background
The CHANGE Project was established in September 1989 with the central aim of providing a criminal-justice based re-education programme for men convicted of offences involving violence 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.
While the provision of a men’s programme for domestic violence perpetrators was the central goal of the Project, CHANGE was also charged to develop training programmes and educational materials for use by social, legal, voluntary and community agencies; and to raise general public awareness about the nature of men’s violence to women.
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.
Project 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 is 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.
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 of DAIP, 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. 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 Project was 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 percieve 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 with four men. At the time of writing, CHANGE has worked with thirteen groups of men, of varying size, over a period of six years. 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 the local community who are dealt with by the criminal justice system.
Contact with 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 6 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, the impact of the CHANGE men’s programme has been 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 are now published as a research report. 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.’
Wider remit
CHANGE's wider remit has been fulfilled in a variey of ways over the last seven years. The Project has hosted three UK wide conferences, plus an Information Day, an Accounting Day, and a Seminar; all for invited audiences. From the third conference there developed a practitioners' network for those involved in working with men. The network has UK wide participation and continues to meet twice yearly.
The Project Co-ordinators have contributed formal presentations to 17 Conferences, contributed over 30 workshop sessions at conferences and training events, undertaken more than 20 seminars for students in social work, psychology and in-service courses for the police, and delivered 18 training packages, ranging from 1 to 6 days mainly to Probation Staff.
In addition to the Probation based programme, CHANGE has also piloted work for use in prisons and contributed to the work of SACRO's Intensive Probation Project for young offenders based in what was formerly Central Region.
Future plans
CHANGE plans to develop mainly as a training and consultancy agency building on the experience gained from the last seven years. The manual will form the basis for that training and the research findings lend support to such a development.
A charitable company limited by guarantee registered in Scotland No 183989
Scottish Charity No SCO18322
CHANGE acknowledges funding from the Scottish Executive
