22 & 23 September 2021
Watch Back Day 1
Watch Back Day 2
Programme
Sessions & Speakers
Keynote by Dr. Marceline Naudi: GREVIO and the intersections between gender-based violence, migration and work with perpetrators
Dr. Marceline Naudi is a member of GREVIO, the independent expert body for monitoring the implementation of the Council of Europe’s Convention on Preventing and Combating Violence against Women and Domestic Violence (Istanbul Convention) by the Parties. With a PhD in Social Work, she teaches as Senior Lecturer at the University of Malta within the Department of Gender and Sexualities. Her main areas of expertise are gender issues with a special focus on violence against women and domestic violence, sexual orientation and gender identity, discrimination, anti-oppressive practice, intersectionality and social inclusion and exclusion more generally. She contributes to teaching within several other University departments and faculties, and has supported and acted as consultant to various agencies in the field of violence against women, gender, LGBTIQ, racism and ethnicity in a voluntary capacity. Ms. Naudi contributed to drafting the Istanbul Convention and has been an elected member of GREVIO since 2015. She also sits on the Advisory Board of the Women Against Violence Europe (WAVE) Network, and had been a member of the European Women’s Lobby (EWL) Observatory on Violence against Women Strategy Group.
Panellists
Imam Ludovic-Mohamed Zahed
Imam Ludovic-Mohamed Zahed is the founder of the first European inclusive mosque (Paris) and rector of the CALEM Institute. He provides international consultancy on the topics of psychology, anthropology & inclusive liberation theology and has doctorates in Anthropology and in Psychology of religious facts. Imam Zahed is the founder of the interfaith network GIN-SSOGIE and the Inimuslim international network. He is international coordinator of the CALEM confederation and a member of INERELA – theologians living with HIV/Aids. He has won various awards, having been one of the three French gay of the year (2012), the Queer Muslim Award of the year (2014), the Pierre Guénin price (for CALEM, 2012), and an award by Moral Courage in 2013.
Gerhard Hafner
Gerhard Hafner, psychologist, works at “Beratung für Männer – gegen Gewalt”, the only project in Berlin that works with men who abused their female (ex-)partners. He also works with children who are harmed by the violence against their mothers as part of a project that closely collaborates with the men’s service. Gerhard Hafner is a catalyst of the campaign HeForShe by UN Women Germany.
Bahia Hasnaoui
Bahia Hasnaoui is a psychologist working with male perpetrators from diverse cultural communities as part of the project “Beratung für Männer – gegen Gewalt”. The project is implemented by the association Volkssolidarität, and cooperates closely with a counselling and intervention service for women affected by domestic abuse as well as a specialised service for children.
Isabella Mancini
Isabella Mancini is the President of Nosotras, an intercultural association of women in Florence, Italy. Uniting women from diverse backgrounds, Nosotras specialises in women’s empowerment, gender-based violence, maternal and child health, and training. Next to other services and activities, Nosotras runs shelters for women affected by domestic abuse. More recently, they have established a helpdesk for prevention and support for women who have survived economic violence.
Presentations
Work with perpetrators from specific cultural communities – Working with South Asian communities and with Polish communities
The first part of the session will be led by Kate Iwi, Dilshana Hassan and Ranu Khatun from the Positive Change Service. This service delivers programmes for perpetrator of domestic violence, their female partners/ex-partners, and their children. They work in an area of London with a majority Bangladeshi Muslim population.
In the second part of the session, Stephen Madill and Ania Tajsiak from Domestic Abuse Services Edinburgh will give a brief outline of the Respekt project which works with abusive men and their partners, and provide some information about the Polish community in Scotland. They will give an outline of cultural aspects of Poland (its history, religion, gender, traditions). This will provide the context within which they can discuss the barriers to engagement faced by abusive men and their partners from the Polish community in Edinburgh. Some of these issues will be specific to, or particularly significant for, the Polish community, but many will also apply to other migrant or minority ethnic communities; the session will hopefully help all practitioners attending the conference to reflect on their practice and the kind of barriers that might inhibit persons from migrant communities from engaging with their services.
WORKSHOPS: 22 SEPTEMBER
Workshop 1: A practice perspective on delivering a language specific perpetrator programme to a multinational group – Bhupinder Virdee, Viji Rajagopalan & Garima Jhamb (presenting independently but formerly employed by DVIP, UK)
Through the experience of group facilitation and treatment management, the process of negotiating “terminology” revealed the importance of a collaborative, hermeneutic approach when working with group members from marginalised communities.
This process of checking in with the meaning of words, often across languages, amongst other things reminded the group of difference as well as universality. The process produced a cohesive working group and modelled respect and cultural humility. This position would not have been reached if the facilitators had not created a space for this exploration, and if group members had not taken the risk of using the space.
In this workshop we will be:
- Sharing process and practice of delivering an Urdu/Punjabi/Hindi language specific programme;
- Explore the challenges of delivering same language perpetrator programmes in Europe;
- Examining the construction of the migrant man – who is he? And how does this impact practice?
- Negotiating terminology – how do we get to a shared understanding and why is it important?
Workshop 2: A culturally and gender sensitive approach in work with immigrant perpetrators in Finland since 2005 – Kostas Tassopoulos (Lyömätön Linja Espoossa NGO, Finland)
The purpose of the workshop is to highlight the needs of culturally sensitive work with immigrants. During the workshop, we will discuss the implications of the12 cultural system for identifying violent behaviour and for taking responsibility. We will open up concepts such as intercultural competence, personal identity and social identity, and the impact of community on a person’s behaviour. The aim is also to look critically at how the professional’s own cultural background affects perpetrator work with immigrant clients.
Participants will be invited to share their own experiences of culturally sensitive work with immigrants during the workshop.
Workshop 3: A Muslim, a Christian and a Jew do perpetrator work within the child protection system…Mobilizing diversity & prioritising children’s safety (And no, it’s not a joke). – Kate Iwi, Dilshana Hassan and Marc Acuna (Positive Change Service, UK)
The Positive Change Service works with children who have lived with family conflict, parents who have experienced abuse and parents who have been abusive. They deliver programmes for perpetrators of domestic violence, their female partners/ex-partners, and their children. They work in an area of London with a majority Bangladeshi Muslim population. With this in mind, the facilitators of this workshop will explore how they approach this work when working in diverse communities.
The workshop will cover:
- Culture and parenting
- The Impacts of domestic violence on children in perpetrator work
- Child protection systems and domestic violence and abuse
Workshop 4: The Theory and Tools of Hope – Bert Groen and Pascale Franck (European Family Justice Centre Alliance)
We imbedded the approach and tools of the Hope Theory in our work in the Family Justice Centres in the work with survivors but also with perpetrators. The goal of this approach is to work towards setting relevant and achievable personal goals, creating the pathways to reach these goals, overcoming obstacles that appear on the pathways and stimulating the mental energy to achieve the goals.
In addition to the general discussion of this approach in the work with perpetrators, the workshop will invite participants to reflect on the relevance of the theory for the work with men and families from migrant communities.
WORKSHOPS: 23 SEPTEMBER
Awareness Raising Workshop A: Intercultural Sensitivity – Mahmoud Rihawi (WWP EN)
Mahmoud will give participants an insight into the topic of cultural sensitivity and the intercultural capacities relevant for facilitators who work with men from migrant backgrounds.
The main questions that the workshop will address are:
- What does culture entail, specifically when comparing individualism vs. collectivism?
- How do we work with populations with Middle Eastern backgrounds in a culturally sensitive way?
- And finally, how can we incorporate challenging topics such as gender-based violence and masculinities in our programmes that keep a balance between European values and traditional values linked to specific cultures?
The workshop will be interactive and reflective.
Awareness Raising Workshop B: Anti-racism – Daliah Vakili (WWP EN)
Daliah will offer an interactive workshop with the goal to reflect on own biases, views and socially constructed racial privileges. The workshop will entail information on definitions and insights on anti-racism work. It will offer brave spaces that give participants the possibility to openly reflect but also discover new methods on how to “be the change” for effective work with people of migration and refugee background.
Awareness Raising Workshop C: Trauma-informed care in work with migrant and refugee survivors – Dean Ajdukovic (Society for Psychological Assistance)
The need to address trauma is increasingly viewed as an important component of effective behavioural health and behavioural change service delivery. The exceptionally high trauma exposure among forced migrants has been well documented, whether during life in their home country, over the perilous journey to a destination country, but also when reaching the “safe haven”. Health, social and psychological consequences of traumatization hinder the capacity to effectively rebuild life and integrate with a different society. Therefore, building the trauma-informed approach into the human services benefit both users, care providers and communities at large. Embracing trauma-informed care (TIC) is guided by several assumptions: realizing the prevalence of trauma and how it can affect people and groups; ensuring that signs of trauma are recognized; understanding potential paths to recovery; having a system in place which can respond to trauma; avoiding re-traumatization. During this workshop, participants will be invited to discuss the following six principles characterising trauma-informed practice while working with refugees and/or perpetrators of domestic violence: safety; trustworthiness and transparency; peer support; collaboration and mutuality; empowerment, voice and choice; and cultural issues. It is noteworthy that some WWP EN members have reported that 90% of their domestic violence perpetrator clients had been exposed to trauma as children and that many of them have a migration background. In the last part of the workshop, key implementation domains of TIC will be presented and participants will have the opportunity to consider and share how close their own organization is to practicing a trauma-informed approach.
Workshop 5: Before it happens – gender reflective and violence preventive approaches in the work with male refugees and migrants – Elli Scambor (VMG, Austria) & Heinrich Geldschläger (Conexus, Spain)
Recent studies show that some young men in vulnerable migrant situations may adopt deviant codes of acceptance and recognition with traditional religious attitudes and ideological positions, as these constructions of masculinity provide orientation and strengthen feelings of self-esteem. The COVID-19 pandemic has clearly worsened the situation, exacerbating vulnerabilities of both migrant populations and women and children.
Strengthening the concept of gender equality and caring masculinity can offer a space in which men can pay attention to their own desires and needs, and find ways to live them that will not pose a threat to other people’s lives. The FOMEN European project is based on innovative approaches focusing on the work with men in an intercultural perspective, promoting gender equity and preventing violence among
MARs (migrants, applicants for international protection, and refugees), with an anti-racist intersectional approach. An interdisciplinary team across Austria, Croatia, Germany, Greece, Italy, and Spain created a capacity-building model for professionals in the field of migration. They developed tools for the work with men, including quality standards and templates for intervention to encourage men’s reflection and dialogue on the topics of gender roles, diversity, social relations, and caring masculinities.
After a short introduction to the project, the FOMEN intervention and education programme for refugee and migrant men will be presented and discussed, and some of the specific tools for the group sessions will be tried out in the workshop.
Workshop 6: “META” – A training programme to qualify multilingual experts for working with perpetrators – Romeo Bissuti (Männerberatung Wien, Austria)
In the country of Austria, there is a lack of professionals who work with perpetrators in languages other than the German language. To solve this problem, the men’s counselling institution of Männerberatung based in Vienna provides a qualification programme, which is open for psychological counsellors with multilingual/migrant backgrounds. In this workshop, we will present the concept of the training programme, and training participants will share their experience.
Workshop 7: Perpetrator work with male migrants in cooperation unions with youth services and support services for women and children – Gerhard Hafner & Bahia Hasnaoui (Volkssolidarität, Germany)
In this workshop, the facilitators will present their work with perpetrators from migrant communities in Berlin in relation to:
- The access of violent men to the programme
- The setting of the programme (intake, individual sessions, group sessions)
- The content of the programme (languages, intercultural topics)
- Working in cooperation with victim support services
- Working in cooperation with child support services
The workshop will put a particular focus on working within a close cooperation system with specialised women and child support services, and participants will be invited to discuss and compare this work with their own experiences.
Workshop 8: Exploring Interactive Techniques when Working with Perpetrators of Domestic Violence – Olivier Malcor (Parteciparte, Italy)
In this workshop, participants will be introduced to various games, exercises and interactive techniques that facilitate the work with perpetrators. Crucial exercises including role-plays and games to work on responsibility will be discussed, looking collectively at how to improve them and adjust them to our needs and challenges. This workshop is part of a research on games that allow dismantling gender-based violence in a playful and memorable manner with people who often have no intention to play games.
