Research around male victims and domestic violence
Men's Advice Line calls observation December 2008 - January 2009
Report from Thangam Debbonaire, Respect Research Manager, March 2009
Background
The Men's Advice Line aims to provide support, advice and information to male victims of domestic violence and to professionals, family and friends concerned about or working with them. From the monitoring statistics of callers to the Men's Advice Line, from observation of calls and interviews with staff during the evaluation of the line in 2008 and from the reports from the former Respect Male Victims' Development worker of his work in two London boroughs it seemed that callers and clients defining themselves as victims or approaching the services set up to support male victims come into a mixture of categories.
Evidence from these sources suggested that callers to the MAL or clients approaching another male victims service sometimes may present as male victims but during the course of the call it becomes apparent to the worker, from the evidence described by the caller themselves, that the situation may be more complicated. In many cases, the caller will, through the descriptions of recent incidents or other information about the relationship, confirm that he is a victim of domestic violence. In others he will describe incidents and patterns of behaviour which indicate that he is both experiencing and using domestic violence. In others still the man will revise his initial presentation of himself as a victim and in some cases will request or accept suggestions of how he might deal with his own use of violence as the perpetrator in the relationship.
The skills of the specialist workers on the MAL and in other services for male victims have developed so that they can work empathetically and supportively with all callers. This includes developing ways of identifying if possible which category of client the caller comes into. In order to provide well supported guidance to other practitioners and within the line, the staff decided to assess systematically how they analysed information and how that helped them to provide clients with the appropriate services and information.
The staff and coordinator of the MAL worked with the Respect Research Manager to devise a way of monitoring how they do this and how this guides them towards providing the caller with the appropriate advice, information and support. They came up with a draft monitoring form which drew on lessons from the evaluation of the MAL, the experience of the staff and coordinator and on elements from the system of assessment developed by the male victims' development worker during work with clients in two London Boroughs in 2007/08.
The purpose of the observation and analysis exercise
The purposes of the exercise were as follows:
1. To identify and analyse the demographic makeup of the callers for one month
2. To identify the extent of the use of various questions already observed as in regular use by the workers on the advice line
3. To analyse how the answers to these questions helped the worker and the caller to identify or review their victim status and their needs
4. To identify to what extent the callers changed their own identification of their status by the end of the call
5. To identify to what extent the workers disagreed with the caller identification of their victim status by the end of the call, based on the information the caller provided
6. To compare the worker identification with the caller identification
7. To identify the forms of help offered to the callers according to the information provided
8. To use and test out elements of a draft assessment system in order to develop an evidence based assessment system for use with male domestic violence victims.
The full report with the findings is included in the Toolkit for work with male victims publication.