Breaking the Cycle: Fathering After Violence
Curriculum Guidelines and Tools for Batterer Intervention Programs Produced by Futures Without Violence, formerly Family Violence Prevention Fund with generous support from the Doris Duke Charitable Foundation.
Many men who have been violent have contact with their children. The contact may be supervised or unsupervised, in the home or elsewhere, but relationships between fathers and children tend to endure. Even men who do not have direct contact with their children live on in their children’s minds. Positive involvement by a father figure is important to children’s development. Yet, until now, few tools have been available to help fathers who have perpetrated family violence relate to their children in positive ways.
Breaking the Cycle, Fathering After Violence: Curriculum Guidelines and Tools for Batterer Intervention Programs offers information, exercises and more to help batterer intervention programs begin these essential conversations. Tested by the Simmons School of Social Work, it includes:
- A Rationale for Working with Men on Fathering Issues.
- Background on the Cultural and Parenting Issues Affecting this Work.
- Staff Training Activities.
- Evaluation Findings from Pilot Tests.
- Exercises on Empathy, Modeling and the Reparative Process that were tested in partnership with the Dorchester Community Roundtable with three Boston-based batterer intervention programs: Common Purpose; Emerge; and Roxbury Comprehensive Community Health Services.
- Materials in both English and Spanish.
- A CD with the Story of a Man who Witnessed and Perpetrated Abuse.
- Much More!
“I learned a tremendous amount. These exercises have the potential to help support the change process for men who use violence, and are badly needed in the field.”
– Dr. David Adams, Co-Founder and Co-Director, Emerge
Breaking the Cycle offers hope to the next generation. The curriculum guidelines and exercises can be downloaded from this website:
