women in london

The Greater London Domestic Violence Project has recently been funded by Comic Relief to roll out a community groups treatment programme (cgtp) across London. This programme is for children, young people and their mothers who have experienced domestic violence and provides a community based setting for them to share and talk about their experiences. It is originally a Canadian model and has been piloted and successfully evaluated in LB Sutton.

Historically, recognition of the needs of children living with domestic violence in the UK has been largely confined to refuge services. Research in the UK suggests that the majority of children who have lived with domestic violence would prefer to talk to other children with similar experiences. For most children outside of the refuge system this is sadly not an option due to the severe lack of community-based programmes for children who have witnessed domestic violence.

The programme runs over a twelve-week period for children aged 4 – 21. Children are divided into age-specific groups. Core issues addressed are:
* validation of the children’s experiences;
* understanding abuse;
* reducing self blame;
* safety planning;
* managing appropriate and inappropriate expressions of emotion.

The programme offers a concurrent component for mothers to also attend a group. Mothers are supported to understand how the violence has impacted on the child and how best to help them through the healing process.

Collaboration and commitment across partner agencies has been the absolute key to success in operating and sustaining the community group programme. The benefits of such a multi agency approach are huge, as not only do staff increase their knowledge and skills in this area of work, so too do they make it transferable to other work settings. In addition, staff taking part from specific agencies, bring the expertise from their primary work environment and utilise that in group to assist children who are encountering difficulties in other aspects of their lives. We know from Victoria Climbe, Baby P and other child protection cases the dangers of failure to work together in practice and this is particularly true in relation to children living with domestic violence. Providing a coordinated community programme reliant upon multi agency collaboration has the potential to improve services to children and women experiencing domestic violence and to maximise their continual safety and well-being.

We are approaching all London boroughs to gain their commitment to this project. GLDVP and the original Canadian trainers will then train people from each borough who will then in turn train people within their boroughs to facilitate the actual groups. Each borough will also need to appoint a coordinator to generate referrals and carry out assessments.

How you can be involved

We will then be recruiting coordinators for each borough and will be offering free training very soon. A job description for this post is available from http://www.gldvp.org.uk/C2B/document_tree/ViewACategory.asp?CategoryID=169

In September we will be providing free training for 2 trainers per borough across London, these people will then return to their boroughs and train groups of facilitators who will then begin to roll out the groups.

GLDVP will provide monthly support and networking events on key themes (eg:engaging mothers, working with teens, dealing with disclosures of abuse etc). We will also hold yearly conferences and an evaluator will be appointed to evaluate how each borough gets on with running the groups, with the aim of producing an interim report after 1 year and a full report after 3 years.

Click here to download a booking form. (Word, 104KB)

If you have any questions or would like more information please contact Jo Sharpen, Children and Young People’s Services Development Officer, on 0207 785 3866 or email joanna.sharpen@gldvp.org.uk.

Please also see http://www.gldvp.org.uk/C2B/document_tree/ViewACategory.asp?CategoryID=169 for other downloads.