Living in a household where there is domestic abuse can have a very negative impact on children’s development, health and wellbeing, so there is great interest in interventions that can prevent further harm.
We recently completed the evaluation of caring dads, safer children, a programme for fathers who have ongoing contact with their children but who have been domestically abusive. The programme uses the participants’ positive role as a father to motivate them to examine and change their behaviour. However, some fathers referred to the programme may often be resistant to engaging with other services due to their experiences with statutory services. A major challenge, therefore, is to encourage these fathers to engage with the programme.
We asked several practitioners who facilitate caring dads, safer children to talk about the skills and experience that help them to engage resistant fathers.
Here are their tips:
1. Have a positive, non-judgmental attitude
Attitude can be as important as experience. Being positive, non-judgmental, open-minded and retaining hope that people can change their behaviour is essential, as it enables the practitioners to remain motivated to work with difficult situations:
“You have to be open-minded, which is very, very difficult because you do have perpetrators of domestic abuse who hurt children and hurt their partners ... you need to have an awareness of that, but that awareness shouldn’t [affect] how you work with them and it’s always key to keep the focus that you’re working with the child invariably through the father,” group facilitator.
2. Empathise but don’t collude
It is important to build a working relationship that will enable the practitioner to help the father and ultimately his children. The practitioners need to demonstrate that they understand the father but not excuse or collude with his domestically abusive behaviour.
Fathers attending the programme are often negatively perceived by the public and statutory services. Therefore, practitioners need to demonstrate an awareness of how life experiences have influenced the father’s views of maleness, his expectations around the role of a partner and of being a father, while also holding him to account for his domestically abusive behaviour and the negative impact on his child and the child’s mother.
3. Retain focus on his child’s needs
Keeping focus on the father’s children helps practitioners to retain a neutral stance. It also helps them to challenge fathers who try to minimise the effect their behaviour had on their children. For example, if fathers say: “But the child was upstairs”, this provides an opportunity to educate the father by sharing our knowledge of the reality for that child:
“The child may not see it happen to the mother but sees the black eye the next day, and what is the child thinking after that?” group facilitator.
4. Help him to identify positive reasons for changing
Motivational interviewing techniques help practitioners guide conversations with a father so that he will become more committed to changing his behaviour, because he can identify positive reasons for changing that will benefit his relationship with his child. For example, showing respect for his child’s mother can mitigate the child feeling torn between both parents.
5. Recognise whether he is ready to change
Practitioners need to be skilled in assessing whether the father is ready to participate in the group at that particular time. They need to recognise the fathers’ stage within the change process: whether he has demonstrated that he has at least begun to reflect on his behaviour and provided some insight in terms of identifying changes he needs to make. Potential group members also need to recognise and take some responsibility for their domestically abusive behaviour.
6. Reflect on your own practice and knowledge
Working in teams increased practitioners’ confidence in how to speak to fathers and become more familiar with their concerns. It is also important for practitioners to keep up to date with changes in relation to domestic abuse, e.g. the increased role of social media in coercive and controlling behaviour and being aware of how diversity impacts on awareness and understanding of domestic abuse.
Practitioners found that the father’s level of engagement in the group programme would determine how far he would progress through the change process. Thus, group programmes are more effective and better protect children when the practitioners delivering them are skilled in engaging resistant participants.
You can find out more about caring dads, safer children on the NSPCC Impact and Evidence Hub.
Nicola McConnell is a senior evaluation officer at the NSPCC, most recently leading the evaluation of caring dads: safer children. Cleve Speers is a children’s services practitioner who is experienced in assessment and facilitation of the caring dads: safer children group work programme.
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