Dear colleagues, The Anti-violence Project of the Mens Resource Centre based in NSW Australia provides group programs for men who voluntarily want to end their violence and abusive behaviour. Partners and ex-partners are contacted and offered support as an integral part of the program. The project conducts an evaluation every two years. The evaluation uses a phone survey and contacts as many of the men that attend the programs and their (ex) partners as possible. In the most recent survey, fifty percent of the partners of men who have attended the AVP programs stated that of all forms of violence (physical, verbal, emotional, sexual) toward them have ceased.
A recurrent obstacle in evaluations is the effort in tracking down the people who have used our services. I'm not sure where research and documentation most urgently needed, what I know is that in our region (rural and town) approximately five men per week call and ask for help in ending their abusive behaviour. The population is approximately 50,000. In other words, for every 1000 head of population in Australia you can expect one man per week to be desperate or brave enough to seek assistance in improving their relationships and ending abuse. This figure matches statistics from a similar centre in Auckland NZ. I believe that it is vital that these men are offered a venue in which they can learn to take responsibility for their behaviour and implement non- violent, respectful communication with their families and friends. I believe that a large effort like this will help change the climate in which violence toward women is accepted in our society. It would be interesting to canvas women's perspectives on offering men anti-violence programs. A small amount of research would be useful in terms of guiding such a project. We have not been able to attract funding for independent research. Therefore our evaluations are compromised in terms of independence. However students who are independent of the service are engaged (voluntarily) to conduct the phone interviews. I believe that Participatory Action Research is an admirable tool for evaluation and improvement of services. 'Restraint of Love' (Susan Goff and Associates 1995), is a book documenting Action Research with young victims of violence. All the best with your work, Stuart Stuart Anderson Anti-violence Project 02 6622 6116 ***End-violence is sponsored by UNIFEM and receives generous support from ICAP*** To post a message, send it to: <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> To subscribe or unsubscribe, send a message to: <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>. In the 1st line of the message type: subscribe end-violence OR type: unsubscribe end-violence Archives of previous End-violence messages can be found at: http://www.edc.org/GLG/end-violence/hypermail/
