CCChat April 2025.pdf - Flipbook - Page 13
This is a conversation that needs to be had.
With domestic abuse, the emphasis tends to be
on high risk, which is important, because that is
where the greatest danger lies, where there is
risk to life, but there is hardly any help for
coercive control at the lower end of the
continuum, where the behaviour is wrong,
where the perpetrator wants tools on how to
change, or the victim needs information on how
how it can escalate. It seems to consistently be
written off as a toxic relationship where people
shouldn’t be together.
So, they don9t have to admit that they are being
awful before they come onto the programme,
because they might not know they are and if we
start off shaming, we are not going to engage with
them. Before I finished writing the programme, I
went to speak to some women9s groups and asked
the women what do you think would have
happened if you had been offered this programme
when he said that he wanted to change? So, the
first thing they said to me was that he wouldn9t
come and, actually, that9s not true. We have hugely
high retention rates on this.
What risk level are the men assessed at?
From high to low. A lot of them are high. No one
has ever worked with them like this before. No one
has ever said come along and we9re going to give
you some education about it. No one9s ever done
that. With most participants, the kids are on the
register. Most of the families are safeguarded. We
engage them and I said, anyway, if he didn9t come,
what would that have said to you? And they said
8well he didn9t want any help, did he?9 and they all
said that they might have got out earlier, so that9s
a win.
My view, when we started this, was that if no one
completes this, I don9t care because what happens
is we will have made the women safer. We9ve given
them an opportunity to understand what9s going on
and given them an opportunity to exit earlier and
safely. My primary aim was not to get the men
through the programme but to make the women
and children safer.
I think that a situation can be made worse
if you shame someone, it doesn’t motivate
anyone to want to change and they are
more likely to minimise their actions and
feel resentment for being made to feel
guilt. I think that’s a huge problem.
We don9t do that. What we do is very trauma
informed, we go here9s a bit of information, here9s
what you can think about it, and they both know
that each of them is getting the same information
every week. I was terrified, the first time we ran.
Eight families started the first group and they
were all high risk, and eight families finished.
Do you still keep in touch?
No, I don9t run it. This was in Slough. We train the
people to deliver it. We9ve done a cost benefit
analysis in Slough, and we had an audit and an
audit evaluation on one we9ve delivered in Wales
and even the auditors said, some people said it
was like magic.
We can9t claim all of that because there9s lots of
factors so we can9t just claim that it9s our group
that made all that difference to families and I
understand that, but it9s massively more important
than what has been happening to them because
most perpetrator programmes are so long.
When I was working independently, I did a massive
evaluation over quite a long time, 3 years of a
perpetrators programme and I9m not saying that
ours is the solution, but it is a different approach.
I’m not saying that
ours is the solution,
but it is a different
approach.
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