Social Services Birmingham - a change in our policy, January 2009.

We have been working from central Birmingham for about 8 years.

Fearing a charge for our service Social workers instruct one of the parents of a child protection case to make contact with us and, having reassured themselves that this contact has been made, they sign the case off, "from the moment the individual made contact."

Our policy is to visit the clients whenever possible within 1 to 2 weeks of this contact.  In the vast majority of cases we will then invest about 2 hours, 1 hour at least in a meeting and time getting to the client and the meeting and contacting people. Many of these clients will perhaps understandably take the line of least resistance. They undertake no meaningful work with us beyond this first assessment.  Children's safety is very unlikely to be improved by this meeting or by this policy.

From our point of view these are "tick-box" cases. The client is deemed to have "recognised or accepted that they have a problem" - i.e they heard what the social worker said -  and to be "doing something about it" - i.e they contacted us. This seems to satisfy Social Services policy in Bimingam. It involves us with between 30 and 40 cases per year, of which about 2 will attend some meaningful work, compared with just over 50% of "truly self-referring" cases.

Meaningful work  in this forum takes us about 40 hours. From our point of view no work will have been undertaken, and a child will be effectively at no less risk because their parent telephoned us and or went through a first meeting. From our point of view it is a pointless and even dangerous excercise and we shall not be associated with it in future.

In consequence upon first telephone contact we shall ask all future clients in the Birmingham area if they are involved with Social Services and  we shall undertake nothing further with the client until a referral form  has been signed and submitted by the social worker with the acceptance of a £90 charge for the first visit.

January 2010:
The above policy was maintained throughout 2009. Social Services sought other ways of referring their clients into the organisation.

Our personal client experience has continued to be one where clients with "minimal" problems have been persued, and clients with major and alarming problems have been ignored.

Birmingham Domestic Violence Forum quickly associated itself with RESPECT accredited courses, it is possible that this influences social services approach to our work.  The deatils of that policy are outlined below and our criticisms of it are added in the next paragraphs. 

Birmingham Interagency Domestic Violence Forum 2004 Motto: ("Empowering, confidential, open, safe.") Service Standards 17 (Pages 14 and 15) Service providers apply specific standards when engaging in perpetrator programmes for violent men. (Numbering added by Temper Domestic Violence) Minimum Where perpetrator programmes are provided, service providers will ensure that:
1              Programmes operate within RESPECT the National Association for Domestic       Violence Perpetrator Programmes and Associated Support, 'Principles and Minimum Standards of Practice'
2              Programmes focus upon the social and gendered context of violence against women. 3              Programmes provide parallel support for associated women (whether current or ex-­partners) and children, with clear protocols determining how information is made available to women where their, or their children's safety, may be compromised.
4              Parallel support would form part of any funding bids for a programme. Programmes require that participation is mandated through the criminal justice system.   Programmes would work closely with the criminal justice system to ensure that any breaches are dealt with swiftly and robustly. Programmes ensure that participants would not be enabled to use their participation in the group as a means to avoid the legal consequences of criminal behaviour. Programmes would not engage with, or link to, couples work, anger management or mediation Facilitators would be skilled and experienced in providing programmes operating within the power and control model. Programmes would forge strong links with Birmingham Inter-Agency Domestic Violence Forum. Programmes would commit to thorough monitoring and evaluation, including the women's report as an integral element of this evaluation. Without these minimum standards being place, then perpetrator programmes will not only be dangerous to women and children, they will also significantly fail to change the behaviour of domestically violent men. Aspirational                 Perpetrator programmes operate within a wider state and community context which abhors and condemns domestic violence and affords greater opportunity for perpetrators to challenge their violent behaviour and attitudes.   Notes to the above
1)               Respect's notions are based on the Duluth Model. According to Gondolf's research 2003, 40 studies had found no substantial affect. "Best practice" as considered by RESPECT was based very largely on DVIP's (The Domestic Violence Intervention Project, London) practice, which up until 1998 involved mainly court mandated clients. Joseph Rowntree Trust established in 1998 that 57% of clients dropped out. DVIP's figures in 2008, with a much bigger percentage of non-court mandated clients, was that "33 men of 230" completed a programme. DVIP's other claim, based on research outcomes by Dobash and Dobash, in turn  based on CHANGE which completed work with 46 men between 1990 and 1996 was that 70% 0f men "improved".    This would mean that 23 men of 230 made significant progress, all documented by Government papers. According to Gondolf, men that drop out of projects pose a more significant threat to their partner or former partner!
2)             The above means that women that are violent to women in lesbian relationships, and men that are violent to men in gay relationships and women that are violent to men in heterosexual relationships have no programmes to attend. As such it represents an unjustified sexual discrimination against all of those groups because violence exists in significant percentages in each of those relationship variations. It further implies that only men are capable of violence and that only women may only be victims.
3)             By attempting to compel an agency into working with both abuser and victim they create a triangular relationship. Essentially this is potentially a very dangerous situation because a couple will attempt to "speak to one another through the agency", and one result is so-called "splitting". It is much safer for both parties to be supported by different agencies.  It is also much safer for the agency, too. Funding to support female victims is now very plentiful. It is plainly unwise to move women who are victims away from well-funded sources of support into the impoverished sources of support, which are barely available for abusers (men!) to use!
4)             If you believe that all abusers are a) the same sex, b) have the same problems and c) need the same solutions then you might make the Birmingham Domestic Violence Forum Statements. In the real world abusers, like everybody else, come with a vast array of problems, a large number of different needs, and produce a wide variety of outcomes.  Patriarchy being seen as essentially the sole cause of domestic abuse is simply unrealistic, and represents dogmatic, outdated feminism in the vast majority of cases. More recent recognitions split the feminist stereotype into " Intimate terrorists" and "situational couple violence" as main categories.
5)             POWER AND CONTROL: the initiator of this notion, Ellen Pence, recognised in the book she wrote in 1999 that power and control was not an issue with the vast majority of male abusers that she worked with. P 29. "Co-ordinating Community Responses to Domestic Violence - Lessons from Duluth and Beyond" Melanie Shepherd and Ellen Pence                 Duluth makes use of its "famous" TWO WHEELS. Power and control was one of them, EQUALITY  was the other. Her statement effectively made the "vehicle" for addressing men's abuse a monocycle, which nearly everybody falls off! Riding a monocycle is usually regarded as a circus act! Trick cycling!  For circus entertainment purposes only. I would suggest that is very close to the mark! The missing wheel is EMOTIONS.
10            When TEMPER attempted in 1998 to forge links with the membership of Birmingham Domestic Violence forum we were not permitted access to an 800 strong membership readership. The young woman who agreed to our placing an advert for an "information day" in her membership paper kindly wrote back and explained that "editorial control" had been removed from her control. In other words, BDVF wanted nothing to do with "abuser" organisations. 
12            With the above elements in place, with our experience of abusers we would say that Duluth programmes are dangerous to families. A coruscating description of the short-comings of a DULUTH abuser programme has been written by no less than the Vice Chair of RESPECT. To implement the very fundamental changes they suggest none of the trainers delivering DULUTH training would have a clue how to start.  Nobody may assume that any particular child will be safer with their mother, because of her femaleness, than they would be with a father because of his maleness.  Ethnic minorities in Britain represent about 10% of the population. Female abusers in Britain represent about 15% of the partner "abuser" population. According to American statistics females are responsible for about 62% of child abuse. 
 As far as work with abusers is concerned Birmingham Domestic Violence Forum's Standard 17 is conclusively the opposite of its motto:
Disempowering, because it does not even expect or encourage change in the behaviour of men - it merely seeks to "hold them accountable". 
Non-confidential, RESPECT like IDAP requires work to be undertaken in front of video cameras, "for quality control purposes".
Not open, because only males, in heterosexual relationships may attend. and Unsafe, because the system "promotes" large drop-out rates, ignores working with the emotional issues in favour of working with a non-credible, and discredited dogma (power and control). It further seeks to involve both partners in a dangerous "triangular relationship" with an organisation.

Starting in 1995 the organisation has  delivered over 100  courses for more than  500 people, over 450 men  and over 50 women. We are aware of  54 of these people who have become violent, aggressive, abusive again.

In 2004 we became members of RESPECT. Whilst members, as agreed, we  delivered  only single sex courses. However, with 14.9% of serious domestic violence cases involving women as the abusers, RESPECT's denial and minimisation of the problem, as outlined in their "Minimum Standards Policy" looks increasingly suspect, based as it is on the notion that patriarchy is the root cause of domestic violence, which is simply statistically incorrect and it leaves female abusers with nowhere to go and people in gay and lesbian relationships unable to choose to take part in groups.

Very substantial and balanced criticism of current policies in America is available at the addresses given in blue on page 8.

You can also Google "Duluth perpetrator programmes" to read of the lack of statistical evidence supporting the use of the overlong, over-complex and resource hungry programme which the Probation Service now "Accredits". The word accredit does not mean that the programme is effective, merely that it fits within a recognised (and imposed) framework.

The efforts with men seem to be to encourage the development of empathy towards their victim. We suspect that neither the roots nor the buds of empathy will be found in the undrawn stumps of pro-feminism!

Described as a snapshot the following information can be read from the RELATE website
http://www.relate.org.uk/Documents/bridging_to_change.pdf  
Three Relate centres run projects with domestic abusers.
The Bridge project in Coventry started in March 2005, which means that up to December 2007 when the report was written, it had been running for 142 weeks (at 4 weeks per month).
The Change project in Bournemouth started in May 2005, which means it had been running for 136 weeks and
the Somerset Change project started in September 2005 which means it had been running for 118 weeks.  
Bridging to change: All three projects run a 30 week course. (p 15).
The Bridge project has 19 men who have completed the work. If we take off the 30 weeks before which they could not have had a completion this means that 19 men have completed the work in 112 weeks.
The Bournemouth Change project has seven men who have completed the work, similarly this means in 106 weeks.
The Somerset Change project has 10 men who have completed the work, in 88 weeks.  
To summarise: 19 men completed in 112 weeks, seven completed in 106 weeks and 10 completed in 88 weeks. 35 men completed in 3 projects in 306 weeks.   There is therefore one completion per nine weeks.  This averages out at about six completions per project per year, a truly outstanding contribution!  
And as Dr Aneta D Tunariu    says later the drop-out rates peak around 3 to 6 weeks!!!!!  Just how much has been learnt by that time?

To undertake a meaningful academic study about the effectiveness of the work would cost at least £18000, money which we have never had available. But anecdotally we believe we have been very successful.

In 2002 a man we'll call Dave took part. Three years before that he had been assessed by a Social Services sponsored psychologist as having a severe personality disorder. Two years after undertaking our work the same psychologist declared that opinion to be outdated, and moreover he was astounded at the progress this young man had made. Dave's testimonial is printed below. He tells it right. It was not because of TEMPER, he made the changes himself. Without TEMPER he would  not have managed any changes. We would add that after the 36 hours he had minimum support.