Legal News
A charity in Essex has a novel method in approaching domestic violence (23 August 2012)
Date: 23/08/2012
Relate North Essex whose staff believes that the statistics that men were responsible for the majority of domestic violence, across the county and nationwide, was true, have on the premise created finalists Essex Change.
The concept of Essex Change was different in as much as its focus was on helping the men to stop abusing, rather than solely assisting the women and children who were the victims.
Their primary aim now is to keep women and children safe, so they support the families too, but their primary work is changing the behaviour of the abusive men.
Essex Change calls itself also unusual in that they would work with couples who were still in a relationship, rather than stating they have to be separated before any intervention can begin.
The charity is up for the Community award, a prize which they took home last year. Since their success in 2011, they have branched out into youth work, which is in two parts.
They work with young people who were already in a close, violent relationship by offering support, one-to-one or group work.
They were also working in partnership with charity Tender to offer drama-based workshops on domestic violence in 18 Essex schools over the next three years.
They intend to help students produce their own drama sketches, which would then be shown to the whole school during assemblies, so that the message was absorbed right across the student body.
The majority of men in their group sessions have been wishing that they had had this help earlier, said Lora Draper, youth service manager for Essex Change. That’s why the best place to start was with educating young people across the community.
Through their work, the staff at Essex Change can see that attitudes towards domestic violence were starting to alter. More and more men understood that abusive behaviour was not OK and are ready to seek help to change.
The team at Essex Change was delighted to be short listed in the Community category for the second time.
Lora added that the charity was thrilled to be finalists again. It was helping to raise its profile, so that people knew that they were available to help them.