"The Other Side of the Story: Perpetrators in Change" (OSSPC) project was implemented by a consortium consisting of:
- The Association for the Prevention and Handling of Violence in the Family (APHVF) - Cyprus as coordinator and their partners
- Bournemouth University (BU) – United Kingdom
- Centro di Ascolto Uomini Maltrattanti Onlus (CAM) - Italy
- The Union of Women Associations of Heraklion Prefecture (UWAH) - Greece
- European Knowledge Spot (EKS) - Greece
- Direcția de Asistență Socială și Medicală (DASM) - România
- University of Bristol – United Kingdom.
The project was led at BU by Dr Jane Healy, supported by Dr Orlanda Harvey, Dr Terri Cole and Professor Colin Pritchard.
The aim of the OSSPC project was to prevent further domestic violence and change violent behavioural patterns by increasing the capacity of frontline workers that will further teach perpetrators of domestic violence to adopt non-violent behaviour in interpersonal relationships and understand the impact of domestic violence on them, their family and community.
The project has directly addressed professionals providing services to victims of domestic violence and relevant public/private institutions in the field of domestic violence. Indirectly, the project addressed victims of domestic violence in order to reduce the perpetuation of domestic violence.
Through the implemented activities, the project has succeeded in achieving the expected results, with a significant impact in the partner countries.
Firstly, national reports (Cyprus, UK, Italy, Greece, Romania) on professionals' work with family perpetrators, on national policies, regulatory frameworks, models of good practice and needs assessments were produced to estimate the scale of the problem. Based on these reports, a transnational, comparative analysis report was produced.
Public policy recommendations have been formulated in the participating countries on the needs and importance of developing perpetrator programmes and forwarded to policy makers.
Among professionals in the field, knowledge and understanding of the dynamics behind domestic violence and abuse, as well as the beliefs, values and tactics of family abusers, has increased. A manual of minimum standards for family perpetrators behaviour change programmes and a methodology for the capacity building of frontline professionals have been developed. Thus, a total of 454 social workers, health professionals and criminal justice professionals from the consortium countries have been trained.
Regional strategies for an integrated response to incidents of domestic violence as tools to foster multiagency responses to incidents of domestic violence were prepared by the partners. Furthermore, the project has increased inter-institutional collaboration in the partner countries and has established a network of professionals from these institutional structures who are willing to work together to prevent the perpetuation of domestic violence.
Awareness of the importance of family perpetrators programmes as part of an integrated and comprehensive approach to preventing and combating domestic violence has increased among policy makers, professionals and the general public. To this end, awareness-raising and dissemination events were organised in all countries of the partnership (National Info Days), as well as an International Conference at the end of the project in Cluj-Napoca, Romania, gathering a significant number of participants.
The implementation period of the project was 30 months (01.05.2020-31.10.2022), and the approved budget of the project was 505.543 Euro, with a European Union contribution of 404.434 Euro.
For more information on the project, please visit the project website or the project Facebook page
