Summary findings Blackpool Inner Strength Evaluation
Inner Strength (IS) was commissioned by Blackpool Social Care as part of Blackpool’s Domestic Abuse and Interpersonal Violence Strategy. IS is a 26-session group-based therapeutic intervention, delivered in community settings and in prison, for male and female perpetrators of partner violence. IS adopts a positive psychological, strength-based approach to reducing the empirically identified risk factors for domestic violence: emotional dysregulation, poor coping, low resilience and ineffective conflict resolution skills.
Methodology
The evaluators (Schrader-McMilland & Rayns, 2020) used a mixed method approach which combined (1) analysis of anonymised police and social care file data and (2) one to one semi-structured interviews with 10 participants who completed the programme. At the date of the evaluation five cohorts comprising of 34 participants had completed the course.
Findings
Interviews with the perpetrators
Male perpetrator “What I learned most was how to understand my partner. […] It helped me understand how the problems with another person can have their roots in the past, whether you want it or not, it’s there”.
Female perpetrator “Before I’d see [my partner] getting up to make a brew [tea] and I’d think he was walking away and I’d follow him and carry the argument on. Now I know he’s doing that to make things better.’ She was then able to take appropriate action to regulate her sense of annoyance and anxiety: rather than letting the fight escalate, she will now ‘go in the bedroom for half an hour or something and … sit downplay on my phone on me games and chill … and then start [the conversation] again”.
Male perpetrator “And with [inner strength] they teach you to see people … for who they really … are and know whether to associate with them people or walk away from them people which is really good”.
Male perpetrator “So I would feel the adrenalin rush increase and then I’m aware of that […] I can be calmer and more responsive in a good positive way”.
Male perpetrator “Made you think and you weren’t just there being told what this is and all that you have to you know, you really got involved with it, which I thought was brilliant. You’ve got to use your brain”.
Female perpetrator “…when I am feeling like that, I will go out for a cigarette or go for a walk or even go to shop of a summer. …I’m not like getting to a point where I will either argue with someone or shout. … like I used to call him all the time to find out what he was doing and stuff like that. Now I don’t”.
Male perpetrator “I’ve sat down with my ex since and told her about some of the arguments we had and told her how I felt and that’s why I went off on one, and she could understand that point of view … and she said why didn’t you say that? And I said at the time… that was the only way I could express what I was feeling. I have been to blame [for most of our arguments] and I have apologised to her”.
Male perpetrator “…when they’re not working – you know, [most] people have their phone turned off and wouldn’t give a damn. And for her to call me back that means a lot to me; it shows they are worrying about people, to do something like that. Even after the course, it’s not like you went on a course and after a course [it’s over]- she answers, has time for you, everyone”.
Couples ‘I know when I am escalating in myself now. I know when I am purposely pushing buttons’. At the same time, he is alert to signs that his partner is also becoming more agitated and ‘I am being wound up to fight’. Instead of ‘taking a big spoon out and giving it a good old stir, which is what I was doing’. He now steps back by ‘literally [walking] away from the situations [by] going into a different room’, calming down, and taking stock. His partner – who did IS in the women’s cohort- does the same: “…when I am feeling like that, I will go out for a cigarette or go for a walk or even go to shop of a summer. …I’m not like getting to a point where I will either argue with someone or shout. .. : ‘like I used to call him all the time to find out what he was doing and stuff like that. Now I don’t’.