Participants required to attend our Non-Violence Programme share hopeful outcomes

SVS Living Safe’s Non-Violence Programme for men is for those who attend of their own choice as well as for those who are mandated by protection order or criminal charge. We collected survey data on the mandated participants who attended this programme for the year ended 30 June 2019.

Our philosophy is to involve the entire whānau in the conversation, and we use a holistic model of learning to ensure diverse cultural and social contexts are taken into account. This is because we help men from a range of ethnicities, which for this survey year included: Samoan, Chinese, European, Māori, Indian, and Pākehā, who were the large majority of participants (65%).

The Non-violence Programme includes strategies that teach participants how to keep themselves and others safe, working with issues arising from events in their lives, and helping them understand the implications of family violence on children and whānau.

Our overriding aim is to increase the understanding of the nature and effects of family violence, including intergenerational cycle of violence, so we can stop violence before it grows.

Evaluations from mandated participants of this programme show some hopeful progress.

• 93% somewhat or fully agree that the programme helped them stop their violent behaviour

• 91% somewhat or fully agree that the changes they’ve made have helped their whānau

• 96% somewhat or fully agree that the programme helped them understand how violence affects children

• 97% somewhat or fully agree that the programme helped them