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Te Huringa ō Te Ao – Sustainable behaviour change for men to restore whānau wellbeing

  Over the last month, I have been privileged to join the procurement panel for Te Huringa ō Te Ao. This new family violence service supports sustainable behaviour change for […]

Understanding the Process of Intimate Partner Homicide

  Intimate Partner Femicide: Using Foucauldian Analysis to Track an Eight-Stage Progression to Homicide (https://journals.sagepub.com/doi/10.1177/1077801220935195) – Jane Monckton Smith, 2020   Domestic, family, and sexualized violence (DFSV) is a patterned […]

An all too common story

Another woman was allegedly murdered by her partner (link). This all too common headline should give us pause to reflect upon why, in 2024, violence against women remains so prevalent […]

Tauawhi Men’s Centre 

  In 2011, I ran a workshop in Gisborne for staff from the Tauawhi Men’s Centre. What a pleasure it was to go back and run a one-day intensive for […]

The place of groupwork in social change

I love group work. I love training people in the effective use of groups. I love the idea that people with similar issues can come together and support each other […]

What does it mean to be accountable?

Last week I was running a masterclass on Disrupting Family Violence, and the issue of accountability versus responsibility arose. I believe that in the DFV sector, we have embraced a […]

Three ways our behaviour change app will enhance your program

Our team created Ake with the goal of addressing the common challenges faced in the field of family violence intervention. Watch the videos below to find out the reasons why […]

Who uses domestic, family, and sexual violence, how, and why?

At the recent ‘Working with Men to End Family Violence’ online conference, Associate Professor Michael Flood from the Queensland University of Technology presented a state of knowledge report on violence […]

Substance Misuse, Trauma and Family Violence

There is often heated debate about the links between these three factors. When a report from the Centre for Justice Innovation (UK) Substance misuse, trauma and domestic abuse perpetration: The […]

We are almost ready

We are in the final stages of publishing the app onto the Apple and Google Play stores for iOS and Android devices and are due to go live with Ake […]

Engaging with young people who use DFV 

Increasing attention is being directed at youth domestic and family violence. A significant amount of violence against parents goes unreported to formal systems (Police, Youth Justice). We also know that […]

Once a week or all week?

How do we increase the dosage in our men’s behaviour change programmes? How do we ensure learning transfer of the work we do in programmes continues after the session? How […]

What our young boys / men are subjected to

Forty years ago, I joined a number of projects that worked with the restraints that gendered restrictions placed on boys and men, and how these flowed through to behaviour towards […]

Is exposure to family violence a gateway to sexual violence?

I have increasingly been interested in the question of pathways that lead a person to engage in harmful behaviour, such as family violence and sexual violence. While it is generally […]

The gendered weight of desistance

The question of who does the social and emotional heaving lifting in relationships is a central question to the gender question. It is in my view that this is a […]

29% of adults have experienced sexual assault or intimate partner violence in their lifetime

    Every year I look forward to the data from the New Zealand Crime And Victim Survey (Cycle 4 November 2022 – November 2021, N=6,244, response rate 76%). Looking […]

On the road again – Our focus on Youth DFV

    It was with some trepidation that I got on a plane and headed from New Zealand to Australia. The last time I travelled out of New Zealand was […]

24/7 support for men kicking the behaviour of abusive practices

Have you ever wondered how much learning transfer occurs from the in-room or online session you are running back into the person’s life? This is an issue that has vexed […]

The role of trauma in DFV

How often have you wondered, “Why does he hurt the people he says he loves?” I know I have. Having spent the past 40 years trying to come up with explanations to that question, if there is one thing I have made sense of, simple reasons don’t consider the vast diversity in the population of men who use violence within their families.  

A third of domestic violence killers in Australia are middle class

    Statistics presented at Australia’s National Research On Women’s Safety (ANROWS) conference by Hayley Boxall from the Australian Institute of Criminology, saw that a third of domestic violence killers in […]

Workshop – The role of Motivational Interviewing in working with Family Violence

“Resolving ambivalence and developing motivation is a key aspect of engagement into Men’s Behaviour Change (MBC) programs.”​ Given that most men referred to programs are mandated either formally or informally […]

Well done Gillette on taking a stand against the impact of rampant sexism

You may be aware of the furore around the new Gillette ad on masculinity. It has certainly lit up the internet. I am always interested that when traditional notions of […]

HMA 2018 Round-Up

We have had a fantastic year. Heartfelt thanks go to the agencies and organisation that have placed trust in HMA to work with their staff. From large delivery and design […]

Disrupting Family Violence Programme Launch!

Disrupting Family Violence & Moving Closer to Family Wellbeing An 18+ session family violence intervention programme for men Family violence has emerged from behind closed doors since the second wave […]

Being careful how we see others

‘Me against my brother; my brother and I against my cousin; myself, my brother and my cousin against others’, so goes this old Arab Bedouin saying. It is however problematic […]

Technology… An abuser’s best friend?

Nowadays, the same technology designed to make our lives easier and more efficient, is increasingly being used as a tool to monitor, manipulate, shame and control people easily, and at […]

Men’s Safety Project – A FREE site for men and practitioners

81% of people think it is possible to change people’s behaviour around family violence* So do we… It’s not uncommon for men to struggle with patterns of abusive behaviour in […]

Making behaviour change sticky

Here’s a question… What do you do after learning something new? Answer: I bet you go back to doing what it is that you usually do the whole time thinking, “that […]

Small numbers of family violence offenders create big impact!

Over the summer I received a tweet from the Sentencing Council in Victoria which reported half of reported domestic violence harm was caused by 2% of offenders. The report, by […]

Wanting to be SAFE within your relationships – a free website for men

  Many years ago when I wrote a self-help book for men titled ‘Feeling angry, playing fair’. It was written for men struggling with patterns of abusive practice in their […]

HMA launches new website

We are excited. Today we launch our new website (www.hma.co.nz). Over the past three months we have been working with Wired Internet Group to rebuild our website so that it […]

Our big successes

People often ask me, “What do you do?”. Putting this into a two minute pitch is often difficult. When asked I say our team is about enhancing community safety and […]

Rules or values – what works best in developing group culture

Have you ever struggled developing group rules or ground rules for the programmes you are facilitating? Often we establish rules, write them on flipchart paper, and then ignore them for […]

A restorative justice approach to family violence: Changing tack

This volume provides an essential update on current thinking, practice and research into the use of restorative justice in the area of family violence. It contains contemporary empirical, theoretical and […]

A resolution approach to family violence

Consider the following scenario: A woman survivor of domestic violence approaches your service seeking assistance. Her son, aged eight, has just completed a children’s program to express/work through the violence […]

Self talk that keeps us stuck

I am currently preparing to run a workshop on motivational interviewing for prison officers who are about to manage a unit for prisoners with mental health issues. In my research […]

Best practice for family violence intervention

Sit around with a group of family violence practitioners (not those perpetrating violence) and ask them to describe what best practice looks like and you will get a range of […]

Intimate terrorism even happens to the rich and famous

The jokes have been flying around recently about Nigella (‘Higella’) Lawson and her very public court case with her ex: Charles Saatchi. As most of you will know it involves […]

Protection Orders – Do they work?

Edward Livingstone came back to his ex-partner’s house in the quiet suburb of St Leonards in Dunedin. He had been separated for the past year. He had a shotgun. Katherine, […]

Have you signed the pledge

Today of course is White Ribbon Day, a day of remembrance of men’s violence towards women. It is also a day where we take stock of the appalling statistics, recognising […]

“Will they do it again” (new stock arrived)

We have had renewed interest in this book around risk assessment and management. We decided to do another small print run. Every day we are bombarded with the reality that […]

‘He just gets me’ – The layering of psychological abuse

“He makes me laugh. He makes me cry. He makes me feel beautiful. I love him like I have never loved anyone before. If he doesn’t get out do I […]

No To Violence Conference Resources now available

The No To Violence Conference on Responses to Men’s Domestic and Family Violence: Experience, Innovations and Emerging Directions, was held in Melbourne during November 2012. This was one of the best conferences […]

What kills more women aged …

What kills more women aged 15 – 44 each year than malaria, HIV, cancer, accidents and war combined? You guessed it – violence. I was therefore incensed when I read […]

Major Justice Canada study puts big price tag on spousal violence

Over the Xmas I found this interesting piece of current research reported on by Dean Beeby from THE CANADIAN PRESS. He reported on a major federal investigation into the cost of spousal […]

Motivational interviewing and child protection – the fit

Imagine someone knocks on your door and wants to talk with you about how you are treating your children. Part of you knows that lately you have not been managing […]

Re-solution in men’s violence against women and children

I attended the No To Violence Conference in Melbourne last week which was a rich experience of sharing, hearing and grappling with the challenges of creating safety in the lives […]

Supporting cutting edge child protection – Practice First NSW

Practice First, is a new model for child protection service delivery in New South Wales. Since March 2012, the Practice First model has been operating in Bathurst-Mudgee Community Service’s Centres […]

What’s in a typology and what are the hooks

On Saturday I had the please of listening to Michael Johnson, Associate Professor Emeritus of Sociology, Women’s Studies, and African and African American Studies at Pennsylvania State University, who was […]

Perth DCS Evaluation Data – looks pretty good to us

  In an earlier blog I talked about the L&D work we had been delivering in Perth throughout September. This incorporated a range of workshops including: case formulation group work […]

Family violence programmes goes open source

Two years ago HMA brought together representatives of key family violence provider groups from around New Zealand/Aotearoa to talk about what should be included in a contemporary intervention for men […]

50 ways to say no to abusive behaviour within relationships

I have finally found time over the past few weeks to get this new book out the door. My last self-help book, Feeling Angry, Playing Fair is now out of print […]

Three phases to enhance completion of interventions

Completion rates for community based programmes for a range of issues are often low (between 30 – 35% for AoD and community based stopping violence programmes) while completion rates for […]

Accountability based practice – setting up a family conversation

In last week’s blog I talked about the concept of accountability based practice that I used as the basis of my address to the recent Violence Against Women conference in […]

Accountability based practice – What does it look like?

Last week I had the honour of being asked to present at the Violence Against Women Conference: An Inconvenient Reality, in Brisbane. I told the audience that we can be […]

What are we teaching our sons (and daughters) about being good men?

If I ask a group of men, “Where did you guys learn about how to act as an adult?”, they are likely to answer, “The family.”  They are absolutely correct. […]

Battered man syndrome cuts jail sentence

My eye caught an article by Victoria Robinson in the Sunday Star Times (17 June 2012) about Toa Tuau, 31, who was sentenced to five years and six months in prison […]

Understanding programme drop-out from family violence programmes

All of us working in the area of family violence intervention are acutely aware of the issue of attrition from programmes. I know that I often worry about the safety […]

Can men who use abusive practices really change?

Don has been struggling with abusive behaviour all of his life. He was adopted at birth into a family who treated him badly.In this family he saw and experienced it […]

Living Well Art Competition

Late last year I was in Brisbane and visited with Dr Gary Foster, Manager of Spiritus Sexual Assault Services. Gary has long been a strong advocate for men who have […]

Online Poster/Visual Media Competition

We received this information from Dr Gary Foster, Manager of Spiritus Sexual Assault Services in Brisbane. Gary has long been a strong advocate for men who have experienced sexual abuse […]

New family violence intervention programmes designed

A goal for many years has been to design a robust and updated programme for family violence interventions that fit the requirements of the Domestic Violence Act (1995). An earlier […]

Family Violence Programme to Better Suit Tasmania’s Needs

HMA has had a strong relationship with Tasmanian Safe At Home project for a number of years. With responsibility for delivering stopping violence interventions coming back to Community Probation Service, […]

Updated figures on Police Safety Orders

Significant changes to the Domestic Violence Act saw Police granted with the ability to issue on-the-spot Safety Orders (PSO) from 1 July 2010. These orders which require perpetrators of family […]

Development of a General Stopping Violence Programme – DVA approval

HMA is taking the initiative to develop a National Domestic Violence Programme to meet the criteria for programme accreditation under the Domestic Violence Act 1995. I am aware over time […]

Family violence statistics show violence is up on last year

We always look with interest this time of the year to the release of the New Zealand Police crime statistics. This tells us many things and is in need of […]

Family Violence increasing in the aftermath of the earthquake

How people cope with stress in the face of adversity is one of the questions that has vexed human service workers over time. In the aftermath of the Christchurch earthquake […]

Probation Officers up skill in working with family violence

With increasing focus from the New Zealand Police on family violence, this filters through into assessment and sentence management of Community Probation Service. Earlier this year we were asked to […]

Issuing of Police Safety Orders

Last month we ran a story on the new Police Safety Orders that came into effect on 1 July. These provide the police with additional powers to intervene in family […]

Another step forward in protecting victims of family violence – Police Safety Orders

From 1 July the New Zealand Police will have additional powers to intervene in family violence call-outs. They will be able to utilise what is known as a ‘Police Safety […]

Lethality arising from family violence

Family tragedy: Homicide within Families in New Zealand 2002-2006 This report provides the first complete picture of homicide within families in New Zealand. It found that there were 141 homicides […]

Strength Based Batterer Intervention: A New Paradigm in Ending Family Violence

The field of family violence has always had people who hold strong positions in relation to the lens (frame) that they bring to understanding the issue. As a consequence this […]

Shifting practice – thoughts on stopping violence work

Mike Cagney has a long history of working in the area of child protection, family violence and sex offender intervention. Last year Mike addressed the National Network of Stopping Violence […]

Family violence has a level of complexity other violence doesn’t

Compared with many other violent crimes, the legal and social dimensions of domestic violence present several complications for effective legal control and intervention. Domestic violence differs significantly from other forms […]

What do we know about men who abuse?

On the 22nd July 2009 Clayton Weatherston was found guilty of murder Sophie Elliott, his ex-partner. He stabbed her 216 times. What makes a man do the ultimate harm to […]

Smacking didn’t hurt me. Or did it?

How many times over the past year have we heard people state that they were smacked as a child and it didn’t hurt them? Over the years I have sat […]

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