1. Against Domestic Violence and Abuse – ADVA Partnership, Devon
Devon’s response to domestic violence & abuse as the context for the REPAIR programme
Dartington 2007
Roy Tomlinson and
Rachel Martin
Thank you for indulging us within the graveyard slot of this conference’s afternoon!
To make sure you reinvigorate those endorphins I’d like you to stand up quickly in response to the following questions please. Some of you may stand up more than once!
Please stand if you are a father or step father
Please stand if you are mother or step mother
Please stand if you are somebody’s son but not a father
Please stand if you are somebody’s daughter but not a mother
Please stand all of you whose sons or daughters are now in relationships with boy/girlfriends/husbands/wives?
That should have covered all of you. The point of this exercise, as well as ensuring necessary oxygen to your lungs and brains, is to also visualise how important relationships are to all of us, and how we’re all caught up within family life extending from generation to generation. These relationships are to be cherished but you, as agency workers and managers, know too just how widespread the agony is when personal relationships break-down and worse still, abuse and violence disintegrates lives.
Roy and I are going to do a double-act in our half hour slot. We won’t be going into all the services that the adva partnership funds within Devon (these are in your packs) but rather we will be looking at
Why domestic violence and abuse work is so important to Devon’s agencies and
Ways in which we can shift our focus towards family intervention working.
I will talk about
the national perspective on domestic violence and abuse,
The costs of dealing with dva and the unmet needs
Current practice and what it addresses, or more importantly, doesn’t address – these are setting the context of REPAIR within Devon’s wider provision.
Roy will then look at the community perpetrator programme, REPAIR – resolved to end power and abuse in relationships – and discuss some thoughts about the work and the potential options open to us as agencies for working differently in the future.
Against Domestic Violence and Abuse – ADVA Partnership, Devon

2. Coordinated Community Response to DV
Police
IDVA
CPS
Courts
Civil Solicitor
Substance Misuse Agenices
Women’s Safety Worker
Benefits Agency
Social Services
Women’s Aid
Refuge
Employer
Housing
Health
CDRP
LCJB
Police
CPS
PPO
Courts
Probation
Substance Misuse Agencies
Perpetrator Programmes
Family Support
Prison
Employer
Housing
Health
Independent Domestic Violence Advisors Multi-Agency Public Protection Arrangements Multi-Agency Risk Assessment Conference Local Safeguarding Children Boards
Social Services Education Schools CAMHS Health Women's Aid Voluntary Sector Housing Police Probation Courts CJS
Community
Friends
Perpetrator
Individual
CYSP
CDRP
Family
CAFCASS
Schools
Voluntary Sector
Educational Welfare
Youth Offending Team
Child Protection Agencies
Educational Psychology
Nursery/Child Care
Social Services
Health
Child
Immediate Network
Neighbours
Primary Agency Contact
Nationally the Domestic Violence and Abuse agenda has remained high over the last 5 years, and another positive, recent step by the Home Office is to change the Community Safety Domestic Violence target from April 2008 from volume to violent crime – shifting towards reduction in DV Murders and reduction in repeat victimisation/scale of repeat violence. (NI 15 Serious Violent Crime; NI 34 DV Murder; NI 32 Repeat Incidents of DV).
I’m showing you the Home Office’s Co-ordinated Community Response to Domestic Violence – as it represents who is affected by dva, and whose responsibility it is to support emanating needs. This model is important because it highlights
that the focus of intervention revolves around all three elements of the family – perpetrator, victim and children, and not in isolation
That the support structures around all these 3 components are complex and engage multiple agencies and cross many different support types
CITE the services provided by adva partnership, via W Aid, as go through the model
Key points:
Devon has done well to date and mirrors the national model
Devon can do more to integrate the work of agencies to meet the integrated needs of families living with domestic violence and abuse
Devon has an opportunity through its LAA and the Devon Strategic Partnership to think out of silos and into linked, thematic work
Devon should look to sustainably fund this work if it’s serious about dv intervention.
Agency Risk Assessments
Safety Planning Process
Against Domestic Violence and Abuse – ADVA Partnership, Devon
Coordinated Community Response to DV

3. Against Domestic Violence and Abuse – ADVA Partnership, Devon
£60m Cost in Devon
Domestic Violence and Abuse
related costs
GP visits : £16,591,581
1.2% A&E related: £3,744,952
35-55% CP cases : £103,140
55% of cyp in care : £162,250 a week
26% of CIN : £123,864 a week
898 Homeless acceptances : £177,844
8,600 incident investigations : £1,780,000
Nationally domestic violence and abuse services cost our nation £23 billion pounds a year (S Walby, Home Office commissioned research) – this is covering statutory service interventions, impact on employers etc. Using Walby’s formulae we have estimated the costs of service intervention (not prevention) to be in the region of £60 million pounds a year.
This is broken down (and there are more statistics in our Strategy in your packs):
GPs – 11% of visits to GP surgeries suffered DV. We have 107 GP Practices in Devon; average number of visits per year per Practice is 11,650 in Devon; average cost per visit £121 (excluding drug treatment)
A&E: 1.2% of attendances at A&E are DV related (Walby). It costs £9,190 for serious (weapon/strangulation) inc hospital and ambulance; it costs £680 for ‘other’ (kicked, hit, bit). Assuming 75% ‘other’ and 25% serious costs are nearly £4m a year in Devon.
Another NHS statistic not cited here: 3% of NHS expenditure is due to physical injury associated with DV – Total annual NHS expenditure in Devon is £959,903,000; 3% of this is dv-related and equates to nearly £29 million in Devon alone.
Child Protection cases: In Devon we have 290 children on CP register this year and last year 382 Case Conferences. If we take the mid point between 35-55% at a conference cost of £600 (low estimate) this costs Devon’s CYPs service £103,140 a year for those cases that have dva in their history.
Children in Need: In Devon we have 3,970 CIN. For 26% of these dva will be a factor. Each child in need costs £120 a week which totals for those dva-related cases nearly £124,000 a week (£6,439,680 a year)
Homelessness: in Devon in there were 898 homeless acceptances of which 11% (98) were dva related. Each of these costs Devon’s Local Authorities £300 a week for an average of 6 weeks per case, per annum amounting to a total of £177,844
Police costs: 8,600 incidents of dva reported to the police in Devon each year (gone up steadily year on year for the last 5 years). An under-estimate of cost per incident is £207 and so at the very least Police spend nearly £2 million a year on dealing with all dva incidents. One murder investigation costs the force over £1million pounds.
oft-quoted 19th century American statesman (Disraeli) quote ‘there are lies, damn lies - and statistics’. The purpose of this slide is not to exaggerate the costs but to face up to how our statutory services are currently spending money on domestic violence and abuse-related interventions.
We all know dva is a crime that affects all agencies and families from birth to death. It knows no social boundaries. It is linked to alcohol and drug misuse; its victims experience well above average mental health issues; the impact experienced by children and young people living in these households – 30,000 of them in Devon – lasts into adulthood. Without appropriate intervention work most of our children living with domestic violence and abuse will suffer the consequences into their adulthood.
Key points
Is there a better way to spend £60million a year?
Can we sit down, at DSP level and via LAA identify true interagency, family intervention work to tackle dva in Devon,
Can this be sustainably funded so the work of the voluntary sector can be more strategically incorporated?
Against Domestic Violence and Abuse – ADVA Partnership, Devon

4. Against Domestic Violence and Abuse – ADVA Partnership, Devon
Meeting Need - Women
7.4% of annual victims supported by Women’s Aid
13 FTE staff support 2,000 women for £465,000
To manage need in Devon requires 24 outreach staff and 10 idvas
The purpose of this slide (thanks to Kristian and Julia in the DAAT team for the image) is to see how few victims are being supported currently in Devon AND those few thousand that are currently only funded via adva partnership funding on an ‘ad hoc’, non-sustained basis – so it is precarious and yet vital work.
THE FUTURE NEEDS TO BE HOW TO WORK WITH THE WHOLE FAMILY. AT PRESENT IN DEVON WE’RE ONLY WORKING WITH A FRACTION OF THE NEED:
Based on research (1 in 3 or 4 women in their lifetime or 1 in 10 in a year) there will be 27,000 victims of dva in Devon
Red squares: 1,000 women receive outreach support from Women’s Aid in Devon a year
Yellow squares: A further 1,000 women receive specialist idva support from Women’s Aid (very high risk victims) a year (yellow squares)
Combination of blue and yellow: Each year the Police deal with 2,800 victims per year (out of 8,600 incidents a year)
So in Devon we’re supporting only 7.4% of victims experiencing domestic violence and abuse
These 7.4% are supported by 13 FTE £289k + £176K = £465,000.
Cost of supporting a woman, per year, is £232
To meet the real need in Devon we need 24 outreach staff and 10 idvas
Key points
There is a huge unsupported need – how to reach these women (and male victims) and how to fund this?
Need to sustainably fund support provided by Women’s Aid
Against Domestic Violence and Abuse – ADVA Partnership, Devon

5. Meeting the need - children
30.4% cyp in need supported by Women’s Aid
1.5 FTE MARAC cyp & 2.5 FTE refuge cyp at £131,000
To meet need 6 idvas & 2.5 FTE refuge
Similarly with children there are untold numbers of cyp affected and likely to be receiving no support. This diagram doesn’t plot the ‘potential numbers’ of cyp as we don’t have a reliable research figure for this. Instead it shows Devon’s 3,970 Children in Need (ie Children assessed by social workers in accordance with Section 17 of the Children Act). According to Silvia Walby research 1,032 of Devon’s Children in Need will have lived with / experienced dva.
Likely number of children and young people 0 – 18 in Devon living with dva in one year is 13,582 (based on population of 135,829 children. Average family comprises 1.8 cyp so equates to 75,460 families. If one in ten of these experience dva in one year = 7,546 families x 1.8 cyp = 13, 582 children/young people).
From April 07 – Nov our database recorded 1,387 children associated with mothers being supported by our 3 women’s aid outreach services – but the service does not cover support to those children, even though they’ve been identified as living with abuse.
blue squares represent 150 children supported by Women’s Aid cyp workers, identified through outreach or REPAIR
The black squares represent the 229 cyp supported in W Aid and D&C Housing in Devon’s 3 refuges
The red squares represent the 600 children (minimum) identified to be living in very high risk families through MARACs
Adva funds 3 children’s workers in Devon (as part of REPAIR programme), approximately 1.5 FTE of this towards supporting children identified through MARAC or Women’s Aid outreach (Cost £54,000)
Adva funds 2.5 FTE specialist children’s workers in the 3 refuges in Devon, 229 £76,000 per £331 worker cost per child per annum
Key points
Unknown need
Need to join up dva integrally within CYP Plan/Trust work and ensure dva part of CAF
Need to maintain specialist support and fund this within the voluntary sector
Against Domestic Violence and Abuse – ADVA Partnership, Devon

6. Why focus on men and their behaviour?
Historical and institutional context
Criminal Justice System : 96.4% of dv incidents did not lead to conviction
869 incidents, 222 arrests, 60 charged, 31 convicted, 4 custodial sentences
The CJ system treats non-domestic violence more seriously in terms of custodial sentences (Hester)
Men are seeking help from agencies
but are not being referred to appropriate services
Men - WORK WITH MEN & dva HAS LARGELY COME OUT OF THE CJ SYSTEM – WE NEED TO MOVE TOWARDS A MORE HOLISTIC APPROACH
Historical and institutional context:
1 Blakemore, from Respect says “Any response to dv that fails to address the behaviour of male perps will remain deeply flawed. Our failure to try to engage with dv perps is an abdication of our responsibility as professionals. If social workers, counsellors, health professionals, educators and local authorities fail to engage with men who are using violence towards their partners and probably their children, then who is going to do so?”
2 Hester’s research finds that the majority of dva cases (94%) DO NOT lead to conviction (and this is something being addressed by our SDVC in Devon)
3 Hester also finds that the CJ system treats non-domestic violence more seriously in terms of custodial sentences – so institutionally we’re still not weighting sufficiently the degree of harm imposed by domestic violence, compared with other crimes.
4 Most fathers are granted contact at court. In ,356 contact orders were made and 518 were refused – under 1% of applications
5 Other common features of our institutional or agency practice are:
Parenting is done by women
Child protection is child focussed – 35-55% of cp cases report DV. Need to shift the focus away from the child as victim to dealing with the source of abuse.
Predominant intervention is to encourage her to leave
Failure on agencies to stay involved post separation
Are male perpetrators already seeking help? Yes, but in most cases are not being referred to appropriate services. Marianne Hester found
71% of dv perpetrators had approached a GP Health service should not refer perps to counselling or related approaches that may reinforce the ‘poor me’ syndrome. Instead should direct perps to services that are critical of, and aim to change, violent men’s behaviour
75% CAFCASS public law caseload is dv related and 65% of private law cases (Blakelock)
58% men had contact with the police in relation to dv (HO)
30% men had contact with RELATE (HO)
25% men contact with Social Services (HO)
KEY QUESTIONS FOR US TO CONSIDER?
How much agency focus is there on dealing with male violent or disruptive behaviour as opposed to focus on mothering and parenting?
What services and interventions are there within social care services which deal specifically with men, let alone men within the wider family context?
How much parenting work is done with both mothers and fathers?
How do we, as an agency, engage with male perpetrators? Do we look at the family as a whole?
We need to work more holistically & shift from services just dealing with victims, or just perpetrators, or just children towards trying to deal with all 3 elements in a family context.
Against Domestic Violence and Abuse – ADVA Partnership, Devon

7. REPAIR in Devon Community Perpetrator Programme
Programme for men (risk assessment; one to one; group)
Support for women (face to face, phone & pattern changing group work)
Support for cyp (individual sessions)
Supervision (fortnightly, 2 hours)
Agency awareness (to increase referrals)
I am going to briefly explain what REPAIR is and just few thoughts from the work so far Before doing that I want to acknowledge the innovative and hard work put into the development of the programme by the people working on REPAIR. Many are in the audience today and can speak far more eloquently and with more authority than I can on the detail of the work. If you want to know more about this then there are two workshops (B5 Working with men REPAIR and IDAP; B6 REPAIR as a holistic family model) will go into much more detail.
We have been fortunate to benefit from a three year ISB fund to resource this work which has enabled us to pilot some nationally innovative work with male perpetrators. But perhaps more improtantly in the context of today’s conference we have been able to take some exploratory steps forward into an approach that could deal with the triangle of DV within the context of holistic family intervention. More of that later as it may be the model for the future.
What is REPAIR – Resolve to End Power and Abuse in Relationships – acknowledge Pete Rosser the early pioneer for this title.
Key is:
Community based on self-referral from men
Requirement that partners and any children will be offered support
Attempts to take a whole family approach
Complex funding and agency based service model – ISB, Daphne (thanks to our EU Partners), adva
Mix of individual assessment and group work intervention work
Based within three areas of Devon
Primary aim is to promote the safety of women and children
Many/majority of men that enter the scheme are not known to CJA so catching a new group of men and women
Against Domestic Violence and Abuse – ADVA Partnership, Devon

8. Against Domestic Violence and Abuse – ADVA Partnership, Devon
REPAIR Programme
5 modules, each module has six sessions.
The focus of the 5 modules is on the following forms of abusive behaviour:
1) intimidation, coercion and threats
2) emotional abuse
3) male privilege
4) sexual abuse
5) using children and abusive parenting
Programme flexibility enables depth . The belief is that to generate genuine change to our identity is an emotional as well as a cognitive process.
Male programme is based on Duluth and IDAP but has introduced a different focus
Women’s programme is focussed on individual support with aim of moving onto Pattern Changing when that is suitable
CYP had hope to be groupwork focussed but because of ages and geography that has not been possible – so focus again on 1-1 tailored work BUT hope to pilot groupwork model engaging cyp other than from REPAIR.
MALE – 1-1 assessment up to 14 weeks prior to groupwork
Groupwork has focus on the five modules
1 – set within basic framework of managing conflict and difference within relationships
2 – looks at intimacy and engaging with emotional feelings
3 – nature of relationships within context of gender stereotypes and inequalities
4 – what is the nature of sexual expereince and sexual relations
5 – looks at the nature of appropraite parenting (fathering) and the impact of abuse on children
Key of how REPAIR differs from Idap is built in felxibility to focus on the here and now of what is brought to each session by the men. The framework provides focus of what issues are covered BUT it maintains potential to set any particular component within what is or has happened to tbe man and partner since the last session. (emphasise importance of link between REPAIR and WSW to feedback what has really been happening)
Key issues
Engaging at an emotional level will have greater long-lasting impact on changing behaviour
Dealing with the here and now as part of weekly check-in opening part to a session
Engaging feelings are key to embedding change
The role of other men in the group in challenging each other and checking out is vital to process of change
Against Domestic Violence and Abuse – ADVA Partnership, Devon

9. REPAIR key messages so far
Reaching men early in their cycle of abuse
Women’s safety increases as new catchment group who continue with support
Risk-assessment critical to measure motivation and potential success
Inter-agency panel improves joint management of risk in the community and criminal justice system
HEALTH WARNING – THE EVALUATION IS NOT COMPLETE AND DATA IS STILL NOT FULL ENOUGH TO DRAW CLEAR CONCLUSIONS ANYTHING WE SAY TODAY MUST BE SEEN WITHIN THIS PRELIMINARY SETTING
Self-reported violence does appear to reduce the longer a man is on a programme and to reduce in violence
It appears that men could be showing more awareness of their violence and to report it as a product of the programme
Most of the women supported were new to intervention as they had not previously saught help – this identifies a new group of women whose safety has been improved
The 1-1 assessment process is critical element in the overall programme in measuring motivation and identifiying potential for successful completion. THIS is and early but potentially very important lesson that could have wider implications about what makes for successful intervention work
Women need subtantial periods of 1-1 support before they are ready to move onto groupwork programmes and are likely to need longer-term help in moving their lives forward. Once engaged women are likely to maintain their involvement in services
For both men and women there is a high level of engagement with health services before programme referral – this needs to be explored more to identify the type of engagment and what heath care is accessed. Also to test if reduction in accessing health results from engagement with the programme
The most successful elements of the programme would appear to bear out the focus given to engaging men at an emotional and feeling level
Crucial to the holistic approach the programme has introduced is the regular sharing of information between the men/women/cyp intervention workers that aids openness in the dynamics of the triangle. Added to this the inter-agency panel in North Devon is a key forum for sharing information and managing risk
Against Domestic Violence and Abuse – ADVA Partnership, Devon

10. Against Domestic Violence and Abuse – ADVA Partnership, Devon
Implications
The unit cost £8,000 per annum
Is this a more cost-effective family intervention model than supporting one child in need, per year, costing £6,240?
Potential for differential programmes/interventions based on assessment & risk
22% of men referred reach the full programme. What about the other 78%?
So from the initial findings and experiences is it possible to speculate on how the REPAIR model could help in a holistic family intervention programme for the future.
PERHAPS – BUT REMEMBER THESE ARE ONLY POTENTIAL AREAS FOR EXPLIORATION NOT DEFINITVE ANSWERS
Unit Cost
£80,000 per programme area. Average completions of men a year is 10 (and higher number of women; approximately 10 cyp)
Unit might comprise man and partner; man, woman & ex-partner; man, partner and child/ren;
Looks as if there is a catchment group of men for whom the ‘full’ programme might not be appropriate (approx 22% of men referred progress as far as a full programme. Our fuller research may indicate how you assess who those men are likely to be).
22% could relate to findings from Hester’s work which identifies 4 categories of DV perpetrator
If you get the assessment right the full programme could deal with very high risk, high demand families and development of other models can deal with lower tier needs.
Against Domestic Violence and Abuse – ADVA Partnership, Devon

11. Against Domestic Violence and Abuse – ADVA Partnership, Devon
Perpetrator ‘types’
Group 1 – ‘one incident’ group. One dv incident recorded by police (31.4%)
Group 2 – ‘mainly non-dv’ group. One dv incident, arrested for non-dv offences (17.4%)
Group 3 – ‘dedicated repeat dv’ perps. A number of dv incidents recorded, but no other offences (17.4%)
Group 4 – ‘all round repeat offenders’. Had a number of dv incidents recorded, and also been arrested for non-dv offence (33.8%)
Hester’s research (not yet published) using a sample of 356 DV Perpetrators from Northumbria – it drew on Police data to develop 692 perpetrator profiles analysing 1889 incidents and a 3 year follow up with the 356 offenders
The purpose in drawing on this research is that it points to the need to be more differntiating in how we regard perpatrators. Hester is suggesting that the pattern of DV perpetration could be characterised more for its differences than its homogeneity.
Group 1 – could be initial or early group when crisis causes call to police – doesn’t minimise fact that potentially the victim may have suffered up to 35 incidents before the police are called or the wide group who never go to the Police
Group 2 – have a wider pattern of offending behaviour with DV as a more minor part of this
Gropup 3 – not generally criminogenic but pattern of on-going DV perpetration appears to be the major facet of their offending behaviour
Group 4 – generally they have a pattern of offending behviour that embraces most facets of their lives and DV is part of this
This shows perpetrators are not one homogenous group – so one intervention is not likely to suit all. We are not saying that this is the only way to develop typologies of DV perpetrators nor that you can automatically establsh services on the basis of these differences.
BUT we are saying it may point the way for developing a range of services that can respond to what appears to be differntial need. It raises some critical questions for how we shape and develop on from the REPAIR programme so far:
Can the REPAIR programme shed some light on this? Can we look at bringing together community and criminal justice interventions combined? Will some short programmes meet the needs of some men?
Given the nature of Devon’s geography and need do we need to develop more one to one work (because of the complications of group work, and based on number of men who complete 1:1 work but don’t go onto the group)?
Against Domestic Violence and Abuse – ADVA Partnership, Devon

12. Against Domestic Violence and Abuse – ADVA Partnership, Devon
Contact Details
If we are together nothing is impossible. If we are divided all will fail.
Winston Churchill
Against Domestic Violence and Abuse – ADVA Partnership, Devon