11 May Perpetrator Intervention Programs–not yet the resource child welfare needs
One of my fears is that child welfare will approach perpetrator accountability exclusively through perpetrator intervention programs. Since I’m at the national batterer intervention conference in Minneapolis, I’ve been thinking about the relationship between perpetrator intervention programs and the child welfare system.
perpetrator Intervention Programs are Not Enough
The Safe & Together work is focused on how child welfare thinks about, engages, and develops plans to intervene with domestic violence perpetrators. First, its tools and concepts are focused on including the perpetrator’s behavior as critical for assessment. Assessments include information about their influence on the family and the survivor’s strengths. Next, it focuses on how a perpetrator’s behavior is assessed and documented. Finally, it focuses on how the perpetrator’s behavior assessment is integrated into intervention plans for the family are developed.
My biggest worry is that child welfare agencies might assume that referring to perpetrator intervention programs means they are doing everything possible to hold them accountable.
Perpetrator Intervention Programs Can be Useful
Perpetrator intervention programs do have a critical role to play in any child welfare system’s response to domestic violence. Below is a checklist for perpetrator intervention programs that want to be a better resource for child welfare.
1. What is your familiarity with the mission, policy, practice of your local child welfare agency?
First, most professionals outside of child welfare have very little understanding of what shapes their processes and decision-making. Learning about those factors will help an intervention program become a better collaborative partner with children welfare and support better outcomes for the family.
2. How much does child welfare refer to your program?
What does child welfare know about your program? Are you clear about what you have to offer them to support their mission of child safety, permanency and well-being? It helps to review your intake process, curriculum, and communication about progress and completion. Next, look at your practice and programming from the perspective of the safety and risk concerns for children. This points out places where you can enhance your program to address better the ways domestic violence perpetrators harm children.
3. What do you know about how child welfare agencies in your area do or do not address Perpetrators?
Most professionals outside the child welfare system have limited knowledge about how child welfare works. Taking the time to understand how your local child welfare system does or doesn’t intervene with perpetrators helps you help them with their mission. Setting up a meeting with your local child welfare administrators is one of the best things you can do to find out about their current case practice with perpetrators. (Generally, it’s useful to ask about their practices with fathers in general as well.)
4. What do you know about how child welfare holds perpetrators accountable in other ways?
Perpetrator intervention programs should be first and foremost advocates for stopping perpetrators’ violence–not advocates for their own programs. Learning the child welfare system helps you recommend actions that child welfare can take to better hold perpetrators accountable. These actions do not necessarily involve a referral for treatment. Child welfare can learn to address perpetrators’ harmful behavior without referrals to service providers. For example, they may include requests that he return the family car to the children’s mother or request him to support his child’s mental health counseling in the case plan.
5. Does your program address how a perpetrator’s domestic violence impacts the children?
Perpetrator intervention programs provided education on how children are impacted by domestic violence for a long time. This education should expand to address how: children are used as weapons, how perpetrators undermine their partners’ parenting, and how coercive control tactics impact the children. For example, we need to talk about how isolating a partner may impact children’s access to extended family and participation in activities in the community.
6. How prepared is your program to assess Perpetrators as parents?
What questions do you ask in your program assessment to determine a perpetrator’s parenting? Do you ask about their role in the family, their skills, co-parenting practices and their ability to support their children’s relationship with their mother? Perpetrator assessments for child welfare need a strong component regarding these and related areas.
7. Is your referral/intake process set up to gather specific information about the impact on children?
It’s important for child welfare to know about the perpetrator’s specific pattern of coercive control and actions taken to harm the children. Programs need to get specific information from child welfare because perpetrators thrive on limited information about their behavior. Child welfare often invests a lot of time and energy in compiling this data from various sources. Perpetrator accountability takes the form of a more informed evaluation and feedback process. When this information is shared, it benefits programs, child welfare workers and the family.
8. Do your progress reports communicate specifics about a Perpetrator’s participation?
How much do your progress reports include how much he acknowledges his behavior? Is there information about how well he understands the impact on his family? And do you indicate any steps he is taking to change? Effective intervention programs seek to proactively share meaningful information with referral sources. A simple letter indicating completion are a dangerous tool that perpetrators use to return home or access unsupervised visits with his children. Progress and completion reports must provide more individualized, detailed information about a perpetrator’s involvement with their program, particularly as it relates to children’s safety and well-being. Perpetrator intervention reports are a small piece of any assessment. Reports from survivors combined and their advocates, interviews with children and other collateral sources of information are more effective tools.
9. Does your program highlight the limitations of your work?
Programs for perpetrators should be clear with child welfare about the limitations They should also encourage child welfare to partner with the survivor and continue their own assessment of the perpetrator’s change (or lack of change). This point is so important it is worth making twice.
Perpetrator intervention programs have a responsibility to educate child welfare about how to use their program to promote the safety and well-being of children.
Programs need to clearly identify that a perpetrator’s participation in a program does not guarantee behavior change. The Safe & Together Model places a strong emphasis on the skills and competencies of child welfare workers due to the importance of understanding the limitations of perpetrator intervention programs.
What does child welfare need from perpetrator intervention programs?
Finally, as a consumer of the perpetrator intervention service, child welfare workers need the following:
Accurate, meaningful and timely information about a perpetrator’s participation in a program.
The skills to evaluate potential change. Child welfare needs to learn to develop and assess meaningful behavior change goals. This will support their case plans and interventions.
Go to Family Violence Prevention Fund, Emerge, or Caring Dads. for examples of how some batterer intervention programs have been beefing up their educational components on fatherhood
Take our e-course Working with Men as Parents for more on working with men as parents,
Read our position paperon this HERE for more information on the dangers of using Perpetrator Intervention Program certificates as evidence of change.