An evaluation of the Building Stronger Families program, 2019 – 2022

SOWING THE SEEDS OF CHANGE

An evaluation of the Building Stronger Families program, 2019 – 2022

Surpreet Cheema, Shannon Harvey, Trisha Nowland and Jen Hamer

May 2023

ACKNOWLEDGEMENT OF COUNTRY

Relationships Australia NSW acknowledges Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander peoples as the Traditional Custodians of the land and waters on which we live and work. The Building Stronger Families program operates on the unceded lands of the Dharug nation.

We acknowledge their Ancestors who first walked on this land and pay our respects to Elders past, present and future, for they carry the cultural wisdom, the stories, the traditions and dreaming.

With a commitment to Reconciliation, we acknowledge the enduring impact of past policies and practices, and commit our endeavours to creating a just society and sector that celebrates the ongoing resilience and self-determination of Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander peoples and communities.

Suggested citation:

Cheema, S., Harvey, S., Nowland, T. & Hamer, J (2023) Sowing the Seeds of Change: An evaluation of the Building Stronger Families program, 2019-2022. Sydney: Relationships Australia NSW.

ISBN: 978-0-6458142-0-0

© Relationships Australia NSW

Published by:

Relationships Australia NSW 68 Waterloo Road

Macquarie Park NSW 2113 Australia

EXECUTIVE SUMMARY

First envisioned in 2018, Building Stronger Families (BSF) was an ambitious response from Settlement Services International (SSI) and Relationships Australia NSW (RANSW) to the lack of support for men from refugee and new migrant communities who use violence to address their behaviour. BSF was the first men’s behaviour change program in New South Wales (NSW) to be adapted in language and culture, beginning with Arabic, and then adding Tamil and Farsi. Today, BSF includes a 18-week Groupwork program for men who use violence (“Taking Responsibility”), an eight week Groupwork program for women who have experienced violence (“Women, Choice & Change), and casework support for both men who use violence and their female partners.

Evaluation was woven into the structure of BSF from the start, with a dedicated internal evaluator1 who conducted depth interviews with program managers and staff at three timepoints over the course of implementation. Further, the Most Significant Change (MSC) evaluation method was used from December 2019 to March 2022, to capture staff members’ experiences of change at quarterly time points. These “stories” of change were used by the Reference Group for reflection and continuous service improvement.

A PROGRAM GROUNDED IN COLLABORATION

Although BSF was primarily intended to deliver a men’s behaviour change service, the evaluation found that a key strength was that it was designed from the start to build capacity in communities, and across the settlement and family violence sectors.

• Through partnering in service design and delivery, SSI built its expertise in family violence and RANSW built its expertise in working with refugee and new migrant communities.

• Members of Arabic, Tamil and Farsi-speaking communities increased their awareness of family violence and contributed expertise to adapt the men’s behaviour change program in their languages and cultures.

• New capacity was added to the men’s behaviour change workforce, through recruiting and training bi-cultural workers from the target communities, who have in turn provided expertise to support sector improvement in culturally diverse service delivery.

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MAKING STRATEGIC PARTNERSHIPS WORK

RANSW and SSI partnered to deliver BSF with the explicit aim of leveraging each other’s expertise and building capacity across the two organisations. Strategic partnerships of this kind, while beneficial, can also be challenging. Interviewees from both organisations identified four qualities of the partnership that enabled its success:

• Mutual respect and a shared vision: both partners were committed to the right of refugees and new migrants to access family violence services, and had a deep respect for each others’ area of expertise

• Formal collaborative structures: the partners established a Reference Group and clear management structures, with equivalent roles in each organisation.

• Open communication and ability to resolve disagreements: program leaders described feeling comfortable to address disagreements with each other openly, knowing that they had the support of formal structures like the Reference Group to take issues to when needed.

• Openness to learning and willingness to take risks: both partners agreed on the need to take risks to enable innovation and were willing to accept the risk of failure in order to learn and improve.

BUILDING A BI-CULTURAL MEN’S BEHAVIOUR CHANGE WORKFORCE

In developing BSF, the two partner organisations were faced with the challenge of building a bicultural men’s behaviour change workforce, essentially from scratch. RANSW and SSI committed to recruiting workers from the communities the program was targeting, implementing a robust and ongoing program of formal training, clinical supervision, and experiential learning opportunities. While workers did not necessarily have experience in family violence service delivery, they were able to contribute invaluable cultural knowledge to program design and implementation.

The evaluation found that through this process, the organisations not only diversified their own workforce and expertise but were able to share learning across the family violence and settlement sectors. These benefits have also been shared through workers moving on to roles in other

organisations in the family violence sector. BSF staff were able to provide expert advice to other organisations in the sector, to improve the cultural appropriateness of sector-wide materials such as risk assessments and training.

ADAPTING PROGRAMS IN CULTURE AND LANGUAGE REQUIRES FLEXIBILITY

BSF program adaption began with RANSW’s Taking Responsibility program. Through consultation with community members and co-design workshops with bi-cultural staff, program materials were not only translated but culturally adapted to make them relevant and acceptable to program participants. These materials were then iterated over time, through reflections between program managers and bi-cultural workers in monthly program development meetings.

The evaluation found that this circular process of reflection and adaption was much more resource intensive than originally envisioned, yet yielded benefits both in terms of the quality of the program and in increasing bi-cultural workers’ ownership of the course.

The evaluation also found that the organisations’ ability to change their approach to meet program needs served the program well when the Covid pandemic first impacted NSW in March 2020. The program’s pivot from groupwork to telephone casework presented a challenge in upskilling staff in risk assessment, but ultimately became a core component of the program.

EFFECTIVE COMMUNITY ENGAGEMENT REQUIRES CONSISTENCY

Community engagement was always intended to be at the heart of BSF, and was designed into the program through formal consultation, recruitment from target communities, and promotion activities through community and faith leaders. The evaluation found that while the first two strategies were broadly successful, engagement with community and faith leaders was less fruitful. While some were receptive to the goals of BSF, this did not translate through into referrals to the program.

BSF staff noted that community engagement was hindered by Covid-related public health restrictions, prioritising of service delivery when roles were understaffed, and ongoing stigma in the target communities around talking about family violence.

PROGRAM IMPACT

While this was primarily designed as a process evaluation, monthly stories gathered from BSF staff through the Most Significant Change process suggested change in several domains. These may be useful indicators of interest for future impact evaluation.

Increased capacity in the bi-cultural workforce

Increased skills in teamworking

Increased ability to identify violent, abusive and coercive behaviour and respond appropriately Improved management of boundaries, emotional responses and complex positions as professionals and community members

Positive changes observed in men who use violence

Increased engagement with the program as they attended more sessions

Increased awareness of DFV, including the law in Australia Acknowledgment of abusive behaviours, increased empathy, and better awareness of the impact of their behaviours on their family

Positive changes observed for women victims of violence

Access to practical supports, including supports to leave a violent relationship e.g. support with AVOs, emergency accommodation Reduced isolation and increased confidence

Importantly, though, these findings also suggest that as with English-language programs, attitude and behaviour change work is a long-term process which requires sustained funding, a supportive service system, a highly skilled workforce, and commitment to culturally tailored programs.

KEY RECOMMENDATIONS 2

Findings from this process evaluation of the Building Stronger Families program, between 2019 and 2022, result in the following recommendations for development of similar services:

• Strategic partnership can provide organisations with a unique opportunity to expand their expertise in a new area of practice, and a shared vision supports partnering organisations to work collaboratively and overcome challenges.

• Meaningful program adaption in language and culture requires good resourcing, including adequate time for co-design and integration of an ongoing reflection and updating process.

• Program plans should acknowledge the significant time and resource required for community engagement work. Community leaders should be explicitly consulted about what support they require to engage effectively with the program. Community members need secure, paid, professional roles wherever possible, to support them to maintain boundaries around their professional community engagement work and their personal relationships.

• MBC workers who are recruited without existing DFV experience can be effective, but must be supported through training, clinical supervision, and experiential learning. Fixed term or permanent contracts provide employees with greater security than casual work, and may be more conducive to workforce development.

• Individual casework is an integral component of MBC and requires workers to have specific training to manage complexity, assess risk, and support participants towards change.

• Future program planning for culturally adapted men’s behaviour change programs should include resourcing for impact evaluation to understanding whether the program is increasing women’s safety.

INTRODUCTION

Building Stronger Families (BSF) is a culturally adapted, in-language Men’s Behaviour Change Program (MBCP). It was designed and implemented through a partnership between Relationships Australia NSW (RANSW) and Settlement Services International (SSI), with funding from the NSW Government under the Domestic and Family Violence Innovation Fund. This report shares findings from a participatory process evaluation that ran between the program’s inception in August 2018 and June 2022, as an integrated function of the partnership approach.

CONTEXT FOR A CULTURALLY ADAPTED MEN’S BEHAVIOUR CHANGE PROGRAM

Behaviour change programs for men who use violence against women in their intimate relationships have a more than 30-year history in Australia. When BSF was developed by SSI and RANSW, there had been a growing push for programs to be individually tailored (Day et al, 2019), and yet very little attention paid to the specific needs of people from migrant and refugee communities.

Family violence is prevalent in Australia across all cultures and faiths, and there is no evidence that any culture is more or less violent than another (ElMurr, 2018; Murdolo & Quiazon, 2016). However, people from refugee and new migrant communities have specific pre-arrival and settlement experiences and face intersecting structural and cultural barriers that may increase their vulnerability when they experience family violence.

People who are settled as refugees in Australia often have multiple experiences of trauma, including experiences of armed conflict, torture and loss of home, livelihood and people they love. They often then experience further trauma in the settlement experience, such as racial discrimination, poor housing, being barred from employment, lack of healthcare, and inability to communicate in an unknown language (El-Murr 2018; Fisher et al, 2020). Mainstream family violence service providers are not always well-equipped to respond to pre-settlement trauma and “acculturation stress”,

either in men who use violence or women who experience family violence (El-Murr, 2018).

Women from refugee and new migrant communities are particularly vulnerable to certain forms of abuse, related to their pre-arrival experiences and immigration status. Migrant and refugee women are particularly likely to experience multi-perpetrator abuse, from extended family and community members (DSS, 2015; Salter, 2014), financial abuse that can be exacerbated by structural barriers to employment (Fisher, 2013; Cortis & Bullen, 2015), reproductive coercion that can be exacerbated by a lack of access to sexual health care (Metusela et al, 2017), and immigrationrelated violence (Segrave, 2017). Women also experience cultural barriers to seeking support, including a preference for reliance on family and community in the absence of culturally safe family violence service systems (Timshel et al, 2017).

Alissa El-Murr’s 2018 scoping review for Child Family Community Australia argued that effective programs for refugee communities should have a trauma-informed, culturally safe, intersectional framework, and be community-driven to enhance accessibility, engagement, and responsiveness to the specific needs of the new migrant and refugee communities. The ASPIRE project, funded by ANROWS and completed in 2016, found that culturally responsive support “was very rare but life-changing for women, as this reduced isolation, established cultural safety and provided women with information needed to make informed decisions” (Vaughan et al, 2016).

BUILDING STRONGER FAMILIES

The Building Stronger Families (BSF) program was initially funded from July 2018 to June 2021, and further extended to June 2023 in recognition of the impact of the global Covid pandemic on program delivery. The program is a culturally adapted, in-language, whole of family approach to men’s behaviour change, designed to achieve two goals: (1) to reduce the use of violence among Arabic, Tamil, and Farsi participants; and (2) to build the capacity of workers from specific language groups to deliver the MBCP in language and in culture.

BSF now includes an 18-week groupwork component for men who use violence adapted in three languages, an 8-week groupwork program for women from these communities who have experienced violence, and casework sessions for men who use violence and their female partners. While BSF was broadly aligned in format with RANSW’s existing MBCPs, it had two unique aspects:

• Existing English-language programs were not merely translated, but were culturally adapted, to make them culturally responsive to the needs of the targeted communities;

• Groupwork facilitators and caseworkers are recruited from the target communities and trained as bi-cultural workers, to deliver the program to their communities in their language.

There are very few culturally responsive MBC programs in Australia and when BSF was launched, it was the first in NSW. RANSW and SSI designed a formal collaborative structure

for the program, situated around a Reference Group which provided the forum for SSI and RANSW to work together, and in conjunction with community representatives and experts from outside the program. Community consultations were carried out with cultural stakeholders such as community leaders and representatives, to direct planning and implementation, including deciding which community groups to target first. Beyond program design, SSI and RANSW sought to use community engagement to increase awareness within the communities regarding domestic violence, get participation and representation from diverse groups (religion, gender, language) for the BSF program, and increase motivation of the communities to work on the issue and bring about attitude change.

Bi-cultural staff were recruited from program’s target communities, which evolved based on findings from the community engagement. BSF sought to build up the MBC workforce by recruiting people for their language skills, cultural knowledge and connections, and training them to deliver MBC programs.

EVALUATION APPROACH

The NSW Department of Communities & Justice (DCJ) commissioned KPMG to evaluate the process and outcomes for BSF (KPMG, 2021). However, in establishing BSF, both RANSW and SSI were aware of the significant challenges of measuring outcomes even in standard MBCPs (Day et al, 2019) and were

keen to integrate evaluation into program implementation as a tool for reflection and iteration. The program included a part-time Research Officer role, situated within the RANSW Research & Impact team, who managed this participatory process evaluation and attended bi-monthly meetings of the BSF Reference Group. The evaluation for BSF took place between May 2019 and March 2022.

EVALUATION QUESTIONS

In line with our participatory approach, the evaluation team set out broad, initial evaluation questions that were iterated over time:

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What is the narrative of the program: its beginnings, key developments and milestones, significant turning points, and challenges in implementation?

What were the key learnings from the program, which can be transferred to other similar programs?

What are the Most Significant Stories of change for BSF that emerged during the life of the program?

METHODOLOGY

This project used an adaptation of the Most Significant Change (MSC) methodology (Davies and Dart, 2005), along with longitudinal, semi-structured interviews with program staff.

MSC was chosen as it is a form of participatory evaluation that uses narrative to understand and describe the impact that the intervention has had on its beneficiaries, the values of the stakeholders and facilitate improvements to the program in valued directions (Davies and Dart, 2003). We hypothesised that MSC’s focus on “stories” may be more culturally appropriate for program stakeholders from across diverse cultures and professional backgrounds.

Data collection

MSC story data were gathered quarterly via an online survey from frontline practitioners, team leaders and managers. Data was also collected from three referring organisations in the July to December 2020 period. Following responses received in the first MSC round, the survey was adapted to collect responses in five domains of change: Groupwork, Casework and Partner Support; Learning for Frontline Staff; Community Awareness and Sector Understanding; Changes in Participants; and Other Significant Changes. Semistructured interviews with SSI and RANSW stakeholders were repeated annually for three years, where participants were available. Stakeholders included managers and team leaders from RANSW and SSI.

Data analysis

The MSC data were analysed by the project reference group and contract managers, through an adaption of Davies and Dart’s MSC process, shown in Figure 1 on the following page. Collected stories then went through three levels of “selection” to identify those that stakeholders deemed to represent the most significant change, with level 1 including members of the RANSW Research team (later expanded to include SSI Project Coordinator), level 2 including the BSF Reference Group, and level 3 including the Contract Managers from SSI and RANSW. Further detail on BSF’s adaption of the MSC methodology is available in Appendix 2.

Interview data were examined using thematic analysis by the evaluation team at three time periods during the study, with each round of analysis building on the one beforehand. Evaluation team members (the BSF Research Officer and three consecutive research team managers) conducted individual coding, supported by group-based consistency checking of codes and themes.

Stories from story tellers

(Front line staff & reference group members)

Contact Managers Selection Level3

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Stories from story tellers

(Front line staff & reference group members)

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Stories from story tellers

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POSITIONING OF THE EVALUATION TEAM

This evaluation was conducted by the RANSW Research & Impact team, with Surpreet Cheema as lead researcher. Surpreet’s analysis is influenced by her professional position as an “insider researcher” (Brannick & Coghlan, 2007), both as a research employee of RANSW and as a clinical practitioner in private practice in the field of mental health. As a member of the BSF team, Surpreet was able to work closely with program staff and observe processes as they developed and bring in her clinical perspective which is grounded in person-centered and trauma approaches and her own experience as a culturally diverse person. Surpreet’s work, including study design, data analysis and reporting, was supported by three successive managers of the RANSW Research & Impact team: Dr Jen Hamer, Dr Trisha Nowland and Shannon Harvey. The BSF evaluation was situated within the context of RANSW’s Research & Evaluation Strategy developed by Dr Hamer, which prioritised the importance of evaluation as a tool that supports practice and enables continuous service improvement.

REPORT OVERVIEW

This evaluation presents five key themes identified through data analysis, organised into five chapters. Chapter 1 analyses the role of the partnership between the two organisations, RANSW and SSI. Chapter 2 considers capacity-building as a key component of the program. Chapter 3 outlines different phases of program design, including cultural adaption and the impact of Covid public health restrictions. Chapter 4 reviews the importance of engagement with culturally diverse communities and challenges and opportunities faced by the program. Finally, evaluation, Chapter 5 analyses areas of impact described by participants through the MSC process. At the end of each chapter we set out recommendations for similar programs in the future, which are also summarised at the end of the report. We have used direct quotes from participants which exemplify the theme being examined.

A PARTNERSHIP FOR IMPACT

COMPONENTS OF A SUCCESSFUL PARTNERSHIP

Interviews with BSF Reference Group members highlighted three critical components of the partnership’s success: mutual respect and a shared vision, formal collaborative structures, and open communication and the ability to resolve disagreements.

Mutual respect and a shared vision

Participants identified mutual respect for each other’s expertise as foundational to the success of the partnership, with RANSW stakeholders gaining insights from SSI’s knowledge of diverse cultures and relationships with the targeted communities and community organisations, while SSI acknowledged RANSW’s expertise in delivering MBCPs and providing clinical supervision for family violence programs.

“I’ve learned a lot about [men’s behaviour change] and about RA’s way of doing MBC. And I’ve learnt a lot about clinical supervision... I’ve learned a lot about group work… there’s certainly been a lot of learning, and I know there has the other way as well, for all the things that we bring” – SSI employee, 2021.

Interviewees from both SSI and RANSW also explained that their shared vision for the program enabled a robust partnership. The two organisations were united in their vision and commitment to the right of new migrants and refugees to have access to high quality and culturally appropriate family violence services. This shared vision enabled the two partners to work effectively through any individual and organisational differences that arose.

Formal collaborative structures

As described in the Introduction, BSF had a Reference Group made up of SSI and RANSW representatives, as well as external stakeholders who were invited for their expertise and community connections. Interviewees described the key role

“We rely and seek counsel from SSI for so much of the cultural community stuff. We don’t have that strength” – RANSW employee, 2019.

This process evaluation sought to identify learnings from the partnership experience between RANSW and SSI that may be applied in similar programs. This chapter explores the successes and challenges of partnership building identified through depth interviews with stakeholders.

of the Reference Group in collaboration, and how the role of the Reference Group changed over time, with new structures were created as new needs were identified. The Reference Group initially met monthly to discuss key issues such as recruitment, training of staff, challenges, community engagement, and implementation. Eventually, though, a Project Managers meeting was initiated for day-to-day operational decisions, and the Reference Group began meeting bimonthly and focused on addressing any significant developments and challenges. Interviewees explained how these collaborative structures were used to resolve disagreements between the partnering organisations:

“I had to say to [RANSW employees] recently, ‘Those things have to come to the Reference Group. You can’t just make that as a unilateral decision’, about when the group should start up, how they should start up, how much case worker is required, whether we go with that training or not. So we’ve started in the beginning as very consensus-driven”

– SSI employee, 2020.

Right from the start of the project, interviewees described the Reference Group as a place to discuss emerging issues related to BSF. The Reference Group was often a place where RANSW and SSI brought different expertise to come to shared decisions, such as in an early decision not to progress development of an adapted MBCP in a particular community as originally planned:

“The community was not ready or able to and it would have probably created a confusion at a community level, there could have been an increased level of risk even. It was a mutual decision then by SSI and RA at the actual Steering Group3 level… to try to support the community in an ‘off-project’ type of way… [it was] what the community was ready and able to do, [which] was a big difference to where what we were wanting to do within the basis of a group context”

– RANSW employee, 2019.

Open communication and ability to resolve disagreements

Interviewees described the importance of open communication between the partner organisations at all levels, including contract managers, project managers and Reference Group members. In particular, interviewees noted that the SSI and RANSW contract managers modelled a good working relationship right through the program. This included openly discussing issues or challenges the program was facing, working collaboratively with the funder, and supporting the program managers in coming to agreements. In this way, the mirrored hierarchy between the organisations, with equal contract managers on both sides, supported effective conflict resolution.

Both mutual respect and the formal collaborative structures played a role in enabling open communication. The project management teams from both organisations emphasised the value of talking through differences in opinion, being reflexive about their own biases, and working through the issues together. This approach was grounded in a recognition of each other’s expertise and the belief that everyone was working towards the same goal.

“I think ultimately

clear that everyone has really good intentions... Like we’ve had disagreements, but we have always ultimately reached a place… [where] we’ve been able to nut it out and work through it” – SSI employee, 2020.

Openness to learning and willingness to take risks

Interviewees described two key attitudes of the partnership that were central to its success: an openness to learning and acknowledging what they didn’t know, and a willingness to take risks and go outside their comfort zone. Early in the program, an SSI interviewee described the importance of openness to learning as being about wanting “to make little mistakes, not big mistakes.” An RANSW interviewee similarly reflected on their self-learning when working with bi-cultural staff:

“It’s got me to look at group dynamics through another lens in this project… we continuously need to reflect as in any project. But there’s an additional overlay or lens that we need to look at everything through, in order to adjust our processes and systems so that we get the best out of people. We make them feel as comfortable and as safe as possible”

– RANSW employee, 2020.

For the two organisations, BSF meant taking risks and challenging their boundaries. One interviewee described RANSW’s move to work with migrant and

“I suppose we just talk it through, is the major approach. And I think, on the whole, that has worked. My approach is trying to get things done in a timely way… [an SSI colleague] keeps reminding me of the importance of the cultural consideration and feedback and adaption process and needing to slow it down. It’s really holding those two tensions, essentially”

– RANSW employee, 2020.

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refugee communities as “bold” and “courageous”. For SSI it was their entering into the MBC space in a formal partnership with RANSW. For the bi-cultural staff who are also active members of their communities, to work on the issue of family violence, which has shame and stigma associated with it, required courage and leadership.

CHALLENGES FOR THE PARTNERSHIP APPROACH

For all the benefits of the partnership approach, it also required both organisations to give up some level of autonomy over the project.

Contract model disrupted equality between partners

The NSW Government’s funding model for BSF required one organisation to be the primary grantee. In this case, RANSW was the primary contract holder and SSI was the partner. For SSI, this sometimes resulted in them feeling as though they had less power and influence in the partnership. SSI stakeholders reported feeling that decision-making was not always shared, and that they occasionally struggled to assert influence in their area of expertise.

For example, SSI interviewees reported that there were certain situations when there was not enough communication between the organisations, such as a perception that RANSW changed program staffing without adequately consulting SSI in their decisions.

SSI interviewees also reported that it was sometimes difficult to influence RANSW, in relation to their expertise in culture and with newly settled communities. For instance, in the initial stages of the adaption process of the MBCP, SSI interviewees reported that they found it challenging to assert their views about the integral role of bi-cultural staff in adapting the program. As the working relationship developed, they described how they learned to be assertive about their expertise.

“We wasted a fair bit of time in the beginning with the adaptation… because we are all polite people and wanted to kind of do it respectfully and all that, but at the end we realised that the facilitators don’t feel they had the permission, to be honest, to really bring the cultural staff in. So then we shifted towards doing some group work, some scenarios, some… role play.” – SSI employee, 2020.

Operational challenges

Interviewees also identified a range of operational issues that had to be overcome. They explained that since staff were employed in both organisations to work on BSF, there were times that the separate policies, systems, and protocols related to recruitment, information recording, and sharing would conflict. When in disagreement, staff would have to find ways to uphold systems of both organisations and find a mutually agreeable way to move forward.

“I think that sometimes policies and procedures when they don’t match up at each organisation, that can be a bit of a hindrance. So for example, like incident management policy, there were some differences around that and because RA was holding the data, RA was doing the incidents, but that meant that they would then not share them with SSI”

– SSI employee, 2021.

This challenge was exacerbated by a perception from some SSI interviewees that RANSW policies and processes were less flexible than SSI’s, making it more challenging to adapt to situations as they arose. For example, RANSW was not able to open recruitment to overseas candidates when they were struggling to hire a local candidate for the Team Leader position, nor could they change the location of the BSF office in response to the challenge of recruiting participants.

Program Staffing

Recruitment and retention of RANSW staff was a key issue for the partnership, particularly in the first two years of the program. Both RANSW and SSI interviewees noted the successive changes to RANSW staff at the project management level, which was perceived as disruptive, and for SSI, suggestive of a lack of commitment to the program. Staffing challenges created very real workload issues for the program, particularly with the Team Leader role vacant at various times. This meant that the SSI Project Manager and other RANSW staff on the program had to step in to take on Team

Leader responsibilities. In practice, the largest share of the responsibilities of the Team Leader role was taken on by the SSI Project Coordinator, requiring them to increase their days and juggle different responsibilities. This subsequently impacted on the SSI Project Coordinator’s ability to undertake effective community engagement, as was envisioned at the start of the program.

“That’s been quite a shift, every time there’s new leaders and everyone has something else, some other angle, and all of that. And at the moment, it’s quite influential” – SSI employee, 2020.

Recruiting bi-cultural workers was a challenge for both organisations, exacerbated by shortages of trained staff across community services and the family violence sector. This led to delays in recruitment and positions remaining unfilled, which meant that remaining staff had to carry additional responsibilities.

RECOMMENDATIONS

The BSF program has led to a blending of expertise and resources and is driven by the synergies created through the SSI/RANSW partnership. That partnership has remained robust because of the two organisations’ capability of holding challenges and working through different ways of thinking and seeing.

Strategic partnerships are pivotal in working with communities experiencing complex and intersectional issues, such as those targeted by BSF, in order to bring together sufficient expertise. However, our evaluation demonstrates that these partnerships require careful planning and investment in collaborative structures. Similar projects in the future should consider:

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A clear, shared vision for the project supports partnering organisations to work collaboratively and overcome challenges.

Formalised decision-making structures should be built into partnership programs from the beginning, with mirrored hierarchies in both organisations if possible.

Similar appetites for learning and risk-taking between partnering organisations are conducive in the service development phase.

Structural inequities between partnering organisations should be openly discussed, with processes in place for addressing disagreement as they arise.

Project planning between partnering organisations should include consideration of differing policies and practices, and how differences will be managed.

CAPACITY-BUILDING ACROSS THE FAMILY VIOLENCE AND SETTLEMENT SECTORS

Capacity building was envisioned as a core component of Building Stronger Families (BSF), with resources dedicated to increasing the knowledge, skills and expertise of bi-cultural staff. Over the course of the program, work also expanded to increase the capacities of the partner organisations, RANSW’s mainstream Men’s Behaviour Change (MBC) program and the broader family violence sector. This chapter discusses three different components of capacity-building: building a bi-cultural MBC workforce, building capacity in the partner organisations, and building sector-wide capacity.

BUILDING A BI-CULTURAL MEN’S BEHAVIOUR CHANGE WORKFORCE

Bi-cultural staff belonging to the communities for whom the adapted MBC program would be run were recruited for the roles of Group Facilitator, Caseworker, Observer and Women’s & Children’s Advocate. Interviewees explained the considerations involved in recruiting the right people for these roles. The BSF team relied on recommendations from community consultations and focused on prospective candidates’ sensitivity and awareness of issues related to domestic and family violence (DFV), candidates’ connection with their communities, their language competency, and their openness to change.

“[We were looking for] people who could see the shift needed and be a part of the shift in their community”

– SSI employee, 2019.

Bi-cultural staff had different religious backgrounds, included both men and women, came from similar cultures to the intended program participants, and were able to deliver the program in participants’ own languages. These was intended to assist the participants of the program in relating to the bi-cultural staff. In interview, one Team Leader explained how cultural connection was related to building trust with participants and enabling change:

“[One MBC participant] came in on the first day and told his story. I remember the facilitators feeding back that he said that at the end, he had a sense of lightness and he felt light. And he said to them, ‘I’ve told so many people these things and what’s happened, but [this] is very different. When I talk to somebody who is also [from my culture], who understands like the nature of my relationship to my mother, the nature of the cultural effects and all these things’”

– RANSW employee, 2021.

Once bi-cultural staff were recruited, workforce capacity building involved three strands of support: formal training, team meetings and supervision, and experiential learning. Each of these are discussed below.

Formal training

Bi-cultural staff received formal training in family violence, group facilitation, and delivering Taking Responsibility from the partner organisations and external organisations such as ECAV. Training aimed to increase their knowledge and skills, which would then enable them to deliver the adapted MBCP. Additional training in risk assessment and safety planning became necessary as Covid-related public health restrictions came into force and BSF stopped providing groupwork programs and moved to virtual-only casework. Program staff observed increased risks for both men who use violence and for their partners and children in this time, perhaps both because of the context of increased isolation, and because frontline workers were working more closely with program participants through case work. Bi-cultural staff were trained in how to identify

situations of risk for the partners of male program participants, and how to develop safety plans to increase safety of the women and children.

“The casework is working with significant client issues like ‘suicidality’ as part of its everyday MBC work. The inter-connecting issues of mental health and how this impacts FDV are more recognized and staff have greater confidence to respond and talk about them”

– MSC story, May 2020.

Team meetings and supervision

To build on these skills and give a practical experience to their training the bi-cultural staff attended team meetings coordinated jointly by RANSW and SSI every three weeks for three hours. These team meetings had three different components: group clinical supervision, a “Family Safety” meeting to address issues around risk and safety, and program development.

One interviewee reflected on the importance of these three components happening together, with women’s and men’s workers brought together from a very early stage in the program:

“Bringing [the Women and Children’s Advocate’s] voice into the family safety program was a really critical thing… we could actually have all people operating from the one perspective around how family violence was impacting the whole family. Because the other early tension… is for new facilitators in MBC, that you naively accept the man’s story... So, with that happening early on, it ensured that the supervision was happening appropriately” – RANSW employee, 2020.

The program development component of these sessions involved bi-cultural staff sharing their knowledge of culture and community, with cultural knowledge used to tailor and adapt the RANSW’s Taking Responsibility program to make it culturally appropriate for the communities. Bi-cultural staff also provided input on translation of materials into the languages of the cultural groups.

Interviewees explained that while clinical supervision was initially provided in larger groups, over time it shifted to individual or small group supervision. This change was prompted by the challenges of providing casework during Covidrelated public health restrictions, which required more intensive support. Supervisors also learned that providing group supervision for staff from diverse cultures created challenges because of the complexities of hierarchies, gender roles, and cultural differences. For instance, one of the managers shared his reflection on how one of the younger female bi-cultural staff from a particular culture was quieter in the group supervision and wondered if that was because of cultural factors such as her age and that men held a more dominant position in her culture.

Interviewees noted that one-on-one supervision, provided by the Team Leader, provided a better

opportunity for individual workers’ needs to be met. Individual supervision enabled staff to build skills, such as working on complex issues of risk and safety, identifying cultural bias, and increasing their confidence.

“I think that a lot of stuff can be worked at one-on-one supervision that can’t be in group supervision… one-on-one supervision is a place that allows staff to be really more honest and more open about what the challenges are for them about this work, and it allows the supervisor to be a lot more focused in what is said” – SSI employee, 2020.

However, interviewees also noted that individual supervision noticeably increased the costs originally budgeted for supervision.

Experiential learning

BSF used experiential learning, with facilitators always working in pairs, supported by managers, and more formally through the role of a group ‘Observer’. While in existing RANSW Taking Responsibility programs the sessions were video recorded, the Observer role was designed for BSF as being more culturally appropriate for group participants who may be refugees, and because the groups were being conducted in languages other than English. The Observer was a bi-cultural staff member whose role was to provide feedback to facilitators and program managers about group processes and the effectiveness of the techniques used. Interviewees from both SSI and RANSW noted the value of the Observer role.

“It’s worked really well in terms of that we’ve gotten feedback from the Observer on the dynamics of the group, the manual, some changes that need to be made. It’s been really positive”

– SSI employee, 2021.

“As more I participate in all these groups and training, the more skills I get. And learn from other facilitators. And managers. I feel more confident when I run the group. And not like the first or second group, as then I would hesitate while talking or practicing at home and watching videos... Starting from the third group I am more confident”

– Bi-cultural worker, submitted as a Most Significant Change story, Jan-Mar 2022.

However, there were also challenges with the Observer role. For example, since bi-cultural staff had to give feedback to each other, if the feedback was not given or taken constructively, it could create tensions between the bi-cultural staff. With experience, the program managers were able to manage these issues and individual supervision also helped with this.

“In this program where we have the Observer, it’s important – because of the cultural groups that we’re working with, the historical experiences around surveillance and making sure that we’re being trauma informed, all those sorts of things. I think the structure is important and unique to this program. And in recognition of what will create a safe space for sharing. But by the same token, it means… they’re also then responsible for providing feedback on their peers and their facilitators

– RANSW employee, 2021.

Perceptions of capacity-building impact

Through their Most Significant Change stories, bicultural workers explained the impact of training, supervision and experiential learning on both their professional skills and personal development. They reported improvements in their ability to work as a team, and to deliver group work and case work with people impacted by family violence.

“As a team, we collaborate and assist each other to run the group in the best way to achieve our goal engaging participants”

– MSC story, Jan-Mar 2021.

“We learned from each other as facilitators, and the caseworker involved with us, to share our experiences to deliver the material perfectly”

– MSC story, Oct-Dec 2021.

Bi-cultural workers described how their professional skills grew in being able to identify violent, abusive and coercive behaviour and to respond appropriately.

“[I have experienced] abusive and threatening behaviour of a participant and [the most significant change for me has been] managing this in conjunction with risk of violence toward his ex-partner” –MSC story, Apr-Jun 2021.

“We have had a lot of learning around information sharing - discussions about risk, confidentiality and the law. This learning have been extremely important this month and very pertinent to a case we have been working where the man has attempted to have staff collude with him and has wanted to speak with our Women and Children’s Advocate. We have been firm in holding and communicating the needed boundaries for this”

– MSC story, Jan-Mar 2021.

Bi-cultural workers’ responses through the Most Significant Change process also demonstrate shifts over time in their understanding of how behaviour

change happens, and how to recognise it. In later stories, from mid-2021 onwards, bi-cultural workers began to reflect on how difficult it can be to bring about genuine, long-lasting change – and to know when it has happened.

“Significant challenge [for my work] is to bring about a heartfelt genuine change in Men the way they perceive women / partners”

– MSC story, Apr-Jun 2021.

“Ensuring that the men are constantly made aware of those who are not presentthe spouse and children. It called for bringing back the men to focus on the impact of their actions on these people”

– MSC story, Oct-Dec 2021.

“The biggest challenge is to figure out the responses made by people. They are expected but are they making it in a genuine way? Are they remorseful or not? We need to watch them to see if they are showing remorse or if there are inconsistencies in their responses before and after”

– MSC story, Jan-Mar 2022.

Most Significant Change stories also highlighted personal development for bi-cultural staff, in being better able to manage their boundaries and emotional responses to the work, and manage their complicated position as both professionals and community members.

“If I reflect on myself, I am learning from my managers how to separate emotions from decision making, if I am doubling up work with other services, how to communicate and work collaboratively with other services” – MSC story, Oct-Dec 2021.

Milestones in program implementation were also important for some workers, in feeling a sense of accomplishment. For one woman bi-cultural worker, her gendered experience of the work made this particularly poignant:

“The most significant change is that we finished [a third Taking Responsibility group]. For me this is a huge thing for this group, and all the other groups, because they are men, and I am the only woman and doing this and so I feel am doing something very important at an individual level”

– MSC story, Oct-Dec 2021.

Challenges in building a bi-cultural workforce

When they were hired, bi-cultural staff were not trained domestic violence or men’s behaviour change workers, or even counsellors or social workers, which meant that onboarding to BSF was a steep learning curve. In interviews, program managers explained the significant amount of training required:

“Even though they knew, and they had a lot of emotional intelligence around domestic violence and its impact on their community, they were relatively new to group work, and they were relatively new to domestic violence practice.”

– RANSW employee, 2020.

Funding limitations also meant that these workers were employed on casual employment contracts, working a few hours a week for BSF, along with their other jobs and commitments. While their roles were challenging and required a lot of skill development, they had limited time and job security in which to do it. Several interviewees noted that having staff employed on a casual basis created challenges in capacity building, recruitment, and retention.

“[It is] sort of a para-professional workforce that is trying to work as casuals to deliver a really important program... it’s a hard space to work in”

– RANSW employee, 2021.

Finally, while all Men’s Behaviour Change workers grapple with the risk of collusion, this challenge had an additional dimension for bi-cultural workers who had to learn to manage this risk in their own cultural context. Bi-cultural staff sometimes held the same cultural patriarchal norms and structures as program participants, leading them to minimise accountability or struggle to perceive the actions of program participants as DFV.

“It is hard to get them out of their own cultural frame… sometimes they still find excuses of “that’s our culture” or just think about him, what’s her situation, or he doesn’t know any better, some of those things which might be true at some level, at another level they need to be very clear that he’s making the decision to be violent… it takes a long time of practice to being able to stand outside your own culture and look in on your culture”

– SSI employee, 2020.

BUILDING CAPACITY IN THE PARTNER ORGANISATIONS

As described in the previous chapter, both SSI and RANSW brought specific expertise to the BSF partnership, and one of the goals of the partnership was to build the capacity of each organisation in new areas of expertise. Across both organisations,

interviewees described learning new skills and practices in delivering group work with diverse communities, understanding of the challenges of running MBC with migrant and refugee communities, adapting a mainstream program to be culturally appropriate, developing a case work model for men’s behaviour change, effectively supporting bi-cultural staff, and navigating differences in a partnership.

“[It is] sort of a “Working together in this quite equal partnership, I think we’ve each built each other’s capacity in our areas of expertise… So I think in terms of like a distinct line between who holds what expertise, it’s much less important now because we both developed much. And I think that can be transferred into other programs”

– RANSW employee, 2021.

RANSW interviewees described increased capacity in terms of increasing the cultural diversity of its workforce, improved skills and reflexivity in the Family Safety Team to work with colleagues from diverse cultures, adapting MBC for culturally diverse cultures and adaption of their own policies and processes to become more culturally appropriate. They learnt from SSI how to engage with culturally diverse communities, increase their cultural knowledge and that of migrant and refugee communities.

For RANSW, delivering BSF provided the impetus needed to increase recruitment of staff from culturally diverse backgrounds. The process of recruitment itself increased RANSW’s experience and learnings in multi-cultural workforce recruitment. As an employee of RANSW noted the shift for their organisation:

“For RA, [we’ve moved] from having interpreters in groupwork, to have culturally diverse counsellors, to having culturally diverse group work” – RANSW employee, 2019.

For RANSW staff, working with bi-cultural staff gave them the opportunity to learn how to collaborate more effectively with staff from cultures different to their own. Interviewees reported learning, for example, how to adapt their practices to create the space for bi-cultural colleagues to feel safe to share their views. Interviewees also reported that it provided an opportunity for staff to reflect on their assumptions and biases.

“In group meetings, it always looks like [one of the facilitators is] going to fall asleep, [he] looks really disinterested, disengaged. And so I made some assumptions, I think about he’s clinical skill and aptitude, around his ability to work in this area… [and then] when I saw his case notes come in… I read them and I was blown away… he was very good at introducing the person, introducing the issues, articulating the conversation in a really succinct, direct way, and then reformulate what was to occur as a result of that conversation with the client, identified risk issues… what it did reveal to me was that [the Team Leader] and I we had a bias in terms of making assumptions based on someone’s presentation in one setting”

– RANSW employee, 2020.

RANSW policies became more inclusive, with documents and practices updated to better align with the needs of culturally and linguistically diverse communities. For example, as the men’s behaviour change program was adapted for BSF, learnings from BSF were then used to updated RANSW’s mainstream MBCPs as well.

SSI interviewees also described how they built capacity as a result of the program, learning how to do MBC work, developing and strengthening the casework component of MBC, and the role of supervision.

“I’ve learned a lot about particularly about MBC and about RAs way of doing MBC. And I’ve learnt a lot about clinical supervision. Like I’ve actually had training in that. I’ve learned a lot about group work and all that has come from RA… it’s been really positive for the partnership… and it’s had sort of offshoots in other ways, I think, where we’ve been able to work together with other things” – SSI employee, 2021.

CAPACITY-BUILDING ACROSS THE DFV SECTOR

RANSW and SSI also aimed to raise the profile of the need for cultural adaption in men’s behaviour change across the family violence sector. BSF staff from both RANSW and SSI were actively involved in the sector, sharing learning from the program and advocating for the needs of culturally diverse communities. Once both organisations were accredited as a Men’s Behaviour Change provider for BSF, they were able to raise the program’s profile further. SSI and RANSW staff presented at conferences and provided expert advice to the sector, such as reviewing the ECAV

Graduate Certificate in Men’s Behaviour Change and the Risk and Assessment Safety tool for cultural appropriateness.

“We’ve had further engagement with ECAV [and] they are now adapting a whole training course to be more culturally responsive and change their whole training program for us… that’s unfunded work that they’re doing, because we sort of challenged them that this needs to be done” – SSI employee, 2021.

“ECAV and SSI are working collaboratively to train BSF facilitators on essential skills in MBCP [and] a consultation was held with the BSF facilitators to identify training needs and areas of adaptation in ECAV’s existing training course” – ECAV employee, via MSC story, July 20.

Further, the work undertaken by SSI and RANSW to build a bi-cultural men’s behaviour change workforce is already yielding benefits for the broader sector, with at least one BSF bi-cultural worker now working in another family violence organisation, while also continuing with BSF.

RECOMMENDATIONS

By placing capacity-building at the heart of the program, BSF delivered benefits for individual workers from culturally diverse communities, to both partner organisations, and for the wider sector. One interviewee described this as sowing the “seeds of change”. However, capacity-building was not without its challenges. Similar projects in the future should consider:

2.1

2.2

2.3

2.4

2.5

MBC workers who are recruited without existing DFV experience can be effective, but must be supported through intensive formal training, clinical supervision, and experiential learning opportunities. These should include both group-based and individual opportunities. Workforce development is time-intensive in its early stages and must be adequately costed and budgeted, with acknowledgement of its long-term benefits for the sector. Fixed term or permanent contracts provide employees with greater security than casual work, and may be more conducive to workforce development.

MBC workers who are recruited for their cultural knowledge and connections may need additional support to maintain their boundaries and manage the risk of collusion in their work. Strategic partnership can provide organisations with a unique opportunity to expand their expertise in a new area of practice.

PROGRAM DESIGN THROUGH CULTURAL ADAPTION

This chapter discusses the process of culturally adapting an existing Men’s Behaviour Change intervention for the Arabic, Tamil and Farsi communities, as well as further adaption required to respond to the global pandemic. We discuss the circular process of reflection and change required from both partner organisations, supported by a shared vision as described in the previous chapter:

“I want these women, these children to be safer, have better choices and options, whatever they may be. But I want these men to have the opportunity and hopefully take the opportunity to be responsive and to be accountable for their behaviors… These women, their partners, did not have access to any men’s behavior change because of language, culture, or if they were, they weren’t suitable.” – SSI employee, 2019.

ADAPTING FOR LANGUAGE AND CULTURE

Interviewees suggested that in the initial stages of program adaption, staff were overly focused on linguistic adaption, without fully engaging with cultural adaption. The value of the partnership became especially clear at this stage, with SSI able to provide expertise around the need for the adaption to not just be a literal translation, but a culturally meaningful translation. For SSI, the best way to achieve this was though co-design of the program with bi-cultural staff, ensuring their knowledge, opinions and viewpoints included.

“Translation is not enough, concepts need to be changed”

– SSI employee, 2019.

Recognising that the initial work to translate the Taking Responsibility (TR) group program for men who use violence was insufficient, and being willing to revisit the adaption approach, was an early turning point for the partnership between the organisations and ultimately the quality of the program. The original process, which had involved RANSW clinical specialists drafting an adapted program manual for review by SSI, transformed into a culturally co-designed process.

is

pivot the Reference Group took in the cultural adaption process, when it became clear that we needed a deeper and second go at it, even if needing to be convinced into it. It’s an enactment of a genuine desire for co-design, and evidence of cultural respect and curiosity, which is the foundation of client centred [work]”

– MSC story, Feb-Apr 2020.

“What comes to mind [as a significant change]

the

The TR program was reflected upon and discussed with bi-cultural staff in group supervision sessions and adapted for cultural appropriateness. Exercises from the manual were role played by bi-cultural staff, who discussed them in their own language. These role play activities were identified as particularly helpful in enabling bi-cultural staff to participate actively in developing the TR group program. As well as these formal adaption sessions, the program was updated on an ongoing basis, as facilitators learned from delivering the program how to deliver content most effectively with different language and cultural groups. In this way, the program was tailored over time to meet the unique needs of each community group.

“It’s not necessarily about changing the activity… sometimes it’s about putting a scaffold in place so that people feel comfortable to engage… We’re just always thinking, maybe that needs to be adapted, and staff are doing it a lot more now too. Like, ‘oh, we ran this in the group and this didn’t work and we need to change that.’” –SSI employee, 2020.

BSF program leaders (strategic managers, program managers, Team Leaders) from both SSI and RANSW were mostly from European-Australian cultural backgrounds and did not speak the languages of the communities the program was targeted to. To create an environment where bi-cultural staff felt comfortable to share their opinions about program adaption, leaders realised they needed to slow down, take time to ask the questions, and create an environment that enables them to share thoughts and reflect.

“When we first started working with our Arabic and Tamil facilitators, they weren’t sort of telling a whole lot of what was wrong… I got the sense that they felt like ‘this is an expert tool, we’ll just leave it to the experts. We won’t say anything.’ … I said, we want to run this with… your community. So if I write this and then you just say, yeah, that’s fine, and then you have to run it with your communities, it’s going to be crap” – SSI employee, 2020.

Compared with the initial plan for adaption, the revised adaption process (i.e. co-designed and evolved over time) was far more resource intensive than envisioned, involving significant investments of money, time and human resources. However, the adaption process did become quicker over time, for example in its third adaption with the Farsi speaking community. These gains were primarily due to program leaders having more confidence in the adaption process.

Despite the resources required, interviewees remained adamant about the value of delivering men’s behaviour change programs in language and in culture. Interviewees described the powerful impact of the adaption process on bi-cultural workers, and for program participants.

“One of the great things to be celebrated in all of that, is the tremendous relief of the men and women to be able to do this in language It’s not just in language, but it’s also in reference to cultural values and norms that make sense to them.”

– RANSW employee, 2020.

ADAPTING TO A GLOBAL PANDEMIC

When New South Wales went into its first Covid public health “lockdown” in March 2020, BSF was running its first TR groups. At the time, men’s behaviour change group programs were only accredited to be delivered in-person, and as such, all RANSW men’s behaviour change programs (including BSF) were paused. It quickly became clear that public health restrictions would not be a shortterm change, and as such, the BSF team began adapting the program to expand the casework elements of the program and deliver them virtually. The existing casework component of TR that already existed was adapted to make it more suitable for BSF, including expanding from a 15-minute check-in to a 45-minute session to work with the program participants to achieve individual goals.

“[Casework] was always a part of our service, but it wasn’t that side that was strong. Now because everyone’s provided casework, we have a model, we have tools like we have had training last week… It would be better if we were still able to deliver face to face and deliver groups. But it has enabled us to take that opportunity to strengthen that part of our service”

– SSI stakeholder, 2020.

The pivot to casework was challenging for bi-cultural staff who didn’t have experience of doing casework. These workers had to be skilled in a short time to not only provide case work, but to deliver services via telephone. Despite the challenge, interviewees and Most Significant Change stories suggested that staff were enthusiastic about developing their skills in this area.

“The team members… have been taking on casework and new responsibilities that have emerged due to COVID with enthusiasm and willingness to learn and commit to the interim style of engaging. I am impressed at the commitment and resilience of staff”

– RANSW employee, 2021.

“Adapting a group work program to a casework model, and equipping facilitators with necessary skill and process [has been] both a success and challenge… The casework modality is very different and requires different skill in particular in managing risk remotely”

- MSC story, Feb-Apr 2020.

Bi-cultural staff were also required to build deeper skills for casework, to address more complex issues that came up in individual sessions. For example, workers reported having to support men around mental health, and needing different skills to assess risk over the phone. This meant that additional resources were required for training and supervision in those areas.

“The group leaders or our facilitators have to have more training in domestic violence itself, so we pick some of that up now because of the Covid working from home and having to do casework with the clients… our facilitators have to be everything and yet they don’t come with a social work degree or they don’t actually come with all those foundations” – SSI employee, 2020.

Interviewees explained that the adapted casework model, although developed through necessity, ultimately provided a “bigger window” into people’s lives and enabled staff to work more deeply with participants around their individual needs and behaviours.

“The one-on-one casework is giving a greater depth of nuance of working individually with men, and their own experiences around the family violence they use, and the partners… When they re-meet, and recommence the group, I think that they’ll have a far greater clarity and confidence in where the group needs to continue to work from” – RANSW employee, 2020.

RECOMMENDATIONS

Through BSF, a Men’s Behaviour Change program has been successfully culturally adapted for multiple language groups. However, adapting well requires a commitment to genuine, meaningful engagement that goes beyond simply translating materials. Similar projects in the future should consider:

3.1

3.2

3.3

Meaningful program adaption in language and culture requires good resourcing, including adequate time for co-design and integration of an ongoing reflection and updating process. Cultural program adaption must include people from the communities that it is targeting, to ensure that concepts are appropriately communicated in culturally relevant ways. Co-design with people from diverse cultural backgrounds requires addressing beliefs around power and hierarchy, to ensure those for whom the program is being designed are able to fully contribute.

3.4

Individual casework is now an integral component of MBC, and requires workers to have specific training and support to manage complexity, assess risk, and support participants towards change.

ENGAGING CULTURALLY DIVERSE COMMUNITIES

Based on SSI’s experience working with migrant and refugee communities, BSF was designed to be rooted in community knowledge and engagement, with co-design with community leaders and stakeholders included in the program’s funding proposal. This chapter will discuss three ways BSF used community engagement, and the opportunities and challenges these involved:

• Formal consultation, including through community events and Reference Group membership;

• Recruitment from the target communities, including caseworkers, group facilitators and community outreach workers;

• Promotion, including engagement with community leaders and awareness-raising events in communities.

FORMAL CONSULTATION

Early community consultations included community leaders and staff from organisations who worked with the cultural and language groups that BSF initially planned to target. Interviewees reported that these consultations resulted in substantive changes to program design, including adjustments such as reducing the size of Taking Responsibility (TR) groups, communicating in practical and visual ways, and understanding that communities can be fractured and building trust takes time. Most significantly, SSI and RANSW agreed following community consultations not to work with a particular cultural group, as the community was not ready for a men’s behaviour change program.

Some community representatives were invited to the BSF Reference Group meetings so that they could provide advice and feedback from a cultural and community perspective on planning and delivery. While some representatives were able to attend regularly, interviewees noted other community representatives were not able to attend as consistently as they had hoped they would.

“The idea was that the Reference Group would also have community… participation, from people from the different languages’ groups, that could actually overview the whole process and what, ultimately, is created. To be able to authenticate its value… They’re volunteer positions, and again, getting someone with the right level of skills and passions from each of those communities has been a gap as well”

– RANSW employee, 2020.

As well as being time-consuming to deliver, community consultation also required the partners to be flexible about their original timelines. Since one of the target communities changed, they were unable to begin all three groups at the same time, as originally intended. The Farsi group had not been delivered by the end of the evaluation period.

RECRUITMENT FROM TARGET COMMUNITIES

Beyond community consultation, BSF sought to embed community members in the program through its recruitment strategy. Bi-cultural workers were explicitly recruited for their connections to their communities, to engage with their communities and increase awareness of family violence, solicit participants for the program, and share their cultural knowledge to adapt the program. Interviewees reflected on the value of this approach, with bi-cultural staff bringing deep knowledge that enhanced the program in ways that wouldn’t have been possible otherwise.

“It’s just like our facilitators are in the community, our community facilitators are community leaders and they know the pressure points and they know this door is open here, this door is half open” – SSI employee, 2021.

However, RANSW and SSI found that in delivering the initial Arabic and Tamil programs, only having bi-cultural facilitators was not sufficient for community engagement. In an attempt to improve community engagement in the Farsi language adaption, BSF hired a Farsi community member in an outreach role. Interviewees were not yet able to assess the effectiveness of this approach, but explained that they hoped it would increase “buy-in” from the community.

“I think they’re our voice pieces to the community, it is their connections and ... you know, in a sense even trying to use their voice… owning and reflecting on domestic family violence in culturally diverse and in language community”

– RANSW employee, 2021.

“We can test whether he’ll do better because he’s speaking the language and he might have better entry to some of the community groups… he’s had some personal experience in [domestic violence] and he’s feeling strongly about it. He also has access to a radio program” – SSI employee, 2021.

PROMOTION ACTIVITIES

Interviewees described a range of activities used to promote the program in target communities, including designing flyers that described family violence in culturally appropriate and sensitive ways, and targeting communities through media such as SBS radio. Most commonly, though, BSF staff sought to promote the program through community and religious leaders, encouraging them to refer community members to BSF. However, interviewees noted that while some of these relationships had been fruitful, they were complex to manage and sustain.

In one positive example, shared through a Most Significant Change (MSC) story, a BSF staff member explained how a faith leader from one of the communities used a sermon to talk about family relationships and identify himself as someone who could refer community members to support services:

However, in interviews and MSC stories, BSF staff explained that outreach to community and faith leaders rarely led to referrals. They described leaders as being tentative in actively promoting the program, and attributed this to the nuances of their position as community leaders and the possible challenges of addressing family violence with people they have personal relationships with, rather than professional ones.

“No referrals are coming from community leaders at all… and I totally understand why. [It’s] very different if I’m a caseworker referring, even if I am a caseworker from the same community, there’s a real boundary. ‘I’m a professional working here and I am required to make this referral.’ Whereas if I’m a community leader, the boundaries are a lot less defined… it’s highly awkward to be like, you need a domestic violence program and then to continue to see that person all the time in the community”

– SSI employee, 2021.

With few referrals coming directly from affected communities, BSF staff shifted away from solely community engagement to increasing engagement with the service sector. Ultimately, the majority of referrals came from the NSW Department of Communities & Justice (DCJ), through child protection, and from lawyers referring their clients who had received AVOs.

“We are certainly talking to a lot of people from the Tamil and Arabic speaking communities, but mostly talking to those who are already employed in a service because there’s more of a clear professional boundary there and more likelihood of engaging this way”

– SSI employee, 2021.

“Through our constant interventions and advocacy, the Senior Pastor of the Australian Tamil Church took the subject of family relationships as his subject of sermon… He said any relationships successes does not come easily you have to work for it… he gave a call to anyone desiring to learn more of happy family relationships to contact him that he has people who will be able to throw more light on this subject”

– MSC story, Oct-Dec 2020.

BARRIERS TO PARTICIPANT RECRUITMENT

As well as the challenges described above, interviewees identified three key issues that impacted effective community engagement, and its ability to generate referrals to the program: stigma around family violence, Covid-related restrictions, and staffing continuity.

Interviewees from both SSI and RANSW suggested that shame and stigma around the subject of family violence was a barrier for both men and women in accessing support, and a key factor in the challenges of recruiting participants across the different target communities.

“In a cultural frame with such a high level of shame towards domestic violence to actually find men to participate is very difficult”

– SSI employee, 2020.

“We’re still battling with the community’s readiness to be able to seek out support to address these issues”

– RANSW employee, 2020.

Interviewees described how the shift to telephonebased casework as a result of Covid-related public health restrictions exacerbated the challenges of family violence stigma. For frontline staff, establishing trust with BSF participants when communicating over the phone was experienced as significantly more challenging.

“Meeting the women once a month face to face individually or in a group could build more trust in the relationship. It is hard to build trust because of fear over the telephone. This is a big challenge”

– MSC story, Nov-Jan 22.

Interviewees and MSC respondents explained how Covid-related public health restrictions presented a range of practical challenges across the program, including delaying the start of groups, hindering referrals, program changes to comply with public health rules, and of-course interrupting planned community outreach.

Finally, interviewees described ongoing staffing challenges, especially early in the program. With workload challenges for BSF staff, community engagement work was often the area of work that was deprioritised. In particular, vacancies in the Team Leader role led to the Program Coordinator taking on Team Leader responsibilities, and reducing their community engagement activity:

“A big part of [the Project Coordinator role] is around referrals and getting people into the program. [If we had a Team Leader, the Project Coordinator] would have been able to spend more time on that, where [they] have to spend a lot of time making sure our staff were being trained and understanding of risk assessment”

– SSI employee, 2020.

Further, while bi-cultural staff were originally expected to be involved in community engagement, their employment on casual contracts with small hours made it challenging for them to do this work.. As one interviewee explained, without permanent part-time contracts, it wasn’t possible for bi-cultural staff to invest time in community engagement work.

“We need to have three- or four-day permanent position with the people in it, where they [can] go into SBS radio and do something… but under casual hours, you don’t have that, mainly because the budget doesn’t spread that far. It’s always the crisis which wins, which tends to be the upfront service delivery to families”

- RANSW employee, 2021.

RECOMMENDATIONS

Community engagement was a core component of the BSF program, yet despite dedicated resources allocated, it was an area that often ended up deprioritised in order to meet the demands of service delivery. While community members were overall supportive of BSF and contributed meaningfully to program design and awareness-raising, this did not translate into referrals into the program. Similar projects in the future should consider:

4.1

Planning significant community outreach to build partnerships and community readiness to address DFV before program design and implementation may be more effective than doing this at the same time. Program plans should acknowledge the significant time and resource required for community engagement work.

4.2

Community leaders should be explicitly consulted about what support they require to engage effectively with the program, including considering capacity to engage with formal roles such as Reference Groups and the impact involvement may have on their relationships with community members.

4.3

4.4

Flexibility must be built into program development timelines, to ensure time and resources are available to implement changes suggested by community members.

Community members need secure, paid, professional roles wherever possible, to support them to maintain boundaries around their professional community engagement work and their personal relationships.

4.5

Recruitment strategies for program participants should include a range of strategies, leveraging the work of existing service providers, and minimising reliance on community members.

IMPACT ON PROGRAM PARTICIPANTS

This chapter discusses the MSC stories of change which reflect on the impact of the BSF program on program participants and how the Reference Group members evaluated the meaningfulness of these stories as indicative of change. These MSC stories were only collected from professionals involved in delivering the program, rather than program participants themselves. Nevertheless, stories of change in participants were captured over the program period, as observed by BSF staff. While not evidence of impact, these stories can be viewed as indicative of change and may provide a framework for future impact evaluation.

MEN’S EXPERIENCE OF THE PROGRAM

Overall, BSF staff reported that men who were using violence tended to have a positive experience of the program.

“BSF project is desired from the all the participants who attended the group and some of them very keen to join the program again when they complete their sessions because it is very useful for the family. In addition, the participants requested to deliver the program to the newly arrived after their arrive directly”

– MSC story, Feb- Apr 2020.

“Participants came forward to speak about the beneficial outcomes of the sessions. Overall, the participants ensured that they are willing to live in the present with corrective behaviours”

– MSC story, Jan-Mar 21.

“I think having a space for men only makes them feel safe to be honest with themselves and articulate their thoughts”

– MSC story, Jun- Aug 20.

Men who attended the program told them that it had been beneficial to them and their family, that they had acquired new skills and that it provided them a space where they reflect and articulate their thoughts. As described in the quotes above, some program participants even recommended that the program be made compulsory and delivered to all new arrivals to the country.

CHANGES IN MEN WHO WERE USING VIOLENCE

Men’s positive experience of the program is not evidence of positive impact, but BSF staff who provided stories through the MSC process did describe other indicators of change. BSF bi-cultural and program staff reported changes in men’s behaviour in four key areas, which are associated with BSF’s program logic4:

• Engagement with the program;

• Increased awareness of domestic violence;

• Increased empathy and acknowledging abusive behaviour; and

• Behaviour change reported by partners.

Shifts were noticed by bi-cultural staff in the way the men engaged with the group program over time, with length of attendance associated with greater engagement. Beyond attendance as a marker of engagement, bi-cultural staff noticed that for some men, their interest and participation was noted to increase as they attended more group sessions.

“One of [the participants] when he attended the first session was very upset and aggressive, but after that gradually became calm and engaged with us and with other participants well”

– MSC story, Jan-Mar 2021.

“After six sessions the men engaged more than before. One of them was not convinced by the group but now he is satisfied with the group and attended all the sessions”

– MSC story, Jan-Mar 21.

MSC stories also included several responses related to increased awareness of Australian law in relation to domestic violence, understanding of different forms of violence, and knowing what behaviours

are acceptable and unacceptable. In the following stories, staff are responding to a question about what the most significant change is that they’ve observed in program participants:

“Men and women understanding that violence exists in multiple forms, overt physical violence and more covert coercive control”

– MSC story, Jun-Aug 2020.

“More understanding of men privileges, equality, relationships, gender expectations, law, different in perspectives”

– MSC story, Oct-Dec 2020.

However, BSF staff also noted that increased awareness of DFV, while important, was also not indicative of behaviour change. As the program progressed, MSC stories became more complex in their consideration of behaviour change, with staff identifying acknowledgement of abusive behaviour and increased empathy as key “signposts of change” for men who use violence:

“One of the first signposts of change would be just an acknowledgment of their own use of violence without minimising, denying, blaming or justifying ‘what I did was wrong’. Empathy is further on, a bit later”

– MSC story, Jul-Sep 2021.

In asking MSC respondents for examples of behaviour change from male participants, acknowledging abusive behaviours and their impact on their women partners and children was a recurrent theme:

“Acceptance on the part of men of their behavior as being the primary cause of the situation within the family”

– MSC story, Sep 2020.

“Better awareness of emotions, behaviours and their impact, manner of selfmanagement and understanding that change is possible and acceptable”

– MSC story, Sep 2020.

An external stakeholder noted a change in one of his client’s behaviour from attending the BSF TR group-

My client has a history of domestic violence and was previously unable to show any kind of insight into how his actions affected others and was unable to take responsibility for his actions. Through this program he has developed a better understanding of himself and constructive conflict resolution. This program has been particularly beneficial as it is tailored to his Tamil heritage and has provided contextual information and knowledge to all participants. My client often encounters language barries, so it has been very helpful for him to gain knowledge and insight in his own language with people who understand his cultural context

– MSC story, Sep 20.

As BSF developed, some MSC respondents described activities in the group program as being useful in increasing men’s empathy towards their partner and children. Special mention was made of the role play technique:

“Empathy for partner/child realised through getting the client to role play assuming the role of the partner”

– MSC story, Apr-Jun 2021.5

However, when these stories were discussed at the Reference Group, some members concurred that the roleplay technique was useful in the group program, but were cautious about assuming men’s responses to the technique as being interpreted as “change” and true empathy. The MSC story selected by contract managers as most significant in the quarter July-Sep 21 spoke to this challenge of identifying real behaviour change:

“In supervision with the case managers who work with the men we have been working on understanding “signposts” of men’s behaviour change. What we saw a lot of was staff expressing beliefs that clients have changed, but what we are often actually seeing is the client “parroting” back to us. For example, saying that it is wrong to be abusive to women, that DFV is illegal in Australia”

– MSC story, Jul-Sep 2021.

Finally, some BSF staff shared stories of small changes noticed in the behaviour of the men, as told to them by the women partners of men involved in the program.

“We had a report from a partner that her husband had been less verbally abusive to her in the two weeks he had attended the groups. She requested that we “make him keep coming” – MSC story, Feb-Apr 2020.

“One woman informed her partner helps around in the house now and he is also managing his anger better”

– MSC story, Jan-Mar 2021.

Verification of behaviour change with partners was integrated into BSF’s program design, as a component of the partner support program. This was critical to helping workers understand whether change was actually happening, since the selfreports of men who use violence are not always reliable. While this was not formally integrated into our evaluation methods in the pilot phase, partner verification of behaviour change will be necessary in ongoing impact evaluation design.

CHANGES FOR WOMEN PARTNERS OF MEN WHO USE VIOLENCE

Through MSC stories, BSF staff described the benefits of casework support for women who engaged in the Women & Children’s Advocacy component of the program, including the value of culturally appropriate support that could address the complex issues women faced. Casework support included risk assessment, safety planning and access to external services and resources. This meant that for women who had difficulties communicating in English or needed help navigating the system, caseworkers could support them practically with concerns such as getting an AVO, finding transitional accommodation if they were leaving the relationship, and getting support for their

children. In the following story, a BSF staff member describes the kind of complex issues Women & Children’s Advocates would work on:

“We have had one Women and Children’s Advocate client who has left her partner in the last month… The woman faced a lot of increased barriers related to immigration status, language, culture and religion. She experienced outright discrimination from police when she reported – ‘this might be okay in your culture’, ‘this might be normal in your religion’ from two separate officers. The BSF WCA and supervisor were able to advocate for her and her children and act as a system buffer” – MSC story, July-Sep 2021.

Men who use violence against their partners commonly use isolation as a tactic to increase their control over the victim. For this reason, reducing isolation and increasing confidence is an important goal of women’s support programs. For BSF, this was especially crucial since women were often further isolated by their migration status, lack of English language skills, and their partners’ exploitation of cultural patriarchal norms. MSC respondents explained how women’s confidence, ability to set goals and access to supports increased as a result of support from the BSF Women’s and Children’s Advocates:

“They are being more confident living on their own as single mothers getting support from me. With one of the participants DCJ has supported as case manager. She felt lost in the beginning but now felt that she has a direction”

– MSC story, Oct-Dec 2021.

“When I called to talk to [her], she was so grateful and spoke about all her trouble with a child with a disability, she was so grateful that she had somebody to talk to and thanked me again and again… She was very lonely and felt nobody to take care of her”

– MSC story, Jan-Mar 2022.

As with all family violence services, service continuity was crucial to BSF’s ability to support women and children. As the story below explains, women would return to BSF for support at later points, when they were ready or able to make further changes around the abusive relationship. Although this is true for all women’s casework services, it was especially important for BSF, since there was generally not be alternative services provided in language and culture.

“We have had a previous client (from about a year ago) of the Women and Children’s Advocacy Program who contacted us again about a current increase in the severity of the abuse… a referral to the Safety Action Meeting were made and the supervisor attend the SAM. We were also able to warmly refer her to a suitable service and she now has a case manager to assist in follow up, assist with her housing needs, provide court support” – MSC story, Oct-Dec 2021.

Through the MSC process, BSF Reference Group members returned regularly to the value of delivering services in the language of the communities and adapted to make it culturally suitable. Reference Group members discussed how the program was able to fill serious gaps in the services sector for those experiencing family violence from migrant and refugee backgrounds. However, they also discussed how MSC stories evidenced that BSF was often filling a service gap that should have been met by other services, and that frontline staff reported that their resources were stretched when they had to pick up work or fill gaps from other agencies and services.

RECOMMENDATIONS

MSC stories suggest that BSF likely increased men’s awareness of DFV, their understanding of their behaviours as abusive, and may have resulted in some change in behaviour. They also suggest that women partners benefitted from the Women & Children’s Advocacy support, including reducing their isolation and providing access to practical supports that enabled some women to leave violent relationships. However, impact evaluation will be required in the future to understand whether the program is achieving its intended results for participants.

5.1 Future program planning for culturally adapted men’s behaviour change programs should include resourcing for impact evaluation to understanding whether the program is increasing women’s safety. Impact evaluation should include pre/post measurements with both men and their women partners/ex-partners, and ensuring behaviour change is not measured on men’s self-reports alone.

CONCLUSION AND SUMMARY OF RECOMMENDATIONS

Our evaluation findings demonstrate the value of collaborative partnerships when designing and implementing complex programs such as Building Stronger Families. Through Building Stronger Families, SSI and RANSW brought together their respective expertise to strengthen both organisations’ capacity, and collaborated with new migrant and refugee communities to build the capacity of the men’s behaviour change sector overall.

However, Building Stronger Families has required significant development resource over the past five years and meaningful community engagement is an ongoing process. For culturally adapted men’s behaviour change programs to be successful, they need dedicated workforce expertise and investment in community outreach. The implications from our findings, copied below from each of the previous chapters, set out a guide for design and commissioning of similar programs in the future.

PARTNERSHIPS

A clear, shared vision for the project supports partnering organisations to work collaboratively and overcome challenges.

Formalised decision-making structures should be built into partnership programs from the beginning, with mirrored hierarchies in both organisations if possible. Similar appetites for learning and risk-taking between partnering organisations are conducive in the service development phase.

Structural inequities between partnering organisations should be openly discussed, with processes in place for addressing disagreements as they arise.

Project planning between partnering organisations should include consideration of differing policies and practices, and how differences will be managed.

CAPACITY BUILDING

MBC workers who are recruited without existing DFV experience can be effective, but must be supported through intensive formal training, clinical supervision, and experiential learning opportunities. These should include both group-based and individual opportunities.

Workforce development is time-intensive in its early stages and must be adequately costed and budgeted, with acknowledgement of its long-term benefits for the sector.

Fixed term or permanent contracts provide employees with greater security than casual work, and may be more conducive to workforce development.

MBC workers who are recruited for their cultural knowledge and connections may need additional support to maintain their boundaries and manage the risk of collusion in their work.

Strategic partnership can provide organisations with a unique opportunity to expand their expertise in a new area of practice.

PROGRAM DESIGN

3.1

3.2

3.3

3.4

Meaningful program adaption in language and culture requires good resourcing, including adequate time for co-design and integration of an ongoing reflection and updating process.

Cultural program adaption must include people from the communities that it is targeting, to ensure that concepts are appropriately communicated in culturally relevant ways.

Co-design with people from diverse cultural backgrounds requires addressing beliefs around power and hierarchy, to ensure those for whom the program is being designed are able to fully contribute.

Individual casework is now an integral component of MBC, and requires workers to have specific training and support to manage complexity, assess risk, and support participants towards change.

COMMUNITY ENGAGEMENT

4.1

Planning significant community outreach to build partnerships and community readiness to address DFV before program design and implementation may be more effective than doing this at the same time. Program plans should acknowledge the significant time and resource required for community engagement work.

4.2

4.3

4.4

Community leaders should be explicitly consulted about what support they require to engage effectively with the program, including considering capacity to engage with formal roles such as Reference Groups and the impact involvement may have on their relationships with community members. Flexibility must be built into program development timelines, to ensure time and resources are available to implement changes suggested by community members.

Community members need secure, paid, professional roles wherever possible, to support them to maintain boundaries around their professional community engagement work and their personal relationships.

4.5

Recruitment strategies for program participants should include a range of strategies, leveraging the work of existing service providers, and minimising reliance on community members.

IMPACT

5.1 Future program planning for culturally adapted men’s behaviour change programs should include resourcing for impact evaluation to understanding whether the program is increasing women’s safety. Impact evaluation should include pre/post measurements with both men and their women partners/expartners, and ensuring behaviour change is not measured on men’s self-reports alone.

REFERENCES

Brannick, T. & Coughlan, D. (2007) “In defense of being ‘native’: The case for insider academic research.” Organizational Research Methods. 10(1): 59-74. doi:10.1177/1094428106289253.

Cortis, N., & Bullen, J. (2015) Building effective policies and services to promote women’s economic security following domestic violence. ANROWS Landscapes, 07/2015. Sydney: ANROWS.

Davies, R and Dart, J. (2003) “A Dialogical, Story-Based Evaluation Tool: The Most Significant Change Technique”, American Journal of Evaluation, 24(2) 137-155.

Davies, R and Dart, J (2005) The ‘Most Significant Change’ (MSC) Technique - A Guide to its use. Available: https://www.betterevaluation.org/tools-resources/most-significant-change-technique-guide-its-use.

Day, A., Vlais, R., Chung, D. & Green, D.J. (2019) Evaluation readiness, program quality and outcomes in men’s behaviour change programs. ANROWS Research Report 01/2019. Sydney: ANROWS.

DSS (2015) Hearing her voice: Kitchen table conversations on violence against culturally and linguistically diverse women and their children. Canberra: DSS

El-Murr, A. (2018) Intimate partner violence in Australian refugee communities: Scoping Review of Issues and Service Responses. CFCA Paper No. 50. Southbank: CFC Australia.

Fisher, C. (2013) “Changed and changing gender and family roles and domestic violence in African refugee background communities post-settlement in Perth, Australia.” Violence Against Women, 19(7), 833–847.

Fisher, C., Martin, K., Wood, L., Lang, E., Pearman, A (2020). Best Practice Principles for interventions with domestic and family violence perpetrators from refugee backgrounds. Research Report, 09/2020. Sydney. ANROWS.

Metusela, C., Ussher, J., Perz, J., Hawkey, A., Morrow, M., Marchal, R., Estoesta, J. & Monteiro, M. (2017) “’In my culture, we don’t know anything about that’: sexual and reproductive health of migrant and refugee women.” International Journal of Behavioral Medicine. 24(6):836-845.

McGough, K. and Kay, D. (2021) Building Stronger Families Evaluation Report. Sydney: KPMG.

Murdolo, A. & Quiazon, R. (2016) Key issues in working with men from immigrant and refugee communities in preventing violence against women. North Sydney: White Ribbon.

Salter, M. (2014) “Multi-Perpetrator Domestic Violence”, Trauma, Violence and Abuse, 15(2):102-112.

Segrave, M. (2017) Temporary migration and family violence: an analysis of victimisation, vulnerability and support. Melbourne: Monash University.

Thomas, D. R. (2006) “A general inductive approach for analyzing qualitative evaluation data.” American Journal of Evaluation, 27(2):237-246.

Tonkin, K. et al. (2021) “How beneficiaries see complex health interventions: a practice review of the Most Significant Change in ten countries.” Archives of Public Health, 79(18):1-8.

Timshel, I., Montgomery, E. & Dalgaard, N. T. (2017) “A systematic review of risk and protective factors associated with family related violence in refugee families.” Child Abuse & Neglect, 70:315-330.

Vaughan, C., David, E., Murdolo, A., Chen, J.V., Murray, L., Block, K., Quiazon, R. & Warr, D. (2016) Promoting community-led responses to violence against immigrant and refugee women in metropolitan and regional Australia. The ASPIRE Project: Research report. (ANROWS Horizons 07/2016). Sydney: ANROWS.

APPENDIX 1: BSF PROGRAM LOGIC

This project aims to increase family safety for 3 specific communities in Western Sydney, by adapting and delivering RANSW men’s behaviour change and related programs.

Project activities

Education groups:

• MBCP

• Women’s support group

Including family support or parenting education as needed Including community consultations and engagement prior to delivery

Target cohort

Men who use violence

Interim outcomes

• Increased knowledge and awareness of DFV

• Increased self- awareness

• Increased understanding of impact on children and women

• Appreciation of how cultural contexts influence attitudes and behaviours

Worker training to:

• deliver MBCP

• deliver Women’s support group

Partners of men who use violence

Written materials:

• Manual of men’s and women’s groups adapted for cultural acceptability

• Promotional materials

• Narrative of the project process

Bi-cultural group facilitators

Increased knowledge and expertise

Community services policy and practice:

• WNSW

• MBC sector

• Multi-cultural sector

• Governments

An adapted program is co-designed with 3 named communities. Manual is written.

Program outcomes

• Male violence in families is reduced

• Men take responsibility for their behaviours

• Increased skills for emotional self-regulation

• Increased understanding of how power and gender operate within a cultural context

• Increased support for partner’s agency

• Safety plans in place

• Increased confidence to enact safety plan

• Increased understanding of how power and gender operate within a cultural context

3 MBCP groups x2

3 Women’s support groups x 2 Partner support contact

Other education groups as needed

• Pre-post outcomes measure

• Client feedback and satisfaction survey

• Possible 6-month follow up with participants

• Most significant change stories collected and analysed.

• Group ‘observer’

Families thrive in the Australian context

We aim to:

• Increase safety

• Lower tolerance for FV

• Raise awareness of FV signs

• Pre-post outcomes measure

• Client feedback and satisfaction survey

• Possible 6-month follow up with participants

• Most significant change stories collected and analysed.

• Group ‘observer’.

Increased capacity for FV group work in community sector

12-16 workers trained in delivering the MBCP and Women’s groups

Enrolments, attendance, completions.

A record of learnings and final materials so the project can be repeated.

• An adapted manual

• Final report on the story of the project

• Conference presentations

Story of the project. Materials are available.

APPENDIX 2: BSF ADAPTION OF MOST SIGNIFICANT CHANGE

Below is a description of how MSC was adapted for Building Stronger Families.

STEP 1. GENERATE AWARENESS AND INTEREST IN THE TECHNIQUE WITHIN PROGRAM STAFF

Information was sent about the technique, how it would be implemented, feedback sought. Introducing the technique at a Reference Group meeting. Trialled by doing a pilot of the MSC survey with program managers

STEP 2. THE MSC QUESTION AND DOMAINS OF CHANGE

The MSC process was initiated by asking, through a survey:

• “In the past month, in your opinion, what is the most significant thing that has happened in this project?” (It might be a success or a challenge. Something that a client said or did. Perhaps it was an insight, or new learning for yourself.)

• “Why is that significant, from your perspective?”

Using an inductive method, the responses received from the initial survey were used to come up with Domains/Categories of change. Domains of Change are the broad areas in which participants of MSC are asked to look for a change.

For BSF the five Domains of change were-

• Change/Challenge in doing Group Work/ Case Work/Partner Support Work

• Learnings for Frontline staff (case workers, group facilitators, partner support workers, observers)

• Community Awareness/Sector Understanding

• Change in participant or participants (Men or women) as a result of BSF engagement

• Any other significant changes (successes, insights, challenges)

STEP 3. COLLECT STORIES OF CHANGE

Stories were collected using a MS Forms survey which was sent out each month, starting the end of 2019 till March 2022. Stories were collected each month from key stakeholders such as members of the reference group (which included contract managers, project managers, team leader, community representatives, and the bi-cultural staff (group facilitators, caseworkers, women and children’s advocates and group observers).

From Dec 2021, along with the monthly surveys, telephone interviews were conducted with bi-cultural staff. This was done with feedback from program staff as it was realized that some bi-cultural staff was more comfortable providing feedback verbally than through surveys. Participation in the MSC process was voluntary.

STEP 4. SELECTION PROCESS FOR MSC STORIES

Selection Level 1.

The Research and Impact team goes through all the responses and does a preliminary selection by choosing the three most significant responses in each of the domains/categories mentioned above. This is done to select the responses which are most representative in each category and filtering the significant responses for further selection in the next round. From July-Sep 21 quarter Jessica Harkins Project Manager joined the Research & Impact team in the preliminary selection.

Selection Level 2

Every three months Head of Research and Impact and myself engaged the Reference Group members in the next level of Selection where we asked the Reference group members to select what they considered to be the most significant story in each of the domains/categories and the reasons for their selection.

Selection Level 3

The stories selected by the reference group then go up to the level of the contract managers (SSI and RANSW) who discuss and select from their perspective what they consider the most significant stories.

STEP 5. PROVIDING FEEDBACK ABOUT THE RESULTS OF THE SELECTION PROCESS

The Research and Impact team meets with bi-cultural staff to share which stories were selected and the reasons for selection at each selection stage

STEP 6. EVALUATION MSC

A mid-term evaluation of the MSC technique was done to get feedback from the MSC participants and incorporate their feedback and suggestions into the MSC process. Including the Project manager in the preliminary selection came from the feedback of this evaluation

APPENDIX 3. MSC STORY ANALYSIS RESULTS

The MSC stories were analysed in the following ways- using the hierarchy of selection processes (Davies & Dart, 2005), reviewing stories in the context of the themes from the interviews and uncovering the values of the stakeholders (Dart &Davies, 2003).

In the Hierarchical Analysis Method (Tonkins, 2021), analysis is inbuilt into the method itself. As the stories filter up the levels of hierarchy namely preliminary selection by research staff, reference group, contract managers, the stories are reflected and deliberated upon to select the story/responses most representative of the domain/quarter. The selectors of the stories share their reasons for selecting those stories which is noted by the evaluators.

Please find below the final story/response selected at the contract manager level for each quarter starting from Feb-Apr 20 till July-Sep 21 and their reasons for the selection.

Feb-Apr 20

Opportunities and Challenges of Covid

Adapting a group work program to a casework model, and equipping facilitators with necessary skill and process. Both a success and challenge. The facilitators have been trained in group dynamics and processes. The casework modality is very different and requires different skill in particular in managing risk remotely

Jun-Aug 20

Reason for selection

As an innovative program BSF made changes and strengthened the Casework arm of MBC, as online was not suitable for the target population

Oct-Dec 20

Other Significant Changes

We are learning how talking about domestic violence can be mutualised and its dangers. We are learning about the important of understanding DFV as a gendered understanding of power and control in intimate relationships. Everyone is reflecting on domestic violence and how men and women experience (thoughts, feelings and actions) it differently.

Reason for selection

Other Significant Changes

Learning about the complex work of DV-understanding power and control-dangers of collusion

The project is being approached to share its findings, how our groups work, how we do adaption which is fantastic

Reason for selection BSF filling gaps in the sector-value of cultural and linguistic adaptation being recognised

Feb-Apr 20 Frontline Staff

We have had a lot of learning around information sharingdiscussions about risk, confidentiality and the law. This learning has been extremely important this month and very pertinent to a case we have been working where the man has attempted to have staff collude with him and has wanted to speak with our Women and Children’s Advocate. We have been firm in holding and communicating the needed boundaries for this.

Reason for selection

Challenges for frontline staff in working with their communities. Their learnings around managing risk and boundaries

Apr-Jun 21 Participant related Changes

Reason for selection

July-Sep-21 Frontline Staff

Empathy for partner/child realised through getting the client to role play assuming the role of the partner

The role play technique used in the BSF program where the men encouraged to put themselves in the shoes of their partner seen as a valuable tool in supporting male participants to empathise with their female partners. Empathy seen as a key step for behaviour change. Also, implies skill development of frontline staff.

In supervision with the case managers who work with the men we have been working on understanding “signposts” of men’s behaviour change. What we saw a lot of was staff expressing beliefs that clients have changed, but what we are often actually seeing is the client “parroting” back to us. For example, saying that it is wrong to be abusive to women, that DFV is illegal in Australia. One of the first signposts of change would be just an acknowledgment of their own use of violence without minimising, denying, blaming or justifying “what I did was wrong”. Empathy is further on, a bit later. This understanding in the staff leads to more effective and meaning case work and group work

Reason for selection

The story focusses on men taking accountability for their behaviour by beginning to acknowledge it -highlights the complex work of dv, dangers of believing men on face value.

The deliberations and discussions at the reference group meetings brought to the fore the following stakeholder values:

• The fact that BSF was delivered in the language of the communities and adapted to make it culturally suitable was hugely valued by Reference Group members as this was enabling the program to fill serious gaps in the services sector for those experiencing family violence from migrant and refugee backgrounds. However, there were discussions around whether this was a gap BSF should be filling and frontline staff reflecting on the stretch of their resources when they had to pick up work or fill gaps from other agencies and services.

• Building the capacities of frontline staff such that they could work towards understanding the complexities around family violence, recognize the seriousness and risks involved and become cognizant of the inevitable biases which come with working with your communities to avoid collusion. The reference group members placed high value on training, supervision and resources being made available for frontline staff to build their capacities.

• Reference group members highly valued engagement with communities-religious and/or community leaders, lawyers and doctors working with the communities and the family violence sector to increase the uptake of services offered by BSF. They reflected in the reference group meetings on their challenges with community engagement such as getting referrals.