Do stopping violence programmes really work?
In honour of White Ribbon NZ this November, RISE is doing a month-long series of articles, videos, and Facebook posts to address one question we often get asked: Do stopping violence courses work? Follow the series through November here on our website, on our Facebook page, and on YouTube.
This is the third and last article in the series. Read the first article and the second article in the series.
Yes, they really do work. In different ways and in different lengths of times for most people. That’s the unequivocal answer from the experienced family violence specialists at RISE.
We hope you now have more insight into what people who use violence experience when they come to RISE to begin their journey. The initial assessment shines a light on the violent incident, potential concerns about alcohol and/or drug use or abuse, and mental health issues that could be involved.
The Non-Violence Programme curriculum is designed, week by week, to give attendees the tools and skills that encourage engagement and honest discussion. Taking home what they learned and putting it to practice is the goal.
The Cycle of Change is a useful tool for anyone going through a change process, including people who use violence. In the Non-Violence Programme, we hope attendees leave us at 16 weeks with an intention to make change and apply this to modifying their behaviour.
What does success look like?
Experience of the majority: one and done
Most people who attend the programme once find it is enough for them to make changes. In fact, it happens more than some people might think.
RISE’s Dr Victor MacGill says he has had men tell him their life was transformed simply by having the 1-10 scale, a tool used in sessions to help understand levels of anger and trigger points.
“One group member told me it changed his life, that one tool. I think he was in the right place at the right time to hear the message and pick up on the tool’s usefulness. And that’s great. Sometimes it is truly one thing or a couple of things that click for a person and that’s enough.”
Victor, co-facilitator of the programme, says he was impressed by another former client who found a way to keep the mahi going long after he left the programme.
“He went through all 16 weeks and he did enough to complete the programme, but he wasn’t very communicative I couldn’t really tell what was going on inside him. Then, I ran into him at the supermarket about six months after and he told me the most incredible thing. He said he and another group member he met in the programme get together once a week with their notebooks and they talk about how their week has gone, basically re-creating the sessions between just the two of them.
“Now that is absolutely incredible to me. Sometimes you just don’t know how people are affected by what they experience here.”
Every clinician has notable success stories like this. Mark Banks, who also co-facilitates the Non-Violence Programme, says although the programme prompts major behaviour changes, if a client is not weighed down by heavy trauma or other concerns, they will get their heads around what they are learning quickly.
“If you make the best of the programme, which most people do, you will leave with a basic management strategy that keeps you pretty safe in the moment. You’ll have increased self-awareness of when you are starting to wind up. You’ll know what triggers your emotions. In my experience, the majority of people leave RISE after going through the programme once.”
Recidivism
Change is hard. Many people change continuously throughout their lives. What stands in the way of a person who uses violence from finding their way the first time through a non-violence programme?
1. Embedded patriarchy
Patriarchal constructs exist throughout our society and they set men up to see violence as acceptable, says RISE General Manager Dee Cresswell.
“One small example we now use in the programme is the Will Smith slap episode at the Oscars. There was no doubt in Will Smith’s mind that he was protecting his woman, defending her honour when he walked onto the Oscars stage and slapped Chris Rock in the face. Men around the world tell themselves all the time they are doing what’s best for their partner. That women and girls need protection. It’s my duty to defend my woman.
“This kind of thinking is embedded so deeply in our society and it is everywhere. We start unpacking this kind of thinking in the course, but of course it’s only a start.”
One of many points to consider is did Jada Pinkett-Smith feel offended or delighted to have her husband act in her defence with the slap and the shouting at Chris Rock? We know that in the days after the incident, women talked on TV and wrote articles both defending and berating Will and his actions. One would think women would be on the same page about whether or not his actions were wanted or needed, but these are deeply embedded beliefs and practices in many Western societies where roles for men and women continually evolve.
Dee says, “Both men and women constantly navigate patriarchal systems. Sometimes people can create movements to address these embedded systems, like #MeToo. Other times it leads to backlashes. Setting out expectations and fostering strong communication between partners in a relationship is difficult but crucial work that we tackle in our programme.”
2. The long road to healing past trauma
If you ask any RISE clinician, they will all say that the people they work with almost always are dealing with some level of trauma. Traumatic experiences exist on a wide continuum. Mark Banks offers an example of someone with an unhappy childhood who carries that baggage into adulthood.
“If your experience as a child was full of unhappiness, angry parents yelling at each other, and feeling unsafe, I can usually draw a straight line to an adult who is a black-and-white thinker.
“My childhood was unhappy and I didn’t feel love, so now as an adult I think I’m not a lovable person. I’m not worthy of happiness. If my parents were always angry and shouted at each other, as an adult if I’m in a relationship, experience tells me anger is the way two adults communicate. So I shout and yell at my partner. As a child if I felt unsafe, then I’m going to grow up not trusting people. As an adult, it’s only one of two ways: either I trust you or I don’t, there’s nothing in-between.”
“How can a person succeed in anything they do in life if their core beliefs are that they can’t trust anyone, anger is how you speak to others, and no one is going to love me. How can we expect someone to have a good relationship or be a parent? What happens is that they will often self-sabotage relationships and fail themselves.”
About half of the clients who participate in the Non-Violence Programme have more severe trauma, including from violence, Mark says. There is only so much that can be done to address severe trauma in group settings. Clients who are ready and willing to work on their past trauma can access additional help from RISE, including one-on-one sessions over a longer period of time.
“The Non-Violence Programme by itself isn’t really a great place to work on those experiences, but we have many clinicians at RISE who specialist in long-term therapeutic support and we encourage clients to consider addressing this after they finish the programme.”
3. Coping mechanisms
New clients can often demonstrate a variety of coping mechanisms they use to manage their violence rather than dealing with the root cause. These can include alcohol, marijuana, or drug abuse, gaming addictions, gambling, unhealthy friend groups, and other temporary distractions.
Victor MacGill says, “Until a client gets on top of their other issues, like addiction, and understands what drives those, they won’t be able to address what’s underneath. These distractions take over their lives and affect their progress in our programme.
“All we can do is offer the opportunity to learn skills and understand their behaviour and at the end of the day it is up to the person.
“Having said that, I was pleased to hear a few weeks ago from a guy that I helped here in Nelson a couple of years ago. He wants to move to Kaikoura and re-engage in the programme. He said what he was doing in Nelson wasn’t working for him. He’d been using coping mechanisms and avoiding the hard work needed for change. He didn’t engage much the first time I met him and I’m encouraged now to hear him come to us with some conviction to shift to Kaikoura, remove the distractions, and engage in the programme.”
4. Shame
Mark Banks says that the Non-Violence Programme group is often the one place the members can go to where they are not judged.
“Often in the early days and weeks men feel a lot of shame about their behaviour and the incident that brought them here. It’s a horrible thing to admit that you spanked your kids or that you slapped your wife. And in the group we make space for a person to feel that shame, express it, and try to work past it.
“As a society, it would be helpful if we didn’t shame people when they muck up, I have to say. It’s horrible enough when you behave violently and you have to take responsibility for that through the courts. But the public shame that follows often makes the experience even worse and the recovery from it worse. I’d like to see society allow space for people to want to change, to try, to fail sometimes, and to keep going. We’re not great about that outside of the Non-violence Programme group room, and we should be.”
How long does it take to stop using violence?
Mark Banks says that when he was training to do family violence work, he read that it is not unusual for a person to lapse, often in the 6-12 month timeframe, contact RISE again for help, and that it was considered a problem.
“Until recently, those of us in the profession even considered this a failure,” he says. “I’m sure that people in the community still consider it a failure when they hear this or read about it in the news stories. It’s really the entirely wrong way to think about it.
“I consider someone coming back to us a tremendous success if they are reaching out because they’ve had a lapse and need more help. Anyone who is curious about making more changes is welcome back and we are completely here for them. Thankfully, in recent years, we’ve developed new programmes to help people in this situation re-engage.”
Mark says it’s our nature to lapse and understanding this is the most difficult part for clients who have completed the programme yet find themselves regressing.
“We want to replace those old behaviours with new ones but the old ones are well-ingrained. Ironically for some people it’s easier to sit in the discomfort of the bad behaviours, the old ones and their consequences, than it is to step out into the new. I know that if I lash out I’ll spend some time in the dog box and it’ll be over – that’s familiar to me and even tough it is uncomfortable, it’s known. The new behaviours put people into ‘I don’t know’ territory and that can be frightening. It inhibits change.”
Victor MacGill estimates that roughly half of his clients come back in one way or another. Sometimes it is voluntarily to take a refresher course or to check in with him. Other times people who have heavy trauma become more frequent visitors to RISE’s office.
“People progress at their own pace, and they have to really,” he says. “It’s important to understand what progress is, though. Every single person has their own expectations of progress, and is that really fair to the person going through the programme? You hear of someone smashing things in a house, which is of course a bad thing to be doing and we would not call it a success, but if that is a lot less than they would have previously done, as wrong as it is, it can be important to recognise a move in the right direction.”
Mark Banks says he notes the smallest of successes during group sessions where he can tell that a member has disclosed a small moment of self-awareness.
“When I hear a client switch from blaming everyone else and saying ‘she did this to me’ and ‘it’s her fault’ to ‘I did this, I have to change something,’ that’s definitely an indicator of having more self-awareness. That typically leads to more behaviour change and that always makes me happy.”
Why doesn’t the programme work for everyone?
“It’s really individual. So much depends on where someone is at the moment. If they are open and able to admit what is going on with themselves,” Victor MacGill says.
“What sort of machine are you!” jokes Mark Banks.
Mark says for many people it takes a long time to change even small behaviours.
“Why can’t we cut these men more slack, especially if they are making progress?”
Community expectations
The idea of meeting expectations of the community they serve – of ‘fixing’ a violent person with one 16-week programme – weighs heavily on Dee Cresswell, RISE General Manager.
“The expectations simply need to change, people expect too much of these men. We know the behaviour change programme we offer works, just not in an instant like most people want it to. And the funding just isn’t there to offer more.”
Before this year, contract reimbursement for each person who attends the Non-Violence Programme hadn’t increased in six years. In fact, it decreased. A slight increase was provided for 2022-23 but that still isn’t up to a level that meets the need. So RISE clinicians have had to do more with less funding at the same time as they support longer-term interventions that are the only proven ways to help people stop using violence.
“There is not enough funding to comprehensively address this issue right now,” Dee says. “The staff give 110 percent to the work and it’s still not enough. We have wait lists and can’t meet the expectations of the agencies that refer new clients to us. It’s really challenging but we aren’t giving up. We are the only ones here with a focus on perpetrators of violence and we have to keep moving forward.”
Dee is hopeful that change is coming, with the Ministry for the Elimination of Sexual Violence and Family Violence and its 25-year strategy, Te Aorerekura.
“The family violence sector now has a strong champion in a place of strength and we are doing all we can to capitalise on that.”
Dr Victor Macgill, RISE Clinician and one of the co-facilitators of the Non-Violence Programme in Nelson and previously in Kaikoura.
Dee Cresswell, RISE General Manager.
Mark Banks, RISE Clinician and one of the co-facilitators of the Non-Violence Programme in Nelson.