Choose to Change: A New Community-Based Men’s Behavior Change Toolkit
By David Mandel, CEO and Founder, Safe & Together Institute
Traditionally, domestic abuse accountability and intervention efforts with men who choose violence have been focused on arrest, courts, and men’s behavior change programs. While these endeavors are critical to community efforts around accountability and safety for survivors, we know that most men who choose violence may never touch these systems.
Moreover, anti-racist activism has highlighted the need to broaden our responses to extend beyond criminal justice responses. We can no longer ignore how poor, marginalized, and ethnic minority men and their families are disproportionately represented within law enforcement, criminal justice, and child protection systems across the world. These responses have failed to help many women, particularly women of color, who are worried that a call to law enforcement will lead to an overreaction in police response or the unnecessary incarceration of their partner.
To move beyond the over-reliance on a criminal justice response to persons who choose violence and respond to the needs of diverse communities and families, we need a wider set of resources and interventions for men who choose violence. These interventions need to prioritize adult and child safety while providing new pathways forward for men who want to change their behaviors.
To coincide with Father’s Day in the UK and USA, the Safe & Together Institute is pleased to launch our Choose to Change Toolkit. This is a time of significant disruption in service delivery, and reflection on the strengths and weaknesses of mainstream responses to domestic violence. Lockdown, loss of employment, and social distancing are creating new and unique pressures on families. More men than ever are calling hotlines, reaching out for help with their violence toward loved ones.
Our Choose to Change Toolkit describes a four-step process to help men develop strong, safe support networks to help them interrupt their violence and increase safety for other family members. Now more than ever, we need a wide range of tools to help men who choose violence to be responsible for their behaviors and change them. By offering men the tools to change, we can encourage their efforts to be a better partner and father.
The Safe & Together Model, at its core, stresses the importance of intervening with men who choose violence, particularly as parents. By offering men the tools to change, we can encourage their efforts to be a better partner and father. We want to encourage more and more men to seek out help around their behavior, their substance use, and their mental health.
The messaging in these resources acknowledges that men are not often encouraged to seek help or support. Boys and men are told to be strong, unafraid, and in control of the situation. We want men to know that it is ok to feel afraid, worried, or depressed and to reach out for help from formal and informal networks. What is not ok is controlling or abusing loved ones.
In the current situation of the pandemic, we want to use the opportunity offered by the global conversation about anxiety and worry about health and safety. We believe now is the time to reach out to men who are choosing violence (and those at risk for choosing violence) with a very clear message:
It is okay to feel worried or afraid for your own safety and the safety of your loved ones.
It’s never okay to use those fears and worries as an excuse for lashing out or controlling others. You can choose to control your behavior.
Help is available.
The rationale behind the messaging is that many men who choose violence use their abusive behaviors so they can manage their own feelings of fear and worry. These behaviors are supported by cultural ideas that can conflate masculinity, fatherhood, and dominance over others, especially women and children. Our message recognizes the reality of anxiety while setting clear boundaries on behaviors. Just like normal times, the current situation does not justify violence and abuse.
By implementing new engagement strategies for men who are choosing violence, we are hoping to improve outcomes for adult and child survivors. We hope these resources, when added to existing intervention strategies, will help make real differences in the safety and quality of life of women and children and offer men new, practical options for choosing to change their behavior.
Additional Resources
Online Course: Working with Men as Parents: Fathers' Parenting Choices Matter
David Mandel’s book Stop Blaming Mothers and Ignoring Fathers: How to Transform the Way We Keep Children Safe from Domestic Violence
Safe & Together Institute’s domestic abuse–informed trainings
Position Paper: Perpetrator Intervention Program Completion Certificates Are Dangerous