Gathering 2010 - Wednesday 0900 - Adriana Uken

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Presenter: Adriana Uken,

In child protection work so many of our plans and interventions depend on engaging and changing the behaviour of men deemed to be violent or problematic in some way. Adriana’s work draws on the same solution-focused rootstock as the signs of safety approach and her solution-focused group work programme with domestic violent offenders provides many insights and challenges about how to motivate and assist the change process in responding to violence. Adriana will describe the ‘Plumas Project’, a radically innovative, solution-focused domestic violence offenders group treatment program that Adriana and John Seebold began developing in Northern California in 1990.

Through 14 years of independent research, the program has demonstrated recidivism rates of 10.2%, a remarkable figure compared to the more usual 40-60% recidivism for traditional group programs. Alongside this, the Plumas programme sustains a very high completion rate of 92.8% (most DV group programs achieve about 50% completion). Given that domestic violence and engaging perpetrators are such challenging issues in child protection work this will be a stimulating presentation.

Adriana’s book on this work, co-authored with John Seebold and Mo Yee Lee is called Solution-Focused Treatment of Domestic Violence Offenders: Accountability for Change published by Oxford University Press. Further information about Adriana’s work and the most recent published data on the program is also available at: http://www.signsofsafety/sfdv