An interesting interview (video, 44:31) by OnRecord. The full video description:

David Eggins and Denise Knowles, of Temper Domestic Violence are very experienced providers of Domestic Abuse Perpetrator Programmes (DAPPs). Their small group DAPPs have a number of important features which maximise their therapeutic effectiveness, such as a small (up to 8) and fixed number of participants, techniques to promote trust and openness and a focus on the background and personal issues of the participants. They have studied the DAPPs which are used by CAFCASS and which are the only ones approved for fathers (never for mothers) in the family courts. They have found a massive, 70% (nearly three quarters) dropout rate. Of those who don’t dropout, a substantial number still fail. The participants who dropout are more violent than those who complete the programmes.

They explain what the problems are with the CAFCASS approved DAPPs. These include: Having greater numbers in the groups (sometimes 12); allowing new participants to join the groups mid-programme; basing the programme on the assumption that all domestic violence is driven by patriarchal assumptions of entitlement by men; a critical and blaming approach; lack of trust within the group; lack of therapeutic alliance with those running the group. There are so many gross inadequacies in the CAFCASS approved DAPPs and such a high failure rate that it is a terrible waste of resources and of no significant benefit to either perpetrators or to their past or future victims.

David and Denise work with both male and female perpetrators of domestic violence. They gave a presentation (video, 46:28) at our (online) National Conference on Men’s Issues last June, Domestic Abuse is a Men’s Issue, too. The document associated with the event, including speaker details, is here, the videos playlist here.

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