APPENDIX 61
Memorandum submitted by Domestic Violence
Intervention Project
Which elements make DVIP particularly successful?
How do you assess success? Can you be confident that there is
a similar reduction rate for forms of violence other than physical
violence—eg psychological, emotional?
In addressing the question of the effectiveness
of our work we identify three key elements:
1. Our programmes work to change men's
behaviour, looking to achieve a significant reduction in physical
violence and other forms of controlling behaviours. Our mechanism
for effecting this change is the violence prevention programme
a 32 week groupwork programme. This is a psycho educative programme
which provides an environment for men to look at their behaviour
and to look at the belief systems and structures which support
that behaviour. The underlying principle is that if men can understand
their behaviour and what underpins it, they can change it.
2. The second important process is
Risk Assessment. We undertake risk assessments for all clients
referred via social services or the family courts at three points:
before they begin the programme, during their participation on
the programme, and again upon completion. So even where a perpetrator
does not complete the programme successfully, the Risk Assessment
process can inform the work of agencies charged with constructing
care plans to support women and protect children exposed to violence
in the home. This can include addressing issues such as the framework
within which it is safe for the perpetrator to have contact with
the children. DVIP is one of a small handful of agencies in the
UK providing this service, that is, a Risk Assessment service
attached to a Perpetrator Programme, which can be accessed by
the Family Courts and by Children and Families Services.
3. The third element is Risk Management
and Safety Planning. DVIP works best when it works as part of
a coordinated community response. What we provide uniquely, within
a network of partner agencies, is close contact with the perpetrator
which as well as providing a place for him to address and change
his behaviour, also enables a close monitoring of changes in this
behaviour and indicators of increased risk. Significantly our
Women's Support Service enables us to respond proactively to these
indicators and support the women, in partnership with other agencies,
to ensure her safety.
As indicated in Ben Jamal's oral evidence
to the Committee in evaluating success in reducing violent behaviours
DVIP draws upon evidence provided by an external evaluation of
our work undertaken by CWASU, our own regular evaluations undertaken
with the partners of men who complete the programme, and wider
research of programmes constructed in line with our model undertaken
largely in the US and Canada. These evaluations indicate a higher
success rate in reducing physical violence than in changing other
forms of controlling behaviours. DVIP is very keen to develop
systematic longitudinal UK based research and is currently working
with RESPECT to develop the framework for a multi site evaluation
to take place across a number of projects over the next two years.
DVIP works with perpetrators, victims and children.
What specific benefits do you see in working with all elements
of the family?
DVIP is one of a handful of organisation
in the Uk which is providing services which encompass interventions
with the perpetrator, support for the partner and direct services
to work with children who have been exposed to violence. This
enables us to assess and address the impact of the violence upon
all members of the family.
Since 2005 DVIP has worked directly with
children exposed to domestic violence, via Stephen's Place, our
Children's Centre in Hammersmith, West London. At the centre we
provide a safe environment to supervise contact between children
and their fathers. We also provide direct therapeutic interventions
to help children in the process of recovering from their exposure
to abuse. We developed these services in response to the recognised
lack of such specialist children's services across London.
The development of these services also
however allows us to offer an holistic domestic violence service.
For families referred via social services or the Family Courts,
we can provide:
— a risk assessment which informs
care planning to support the non abusive parent and protect the
child from harm;
— an intervention to work to
change the perpetrator's behaviour;
— work with the mother, through
our Women's Support Service, to increase her safety and that of
the children; and
— a children's service to ensure
that the child's therapeutic needs can be addressed once safety
is secured.
How effective are your children's services in
increasing the safety of and treating the child? How effective
is the supervised child contact provided through Stephen's Place?
Last year we worked with 36 children
in therapy produced 17 reports for Court and for case conferences,
and helped five children complete safety plans. Our evaluations
conducted with children and parents indicated that 32 out of the
36 children reported positive outcomes to the intervention, in
terms of increases in a range of positive emotional indicators.
The impact upon children of exposure
to domestic violence in terms of emotional, mental physical and
social wellbeing is well documented. We provide individual therapy
and are in the process of introducing a groupwork programme, based
on a model from Canada which has been successfully piloted in
the London Borough of Sutton. We have three central aims underpinning
our therapeutic work:
— to provide a safe environment
where children can make sense of the abuse, attribute responsibility
and reduce self blame;
— to work with parents to improve
child-parent relationships; and
— to reduce harm through safety
planning with the child.
Through the interventions we work to
achieve outcomes of: increased self esteem; increased ability
to label emotions; improved communication between parent and child;
and improved parental awareness of children's needs.
From Stephen's Place, our Children's
Centre in Hammersmith, we provide a supervised contact service
for children referred via the Family Courts and Social Services.
In these cases it is judged to be in the child's interests for
contact to take place, but there are risks associated because
of a history of domestic violence, which means that contact needs
to occur in a safe and monitored environment. Whilst there are
a number of Contact Centres in London, DVIP is the only service
that provides contact linked to a wider range of domestic violence
services including a perpetrator programme. Significantly this
means contact is supervised by staff who are acutely attuned to
the dynamics of domestic violence and who can provide links to
the other services where these are required. This means, for example,
that staff can pick up on issues of unidentified risk, refer these
back to the Court and link the family to our Risk Assessment services,
Violence Prevention Programme or Women's Support Service.
Last year DVIP supervised contact with
55 children subject to private law or public law proceedings.
You provide risk assessment for social services
and the family courts. How many courts do you advise, and are
you aware of similar services offered elsewhere? How often do
courts take your assessment into account in deciding child contact
arrangements?
We can take referrals from any Family
Court and work regularly with about 20 courts, though we do not
have agreements with specific courts. We are aware of one other
agency in the South West of UK that provides risk assessment services
linked to access to a perpetrator programme. We are the only agency
in the UK, as far as we know, that provides a risk assessment
service linked to access to a Contact Centre as well as to a perpetrator
programme.
Our Risk Assessment service has not yet
undergone an external evaluation, We have in the past applied
unsuccessfully for funding to support such an evaluation, and
will be making further applications.
Anecdotally, in the vast majority of
cases we know that the Courts follow our recommendation regarding
contact arrangements. More particularly we are not aware of a
single case where contact arrangements have been changed in contradiction
to a recommendation made within our Risk Assessment. We have seen
significant growth in demand for the service—we undertook
130 assessments in 07/08 compared to 100 in 06/07. We believe
this is reflective of the recognition within the Courts of the
benefits of the process in aiding final care planning for children
within the Family Court system, whether in private or public proceedings.
These services were developed within
the framework of the Safe Contact Project, a partnership developed
between DVIP, Thomas Coram and Cafcass in 2005. This established
protocols to ensure that decisions being made about contact, where
there were allegations of domestic violence, could be informed
by a full risk assessment, and that access could be given to a
supervised contact setting. The Safe Contact Project represents
one of the best examples of multi-agency partnership working to
improve the safety of women and children. However, despite its
success and the growth in demand for assessments, it remains the
case that the numbers involved represent the "tip of the
iceberg" in relation to the numbers of cases within the Family
Courts where domestic violence is the central concern. One significant
issue that prohibits the development of this work is the availability
of resources to fund risk assessments in private law proceedings,
with currently only limited funding from Cafcass available to
support this work.
Short note on DVIP's East London Project
The Committee requested a short note
about this project which has been highlighted by The Mayor Of
London as a model of Good commissioning in providing interventions
with perpetrators.
DVIP has operated in London since 1991
with an office in Hammersmith and since 2005, a base in Southwark.
From these two venues we have provided the violence prevention
programme and associated women's support services, as well as
the risk assessment services outlined above. Work has historically
been funded via individual spot purchases from Social Services
Departments, some men self-funding their own programmes on a sliding
income scale, through grants from a number of local government
funding streams, and through a varied mix of charitable trust
funding mostly through small grants.
In January 2007, DVIP opened its East
London project. This project, uniquely, was funded by three local
authorities—the London Boroughs of Barking and Dagenham,
Newham and Waltham Forest—pooling resources and commissioning
a programme with a commitment of at least three years of funding..
The success of the project and the commissioning process that
underpinned it were acknowledged in November 2007 with an award
from the Mayor of London.
Since January 2007 DVIP in East London
has worked with over 100 men and their partners as well as undertaking
nearly 30 risk assessments for men referred via Social Services
Departments in the three boroughs. Currently the project is running
two perpetrator programmes a week for a maximum of 24 men at a
time, on a rolling programme.
DVIP has the strategic goal of providing
linked perpetrator, Women's and Risk Assessment services on a
London wide basis. We believe this funding arrangement provides
a model for other boroughs committed to ensuring the availability
of work with perpetrators as part of their community response
to domestic violence.
26 March 2008
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