New Program Promotes Healthy Parenting for Fathers While Addressing Past Violence

How can fathers who have used violence in the past talk to their children about abuse? Which fathers will be able to help their children heal from violence in a safe and healthy way? What steps can fathers take to reconnect with children who have witnessed domestic violence? A new program organized by the Family Violence Prevention Fund (FVPF) will help answer these and other questions.

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The Fathering After Violence Project addresses the role of fatherhood with men who have been violent in intimate partner relationships. Through the Project, the FVPF will partner with The Institute On Domestic Violence in the African American Community (IDVAAC) and The Minnesota Center Against Violence and Abuse (MINCAVA), as well as a consortium of Boston-based organizations that work with men who have used violence and children who are affected by it. The Project will develop materials to help men who have been abusive talk to their children about their violent pasts, make amends and start healing their relationship with their children when possible and appropriate.

"Our main priority is ensuring the safety of victims of domestic violence and their children," said FVPF Vice President Janet Carter. "But we recognize that many men who have been abusive are fathers who will continue to be involved in the lives of their children. This new Project will explore ways to help these men be better fathers and show them how to teach their children that violence against women is wrong. Doing so can help end the vicious cycle of abuse."

The Fathering After Violence Project results from a partnership between the FVPF, IDVAAC, MINCAVA and the Dorchester Community Roundtable, The Boston Children's Hospital Child Witness to Violence Project, EMERGE, Roxberry Comprehensive Community Health Services and Common Purpose. Lonna Davis will head the Project out of the FVPF's Boston office with the help of consultant Juan Carlos Arean. Support for the Project comes from the Doris Duke Charitable Foundation.

Batterer Intervention Programs

Throughout the last decade, batterer intervention programs have been proliferating around the country. With varying degree of reported success, these programs have been engaging abusive men to make them accountable for their behavior and to educate them about healthy alternatives to their abuse. Men learn what constitutes abuse and how it affects their partners and relationships.

Anecdotal information from batterer intervention practitioners indicates that understanding the effects of violence on children is a powerful motivator for abusive men to change their behavior. But little attention has been given to the issue of men talking to their children about their abuse. Programs may include discussions about the effects of violence on children, but often they fall short of helping men figure out how to begin approaching the subject with their children.

The Fathering After Violence Project will develop tools to help batterer intervention programs better address these topics and help men who have made a commitment to renounce violence be better parents. The Project will support and compliment other responsible and innovative work done by batterer intervention programs and other organizations around the country in the fatherhood field.

Fathering After Violence Project

The Fathering After Violence Project will help children and their families by attending to the needs of fathers who are ready to make amends with their children. It will produce materials for men who have been violent, children who have been affected by violence and service providers who work with both groups. The materials will be developed in English and in Spanish, and will be culturally appropriate for diverse populations.

Materials will include:

* Exercises that can be incorporated into typical sessions in any batterers' intervention program;

* Tools and homework for program participants to use with their children outside a batterers intervention program;

* Outreach materials about fathering for men who have used violence;

* Policy and practice recommendations that support the objectives of the project;

* A monograph on considerations in working with fathers for child mental health practitioners;

* A list of resources for batterers' intervention programs; and

* A safety and accountability guide for doing this work.

The materials will be developed under the guidance of a national advisory committee of experts on fatherhood, batterer intervention and battered women's advocacy. The committee will review and evaluate Project materials. The Project also will gather feedback from mothers who have experienced intimate partner violence, men who have completed batterers intervention programs and who have renounced the use of violence, batterer intervention practitioners, and staff from fatherhood programs and visitation centers.

In early 2003, the Boston-based batterer intervention programs participating in the Fathering After Violence Project will pilot the implementation of the Project's materials and practices, and participate in an evaluation process. The Child Witness to Violence Project also will test the Project's practice recommendations on how to work with fathers in the context of children's mental health treatment. After the evaluation process, the materials may be available to other programs around the country.