Current Daphne Project
This project aims to equip professionals working with families at risk to acquire specific competences by using the Multi-Family Approach (MFA). Professionals working in this field will have access to a comprehensive manualised intervention pack, including audio-visual materials, which is also relevant to their respective cultural and work settings.
The enhanced quality of service delivery, as a result of increased professionalism, will benefit abused women and children, who are the primary target group for this intervention. MFA helps families to overcome their social isolation, by creating a social network of support with peers. The emphasis is on helping families to discover and use their own resources, both for themselves and for others, so much so that they can provide mutual support and help beyond the actual intervention phase. The benefits for women and children are increased self-esteem and competence, awareness of risk, as well as coping strategies for women to keep children and themselves safe. The resulting changes in intra-family dynamics will contribute to the development of non-violent interactions and a significant increase in the quality of life for all members of the family. The focus of MFA on changing abusive patterns within families has a direct impact on the prevention of child abuse and spouse abuse.
This project is the continuation of a previous DAPHNE project (2006-2007) on the application of Multi-Family Approach (MFA) in the field of family violence. Good practice principles were developed and exchanged between 7 European partner centers (Belgium, France, Italy, UK, Denmark, Poland and Germany). One major lesson learnt was that the principles and techniques used in the centers are fairly diverse and a clear need emerged to develop a focused and comprehensive treatment teaching/training package to enable all European teams to use a unified ‘Europe-fit’ approach. Another lesson learnt was that, depending on the type, severity and chronicity of family problems, the approach can be adapted to various other settings such as youth work, primary care, the voluntary sector and educational settings.
This project is innovative, as its goal is to develop a comprehensive training pack, consisting of a treatment manual and accompanying audio-visual materials, developed in collaboration with all partner centers and thus relevant to different countries and their specific cultural contexts. This will break new ground as no manualised MFA for the work with family violence exists to date. Another innovative element is that the treatment pack is structured so that MFA can be used in a number of different work contexts. Depending on the type, severity and chronicity of family violence it allows different 'menus' of service delivery to emerge, ranging from intensive day programs lasting for up to 6 months, to less intensive work in out-patient or community settings, lasting a few hours per week over a period of 1 - 3 months. The European Conference, scheduled to take place in Belgium, will promote the Europe-wide dissemination of the approach.
MFA is anchored in the theory and practice of psychodynamic group and systemic family therapy and combines both. In a family group setting 6 – 8 families are encouraged to help one another by sharing experiences, observing and understanding seemingly identical problems in others and by making suggestions for change. Being helpful to others increases their own feeling of self worth. The focus of the work is to experiment with new and safer ways of relating to each other and to identify how to combat family conflicts and related violence and abuse.
The general goal of our project is to create a specific cross-European Multi-family Training Pack for professionals in order to apply innovative ways to break the cycle of transgenerational abuse and family violence and to reduce the risk of re-abuse in high risk families.
Main Specific Objectives of the Project:
1. To create a Training Pack that will equip and train professionals working in the field of family violence, improve the quality of their interventions with high risk families in order to reduce family violence and the risk of re-abuse.
This Training pack consists of:
a. A European Training e-Manual in 7 different languages (English, French, Italian, German, Danish, Polish and Spanish).
b. A training DVD (with subtitles available in all the above languages)
2. To promote the Multi-Family Approach and disseminate the new Training Pack at a European Conference in Brussels on the 15th and 16th of December 2011, during which the e-manual and the DVD will be presented to professionals across Europe and further training will be available in the various Partner Centers already using the technique.
3. To build a network of well-trained professionals across Europe working with high risk families
