CCChat-Magazine_Issue-15

Min: I think that a situation can be
made worse if you shame someone, it
doesn’t motivate anyone to want to
change and they are more likely to
minimise their actions and feel
resentment for being made to feel
guilt. I think that’s a huge problem.
Sue: We don’t do that. What we do is
very trauma informed, we go here’s a
bit of information, here’s what you can
think about it, and they both know that
each of them is getting the same
information every week. I was
terrified, the first time we ran. Eight
families started the first group and
they were all high risk, and eight
families finished.
Sue: From high to low. A lot of them
are high. No one has ever worked with
them like this before. No one has ever
said come along and we’re going to
give you some education about it. No
one’s ever done that. With most
participants, the kids are on the
register. Most of the families are
safeguarded. We engage them and I
said, anyway, if he didn’t come, what
would that have said to you? And they
said ‘well he didn’t want any help, did
he?’ and they all said that they might
have got out earlier, so that’s a win.
My view, when we started this, was
that if no one completes this, I don’t
care because what happens is we will
have made those women safer. We’ve
given them an opportunity to
understand what’s going on and given
them an opportunity to exit earlier and
safely.
My primary aim was not to get the
men through the programme but to
make the women and children safer.
Min: Do you still keep in touch?
Sue: No, I don’t run it. This was in
Slough. We train the people to deliver
it. We’ve done a cost benefit analysis in
Slough, and we had an audit and an
audit evaluation on one we’ve
delivered in Wales and even the
auditors said, some people said it was
like magic. We can’t claim all of that
because there’s lots of factors so we
can’t just claim that it’s our group that
made all that difference to families and
I understand that, but it’s massively
more important than what has been
happening to them because most
perpetrator programmes are so long.
When I was working independently, I
did a massive evaluation over quite a
long time, 3 years of a perpetrators
programme and I’m not saying ours is
the it is a solution but it is a different
approach. When I volunteered in
outreach, I got to see this young
woman and she was 20, she had a baby
and he had punched her when she was
holding the baby. She didn’t come
from any background like this at all.
She rang the police and he was
Making The Invisible Visible