One women facing another women explaining something to the other.

Engaging with those who harm

It’s vital that domestic abuse professionals address the safety of victims, ensure children are appropriately supported and increase accountability and responsibility of perpetrators, so more families can become safer sooner.

Key course features

Our Engaging with those who harm training aims to:

Provide professionals with an empirically supported structure for tackling issues such as denial, disengagement, and disguised compliance.
Address the challenges of an organisational culture that can develop around domestic abuse cases that focuses on separation and isolation as a long-term strategy to manage risk, rather than an immediate safeguarding action or a last resort.
Encourage learners to consider the goals of building rapport and engagement to support managing risk and achieving long-term safety and stability.
Provide a proactive framework for agencies and professionals to confidently, professionally and safely establish direct working relationships with domestic abuse perpetrators without compromising robust safeguarding and support for victims and children.

Course overview

Our Engaging with those who harm training aims to build confidence and skills in responding directly to the perpetrators of domestic abuse. This includes extending existing professional competencies in holding them to account, assessing their readiness to engage in in-depth specialist behaviour change work, and effectively using referral pathways to access those interventions.

Data suggests victims still living with the perpetrator will experience abuse for six years before they get effective help – that’s double the time that it takes for those who are not living with the perpetrator. Too often we ask, ‘why don’t you leave?’ when the reality is much more complicated and there may be reasons why someone remains in an abusive relationship.

Our Engaging with those who harm training is based on Engage, an organisational framework and set of practical resources for working with individuals perpetrating domestic abuse. Engage is a behaviour management model developed by Emily Alison (behavioural psychologist) and piloted, delivered and evaluated by Cheshire Without Abuse and SafeLives’ ‘Beacon’ sites. This training has been piloted in multiple settings and contexts across the UK.

Exceptional training with lots of experience in the room and expertise of the trainers - lots of understanding gained about the long term effects of DA on children and how this is long term and can negatively impact on perpetrators so that abuse is ongoing and can scan several generations

Previous learner

Time commitment

The Engaging with those who harm Specialist course comprises 4 days online training, delivered in four consecutive days; e-learning modules which must be completed prior to attending each block of training; and the completion of one assessed worksheets that is submitted online.

You must attend all 4 days.

The list below provides guidance on recommended study time you should allow:

Guided learning (training blocks, pre-course reading and e-learning modules) – 40 hours
Worksheets – 15 hours
Notional study – 40 hours
Total course time requirement – 95 hours

Eligibility

Our Engaging with those who harm course is one of our Specialist level courses. It is typically designed for learners who have already qualified as an Idva (or equivalent) or Ypva and want to top up their knowledge by attending a shorter (four day) course in a new subject.

Anyone with a current, active caseload supporting domestic abuse victims. This is to ensure that you have variety of cases for practice reflection as part of your assessment.

To promote diversity and widen our learners’ network, we limit the number of successful applicants from the same organisation. A maximum of two learners from a single organisation will be admitted to one course. Please consider this before you apply to avoid any disappointment.

As a child protection social worker I often complete one to one work with perpetrators and I now feel able to identify core values and use this to unpick abusive behaviour whilst building rapport. The motivational interviewing skills were really useful and how to empower perpetrators to make meaningful changes rather than simply 'isolating and separating' which as a social worker I have encouraged in the past and not completed further work with a perpetrator

Previous learner

Price

£718.25 per learner.

Subsidies

We’re pleased to offer a limited number of subsidised spaces for learners wishing to train with us.

The reduced fee spaces are allocated by random selection from the pool of successful applicants who qualify. Please ensure that you complete the application as fully as possible as the answers provided on the application will be used to determine eligible learners. Thanks to the additional funding from Ministry of Justice our subsidised spaces are offered at an even lower rate currently.

Subsidised spaces £60 (previously £600) - Learners from registered charities with an annual income of less than £1million.
Super subsidised spaces £35 (previously £350) - Learners from registered charities with an annual income of less than £500,000.

Please note, subsidies are only available on the accredited cost of £718.25.

How to apply

Applications for the Engaging with those who harm Specialist course are now open, if you are unable to make any of the current available course dates please register your interest below and we’ll contact you to advise when future dates are confirmed.

Accessibility

We welcome learners of all backgrounds and abilities. We encourage you to share with us any details on accessibility and diversity needs so we can ensure the right support is in place. You can also contact the training team if you have any queries via training@safelives.org.uk.