Temper Domestic Violence, registered charity 1081139 works quickly and effectively with domestic abusers both males and females.

Each course has a maximum of 8 places available. To enrol please contact via phone or email and get a letter with dates and locations of the next courses and also an application form.

London – our next 2 courses:

Part 1, Harrow area: March 9th and 10th plus part 2 April 13th and 14th. 

Part 1 S London area: To be advised

Birmingham – our next course dates:   April 20th and 21st plus part 2  May 18th and 19th

Breaking News and Politics: “RESPECT ACCREDITED” DAPP’s (Domestic Abuser Perpetrator Programmes) were decommissioned in June 2022.   Cafcass currently has no “pathway” to which to forward men who need to complete an abuser programme.    

For 28 years we have supported, face-to-face, males and females who have exhibited abusive behaviours and their female or male partners.  Our headline work is with the abusive person. We have completed 36 hours of therapeutically informed work with more than 1250 men and more than 120 women. We have extensively supported about 200 partners, about 120 females and 80 males for very varied periods of time. 

What is needed we assert is:

1) emotional regulation – this might well include some anger management

2) impulse control training, learning to respond rather than react

3) a much better understanding of intimate couple relationships, coupled with an understanding of primary declarative emotions,

4) New skills for communication, which need to be learnt and practised.  The work is about emotions and behaviours, and little about attitudes

5) a focus needs to be maintained on each and every individual in his or her individual circumstances 

6) the process is to facilitate learning by raising curiosity and interest.  It’s for that reason front line workers are called facilitators

7) the process needs to be carried out to an ethos which involves “active listening”, “non-judgement”, be “non-punitive”  and raise “curiosity”. Work needs to avoid engaging the fight/flight/freeze reponses in individuals which cause a cessation in, or inhibit, learning. Whenever possible the client’s “social engagement system” needs to be harnessed to facilitate learning.

8)  An attachment based model for working is likely to be the most productive model and fundamentals of which can be found here, along with reasons for the need for a much greater focus on sadness and grief. 

9) Children are frequently the witnesses of and victims of the outcomes of very disturbing adult  behaviours. Worked at via experiential methods, work needs to be included which directly brings the individual participant into the “experienced world” of a child or children of the family.  

An outcome from a DAPP. The West Midlands police commissioner funded MyTime, which, along with the DVIP in London is a division of the bigger charity The Richmond Fellowship. Research showed 1,074 men were referred, 256 were considered suitable, 196 started the programme and just 24 men completed it .   £350 k per year for each of 3 years!

IDAP and BBR, Probation service examples, have had very similar difficulties. The inspectorate’s report is here.  The DRIVE project, was / is associated with the MARAC process. (My video clip on the subject is linked here.)   A detailed breakdown of the outcomes is here. 

Some sobering thoughts for potential funders, MP’s, councils, local councillors, Police Commissioners, Mayors and others are here

In the Magistrates’ and Family Courts judges are advised by Cafcass,  the Child and Family Court Advisory and Support Service. Judges  are advised that males with alleged abusive behaviours are to go on a “DAPP” – Those programmes have virtually all closed now because Cafcass has stopped funding men. We are increasingly being asked to explain our focus and content: this talk for a conference in Manchester explains a great deal. The clip is about 46 minutes long. 

Duluth / Duluth hybrids,  DAPPS focus ideologically only on “male power and control”

Our Heart of England programme was originally devised in 1994/5. The content has been improved with the experiences and an explosion of knowledge about emotions brought about by  neuroscience. David and Terry White discuss some of the problems with the accredited DAPP programmes here.

Emotions drive behaviour, not a desire for “power and control” in the vast majority of couple relationships, although, of course, when “invited” to fight for their children’s ongoing contact with them, parents’ behaviours in the arena of the adversarial system of the family courts very quickly become “competitive” and often the individuals are motivated by strong feelings of grief and loss, or feelings of injustice or even revenge.  The individual much more frequently becomes driven by efforts to achieve “power and control”, effectively invited to do this by the adversarial nature of the family courts! “Attachment theory” plays a large role in some, even many cases. You can understand something about the impact on children from this link, and you can follow this professor’s seminar via this link

“Anger management” was originally thought to be what was needed.  In 1996  Dr Joseph LeDoux, neuro-scientist,  clearly established that emotions drive behaviours. Individuals need to learn how to “regulate” their emotions.  Anger may well be one of them, but many cases are  more about other primary, declarative  emotions, fear, grief or disgust, or trust and other secondary, discrete emotions,  shame, jealousy, envy and others.   The guts of a risk assessment by a clinical psychologist outlining the problems of his client and the need not for the “accredited work”   but for therapeutically informed work is here.  Another clinical psychologist summarised problems with which Cafcass still struggles, the problems of their proxy accreditor, RESPECT.  (Dr LeDoux later recognised he had been mistaken about the role of the amydala.)

You can read about Dr H’s clinical psychology assessment of what one man needed in the Professionals page.  

CAUTION: Here you can hear about of some of the problems with the so-called “accredited work”, that of the DVIP in London, for example and Mytime in the Midlands and here you can read about it. Men who attend those courses have about a 1 in 4 chance of completing the “accredited” work. Even if they complete it they may well find that a hostile facilitator will report: “In my professional opinion Mr X did not make enough progress to be considered safe.”   Very largely separated for at least 6 months from their (ex)? wife/partner/children the man will then find himself not one step closer to his assumed goal – that happens by design, not by chance!

Before participants can be accepted onto the programme an initial assessment meeting lasting between 1 and 2 hours is required. Historically  this meeting was face-to-face in the client’s own home or near to where the client lived. As this has become much less possible, even impossible, then a Zoom, WhatsApp or telephone interview replaces it.

There are a maximum of 8 places available per course. Each of our courses runs as a closed group. To complete the course takes two weekends, usually one month apart.  The total course time is 36 hours over the two weekends, 16 x 2 hour sessions. The intervening time allows what has been learnt in the first half to be practised and processed and developed in the second half. Both halves of the work must be completed in the same group. After the course a small percentage of clients may require more extensive work. This may then be offered by Temper or by referrals to or suggestions made as to other, more specific, sources of help. For those that wish for it post course support is available via Zoom once a week, or some groups maintain contact via their own Whats Ap group.

Safety for all concerned comes, we believe, in early and effective intervention. We always try to engage with the client as quickly as possible because of the potential risks involved to all concerned, children, mothers and fathers.  Our target was to meet face-to-face with clients within 10 days of their initial contact with us.  Via Zoom and What’s Ap these meetings now usually  happen very soon after an individual’s first contact.  About 10 days are needed to complete all the initial processes prior to taking part in a group course. Our experience is that last-minute arrivals can be impulsive and then either not join a group or settle into the work. But, if there is a space available, we will always do our best to engage with the late arriving individual.