Project Mirabal
What do perpetrator programmes add to co-ordinated community responses to domestic violence?
This research project started in 2009 and concluded in 2014. The formal launch of the research is planned for January 2015.
Professors Liz Kelly (London Metropolitan University), Nicole Westmarland (Durham University), and Charlotte Watts (London School of Hygiene and Tropical Medicine), have been funded by the Economic and Social Research Council and the Northern Rock Foundation to investigates the extent to which perpetrator programmes reduce violence and increase safety for women and children, and the routes by which they contribute to coordinated community responses to domestic violence.
The pilot phase also received funding from Lankelly Chase Foundation and the Home Office. This research enters a contested arena where questions of methodology and policy direction have reached something of an impasse. By re-casting the research question beyond ‘do they work?’, addressing the limitations of previous studies, and introducing innovative directions in analysis they hope to create a new trajectory for domestic violence perpetrator research and interventions.
Aims and objectives
To investigate the extent to which perpetrator programmes reduce violence and increase safety for women and children, the routes by which they do or not produce effects alongside the overall contribution programmes make to coordinated community responses to domestic violence. Within these overarching aims are a number of more specific objectives.
- To measure change among men who have used domestic violence
- To discover what enables men to change
- To innovate in research methods and research practice
- To locate community based perpetrator programmes within co-ordinated community responses to domestic violence
- Address two neglected areas in the knowledge base through linked PhDs
Publications to date
- Downes, J., Kelly, L. and Westmarland, N. (2014) Ethics in Violence and Abuse Research – a Positive Empowerment Approach. Sociological Research Online, 19(1)2.
- Alderson, S., Kelly, L. and Westmarland, N. (2013) Domestic Violence Perpetrator Programmes and Children and Young People, London and Durham: London Metropolitan University and Durham University.
- Phillips, R., Kelly, L. and Westmarland, N. (2013) Domestic Violence Perpetrator Programmes: An Historical Overview, London and Durham: London Metropolitan University and Durham University.
- Alderson, S., Westmarland, N. and Kelly, L. (2012) The Need for Accountability to, and Support for, Children of Men on Domestic Violence Perpetrator Programmes. Child Abuse Review, 3, 182-193.
- Westmarland, N. and Kelly, L. (2012) (with Kelly) Why extending measurements of ‘success’ in domestic violence perpetrator programmes matters for Social Work. British Journal of Social Work, 43(6), 1092-1110.
- Westmarland, N., Kelly, L. and Chalder-Mills, J. (2010) Domestic Violence Perpetrator Programmes: What Counts as Success? London: Respect.