Working with Fathers around Domestic Violence: Contemporary Debates

This article discusses the issues that emerged from a small consultation exercise with academics and practitioners in the field of domestic violence on their perceptions of practice interventions with fathers who were domestically violent. The exercise suggests that there has been a growth in such interventions especially in the UK over the last decade as a result of the recognition of domestic violence as a child protection issue. There are tensions, however, and these mapped onto tensions between interventions located in working with perpetrators and more recent interventions that have a focus on fathers. More importantly, tensions about what kinds of practice interventions were most desirable were linked to wider debates within practice about the merits of set programmes versus more individualised responses. Respondents expressed concern about the lack of evidence on effectiveness on programmes