Are you ready to seriously consider change?

For those of us working in the area of behaviour change and intervention around domestic, family and sexualised violence (DFSV), ‘Are you ready to seriously consider change?’ is the crucial question that we are always interested in answering. When we sit with men using DFSV within their relationships, the readiness to look at patterns of behaviour and explore ways to disrupt them is a critical question we are curious about.

I attended the No to Violence conference in Melbourne last week and heard a presentation from the research team at Monash University about a study entitled “Engaging with change”.

As many of you will know, this has been my area of speciality for a long time. I continue to facilitate programs using motivational interviewing within the domain of the DFSV intervention.

The story has excellent news that emanates from this study. While nearly 20% of the program participants did not recognise their behaviour as problematic or feel responsible for changing it, 33% acknowledged their behaviour as difficult, and nearly half recognised the responsibility for change.

Where participants were mandated to attend an intervention, readiness for change was impacted. It is no surprise that program readiness for this cohort was low. They note the following:

• Family members described low levels of motivation to accept responsibility
• Motivation was primarily self-serving, for example, getting access to children, complying with court orders, or avoiding further criminal sanctions
• Where orders were changed mid-program, disengagement was common
• Where there is no obligation on the part of the program provider to report back to the court dropout, disengagement was heightened

This finding shouldn’t surprise us, as few people respond to pressure to change. While men may turn up at a program to keep others off their backs or comply with conditions of sentence, our challenge is to help shift motivation from extrinsic to intrinsic motivation. When men who use DFSV see the importance of the work and value the experience, they are more likely to engage.

The findings from the report underscore the importance of ensuring program readiness to foster a quick start to the work. With limited intervention time, DFSV users should be as ready as possible. We know ambivalence plays a role in the lack of progress around behaviour change. We also know that different strategies can be used to increase readiness:

• Pre-program sessions based on motivational enhancement
• Phone calls to check in
• Reminders for sessions
• Case management

We also know that forming a solid working/therapeutic alliance accounts for around 30% of the change process, so investing in engagement seems worthwhile. We see our Ake app as a resource to support behaviour change. This can support pre-program readiness and start to socialise users of violence to concepts they will be exposed to during intervention. Ake can also support case management and post-program follow-up to consolidate learning transfer.

Getting users of DFSV to the starting line is essential. How they are prepared for the journey ahead is probably more important if we want effective outcomes for the investment we put into interventions.

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