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For men and women who are violent and or aggressive and or abusive with a partner or former partner.

More than 282 children according to Ofsted, 100 women and 30 men are killed in domestic violence incidents in Britain yearly. A child is 6 times more at risk of death by domestic abuse than a woman. These are the headline catching statistics. The volume of non-lethal behaviour is enormous. (According to the Observer Newspaper's government sources, Ofsted has now privately admitted this - child death - figure is 'misleading'.)

For potential clients, men and women.
Are you violent, aggressive, abusive to a wife or husband, a partner or a former partner
or mixtures of these towards your partner or former partner?
Do you want to change?


If so we may well be able to help you do just that.

Emotions drive behaviour.
"Anger management" is often what is deemed to be needed. But since emotions drive behaviour it is more likely that you need to learn how to "regulate your emotions ".  Anger may well be one of them, but some cases are really more about fear, or jealousy or "attachment". "Affect regulation" is the expression for the new therapies which are now quickly emerging, resulting from the new sciences which are converging on  emotions and which are slowly supplanting "Cognitive behavioural therapy". In the linked website ( which is currently being extended, developed and added to) you can read more about "attachment" "emotional regulation" and the misplaced power and control hungry methods of the radical feminist agenda . The vast majority of domestic abusers are  not about  achieving "power and control" over a partner. Prior to separation, the term "Intimate terrorist" applies to 7 men per 1,000 and 5 women per 1,000, according to Johnson (2000). Amongst that group there will also be people with obsessive compulsive disorder, high levels of fear and anxiety and strongly paranoid feelings. Their "intimate terrorism" usually results from their (usually very bad) experiences.
Post separation these figures increase enormously, much more in men than in women. But upon separation men tend to lose everything, and women tend to keep the children and the accommodation. Attachment theory predicts the likely course of events, men tend to become chaotic, and "the children" help provide an alternative "attachment" for women, the focus of which mediates a good deal of their behaviour. People that are separating need close support to help them to manage themselves during the separation.
The vast majority of our work is undertaken with people displaying "common couple violence" or "mutual couple violence" and in some cases "violent retaliation". 
https://sites.google.com/site/temperdomesticviolence/

How do we help? 
Early intervention

When someone asks for help we attempt to deliver it, early. Early intervention.
So our target is to get to a first meeting with them within a week to 10 days of them contacting us.

We usually meet in the person's own home, or somewhere close to where they live. Our experience is that these meetings take place. Maybe one or two people a year "miss" the appointment. We have transport and can get to you. We save on not having to run an office in a run-down part of a city to which you would have to come.

We deliver intensive courses at weekends which are designed specifically to help you to stop being violent and or aggressive and or abusive with your partner or former partner, your spouse or former spouse. We work with "closed groups" so you would need to be able to attend  all 4 days over two weekends with the same group of people. In this group format and with the therapeutic focus we are able to bring to the work, change can be brought about very effectively and quite rapidly in most cases. More than 9 out of 10 people complete all  the work.




The course we devised 15 years ago and have improved upon ever since runs like this. You can currently attend in either Birmingham or Northampton. As and when finance becomes available our plans are to work in other places, too. Borehamwood is number one on our list.

Stage 1 (day 1, weekend 1)
You start to learn new skills, which will allow you to start changing in the very first hour.

Stage 2 (day 2, weekend 1)
You discover and examine your own violent reactions.  In addition, we will help you develop higher-level skills and teach you how to empathise with your partner.

Stage 3    (Weekend 2 Day 3)
You establish exactly what your violent, aggressive, abusive behaviour is and learn new ways of managing it, exactly for your particular case.

Stage 4 (Weekend 2 Day  4)
As a group we develop a 3 stage plan for you to manage yourself from now on.
The ending of the group and "dealing with the baggage" is explored. Preparations for ongoing support are made.


Ongoing support
Assuming you finish the course,  we will continue to support you for up to a year by telephone and email and, for people who need it, further face-to-face work is available. Usually we want to come back and see you a further 3 times after 2 months, 6 months and 1 year to hear and check out how you are managing with your new skills.
Our Club
runs in one area where there are a number of people who have attended. People that take part can gain additional support from one another.

Course content
The course has three main components.
a) Learning new skills with which to manage yourself in a couple relationship and understand your partner.
b) Learning about many different important aspects of yourself and your relationship.
c) Developing your awareness so that you can "regulate your emotions", rather than 'simply' managing your anger.

Methods
Although in schools people learn a great deal by reading and writing, the skills needed for couple relationships are mainly aural and oral, it follows that most of the practice is with aural and oral skills.
Couple relationships are dependent upon the careful recognition of another person's "emotional communication", this is, of course also developed and practised.  There is virtually no reading and no writing involved in the course. You learn mainly by doing and practising. Some people feel they retain information better by taking notes, and so some do .

"Therapy" helps people to learn more quickly and more easily and a "therapeutic thread" helps to motivate people.  By following "the thread" they are  drawn through the work. This "therapeutic component" is also capable of changing "the whole base" on which they exist.

"Attachment" forms the basis of all intimate relationships and so attachment theory provides the lense, if you like, through which the majority of this work is carried out. When this thereaputic  thread is grasped, or if the facilitators are able to make it available, an individual can make enormous progress.   The report on "Dave" at the bottom of this page and on page 8 clearly illustrates this. It clearly indicates a man who made enormous progress. It would probably not be an exageration to say that he was a changed personality, according to the examining psychology team. 

 We work in roughly a 30 mile radius of Birmingham and Northampton, people travel in daily for two whole days work at the weekend. Determined people with transport and who can afford a room for a Saturday night (£29.95 if booked a week in advance by internet) travel from much further afield.

The work is exhausting so we recommend not travelling in further than 1 hour per day to the venue. For people needing to use public transport, services are, unfortunately, sometimes not available to get you to the venue for a 9.00 start on a Sunday.

We offer regular  courses at weekends for men and women who are abusive towards a partner or former partner. Most often our clients are in heterosexual relationships but gay men and lesbian women have also taken part successfully. This work is often referred to as "Anger management". Anger is but one emotion involved. There are frequently others, too, which might need "regulating", fear and jealousy being examples.

As a rule courses run in Birmingham, the first weekend in the month and in Northampton the third weekend, with variations to cope with bank holidays.

Next course start dates,
Birmingham. The next course
starts in October.
Northampton. The next course starts
in November.

Our new national helpline numbers are: 
01604 211445 or 0121 270 61 68.

Those numbers are open 8.00am to 9.00 p.m. most days and on weekends when a course is not being delivered. If you get the answerphone then either leave a message for us to call you back or call back later. You can email or text a message on 07833 143 724.

We are mainly focused on sources of help for abusers rather than victims. There is relatively speaking masses of help available for women victims, and virtually none for men, victims or abusers.

RELATE - Caution. Very sadly you need to apply the same caution to RELATE's services as you apply to RESPECT below.  45,000 of approximately 150,000 of RELATE's couple clients each year attend counselling looking for help where there are issues of domestic abuse.  Obviously RELATE, as an independent organisation, may work in any way they choose with clients.  Despite their 75 years of experience of couple counselling, and their doubtless very wide knowledge of clients they now choose to follow "a one size fits all" strategy when domestic abuse is mentioned. It is a strategy designed essentially by RESPECT to prevent couple counselling work, thus tring to ensure that all abusive men get funelled into their service - and that by insisting and causing others to deliver programmes which are overlong and under-focused, the maximum chaos is created in families by all of the "patriarchal ballywho". Clearly the pro-family and non- pro-feminist voices within RELATE do not have the votes to  counter this policy.
You can read about the Initial Structured Interviews ISI s on the following link. The effect is that a couple that disclose any abuse - which was likely the reason they were attending anyway - are likely to be split and separately interviewed, usually 3 times (at a cost of approximately £120). They may then very well be told that couple counselling is not appropriate "because of safety issues". The female victim may then be worked with, the male abuser will be "Bridged to Change". i.e he will be given RESPECT's telephone number, who, after a "motivational interview" (of which you can read one man's dialogue on a page in the other web-site) he may be given a telephone number. Very few of the men that attend a DULUTH abuser programme  complete it. Statistics are given in the alternative website, as well as references to research and outcomes mainly broadcast in America about the lack effectiveness of the Duluth Abuser programme. .

Policy decisions regarding cases referred to us by social services in Birmingham can be found of page 7.

Caution regarding RESPECT and the so called "accredited programmes" and "help" it advocates for abusers via the "government-funded help line".

RESPECT's attempt, via the programmes it "accredits" is to "hold men accountable".  Essentially over about 36 weeks the programme seeks to separate women from men, regardless of the underlying causes of their behaviour, all of which are seen as being "patriarchy". The men are confronted with the "denial and minimisation" of their behaviour and for failing to take responsibility for their behaviour. These "confrontations" are repeated ad nauseam, or until the man leaves. When he leaves that proves that he would not "take responsibility" for his behaviour and he was still denying and minimising it. A kind of Circular logic.

The Duluth abuser programme is the "FIREWALL" in the Duluth programme. It was constructed in America 30 years ago to prevent  effective, therapeutic work with abusers from taking place. Feminists were and are worried that "therapeutic work" will undermine their potential income, for helping women, and their radical feminist message of despair that "violent men will not change".  You can read some very illuminating passages in  The book: Coordinating community responses to domestic violence,  Chapter: "components of Community Intervention Projects" , batterer intervention programmes.  "Jacqueline Campbell characterised these programmes as an attempt to create a firewall against therapeutic practices..... . This firewall was successfully built." Page 134. (Many other quotes are contained on page 6 of this website.)

The Duluth abuser programme is a so-called "socio-political, educational" programme. It attempts to "educate" abusers (always men)  into not being abusive. Extensive research in America, over 30 years,  has uncovered "no significant affect" from the Duluth abuser programme.  Google, Dutton and Corvo, or Wikipedia - for examples.  Read the sceptical comments of Dr Gondolf, a researcher, an apparent advocate of Duluth.  Duluth's ineffectiveness is beyond doubt, unless you are a conspiracy theorist!  For the Probation Service the fact that a Probation office employee can be trained within 5 days to deliver the programme was no doubt it's most significant plus-point. It is also true to say that despite some overlap the Probation service will probably have a much higher proportion of "Intimate Terrorists" than a third sector organisation which is very much more likely to be dealing with "common couple violence".

Potential participants for a Duluth abuser programme, for example those people contacting RESPECT looking for a telephone number, need to ask about the completion statistics of a programme, then check what you are told with the Charity Commision registered accounts. 
Ask if they work in the "Power and Control" model of Duluth -  they will - point out that the above book written by the originator of the notion, Ellen Pence, recognised that it was incorrect in the above quoted book, page 28, given on page 6 of this website. She at least had the honesty to recognise this and say it, publicly.
Ask why the numbers of men being violent increases enormously upon separation, and will they be trying to separate you from your partner, and why they, as 3rd sector organisations are mainly working with  "Intimate Terrorism" when they need to be working mainly with "Common couple (situational) violence".  If they mention patriarchy, ask why the officially recognised numbers of women being violent with men have increased from less than 5% 15 years ago to 14.9% now.

If you get an answer that says they have a "therapeutic" content - ask what the minimum length of the training is required for a facilitator. If they claim to undertake CBT - ask the same question, ask if it is "feminist CBT". If you want to be smart just ask where emotions (which drive most basic behaviour) fit into CBT. (Cognitive Behavioural Therapy). Draw your own conclusions from what you imagine the length of training would need to be.

Finally, carefully read what RESPECT says in the information available on its website at .......... .
Read with interest what RESPECT say about the FREEDOM PROGRAMME, which does not "pretend" to help change a man's behaviour but does invite him to understand what feminists believe to be the machinery behind it.  Ask yourself why they would be so upset by that programme that they should write so vehemently against it!

Feminists and politicians currently want background  work to be undertaken in the feminist devised "power and control" model.  For the vast majority of cases "power and control" is not an issue! Emotion drives behaviour, not an overriding desire for "power and control".  How do we know? Well the originator says so and that is also our experience of intensive work with well over 600 men and women.

Psychologists' report extract on a successful TEMPER client from 2002. The remainder of the report is on page 4

A Victim Empathy questionnaire. The most striking characteristic was his 'Don't Knows'. His responses were at variance with non-offending men. He showed very little appreciation of how the victim might have felt.
At current testing, there have been significant changes in his answers.    
Comment
Mr W now presents as a man with averagely good self-esteem. He does not complain of emotional loneliness. He  has become considerably less guarded, tense, aggressive and impulsive. He is also much less hostile and mistrustful of others.   When I last saw Mr W I found that he had a range of personality problems characterised by impulsivity, aggression, poor perspective taking and lower than average empathic concern for others. His perspective taking ability and empathic concern for others has improved partly through maturation but also through the help he received on the Anger Management Programme he attended.   Mr W's personality profile has changed as he has matured and received treatment and he no longer exhibits the aggressive and impulsive tendencies which characterized his previous presentation.  


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