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Healthy Relationships Program helps fight domestic violence

There are resources in the community for people experiencing domestic violence.

For a complete rundown of resources, contact A Safe Place by calling (814) 266-1030 or 1-800-338-3460.

Among the many agencies that might be called to act when domestic violence becomes an issue are treatment providers, shelters, clergy, healthcare providers, and legal entities.

Family Services of Warren County is one of the service providers whose involvement in domestic violence and abuse is well established in the county. The Healthy Relationships Program (HRP) run by FSWC, “has historically been geared toward men and domestic violence related issues such as power and control, physical, emotional, financial, and verbal abuse,” said FSWC Executive Director.

Healthy Relationships at FSWC was originally a 24 week group that was cash-only (no insurance accepted) and cost anywhere from $500 to $792 over the years, Philhower said. Referrals for the group came mostly from Forest and Warren County adult probation offices and the courts, making it a significantly punitive effort to combat domestic violence issues in the county. The curriculum of the HRP, said Philhower, was focused on education and redirecting men on the subjects of what a healthy relationship should look like, and how attempts to control and overpower partners generally end badly for everyone involved.

As one of the group’s facilitators during staff transitions, Philhower said that he grew to see the group’s “punitive nature” and decided that it really needed to be a therapeutic program if it were to effect any meaningful changes in the participants referred to it. “The goal of the group at that time was to focus on what is wrong with that individual and help them identify maladaptive thinking, behavior, and attitudes, and to learn how to engage in healthy patterns that are nonviolent,” said Philhower. As staff at FSWC continued to evolve, so did the program, with the goal of making it a therapeutic rather than a punitive experience.

According to Philhower, the original model of the HRP is that “violence is seen as something that has been socially reinforced and power differences exist in our society between men and women, that it is a learned behavior.” What’s not taken into consideration with that model, said Philhower, is that an individual’s issues tend to contribute to maladaptive patterns of behavior like violence and manipulation. A program that fails to take these individual pathologies into consideration does not allow for the fact that changes can be made. It’s a bleak behavioral message: those who abuse now will abuse in the future and nothing can be done to change it in the present or to prevent it moving forward.

That model’s focus on behaviorism and behavior modification, Philhower said, “is fine, but we really need to get down to the individual’s thinking, pas experiences, and traumas that have influenced that person’s thinking and core beliefs about themselves and the world around them.” Those elements of a person’s cognitive makeup are what influence their outward behaviors, explained Philhower, and to ignore them is to ignore those elements of a whole person that may mean the difference between that person making meaningful behavioral changes or not. “If you only change behaviors,” said Philhower,” you can see you’re missing a huge part, which is why changes in behavior don’t tend to last.” Cognition, in other words, begets behavior. You need to change the way a person thinks, Philhower stressed, and only by making positive changes to cognitive patterns – which are often seen as well-entrenched core beliefs a person holds – can you make meaningful changes to the behaviors that person exhibits.

A person who doesn’t value women, for instance, won’t stop beating women when they displease him.

So, said Philhower, while the HRP group continues to be called HRP, both the curriculum and the style of the group has changed. Now a closed group that runs 12 rather than 24 weeks, HRP can now be billed on insurance rather than out of pocket cash copays only.

Making a group a mandatory component of the Protection from Abuse (PFA) process and then charging a significant cost to participate in the group and making legal consequences the result of non-participation doesn’t tend to encourage honest, meaningful change in a person’s basic beliefs about the value of others.

It’s all about accessibility to services, too, Philhower explained. Barriers to accessing services, he said, are going to bring down positive outcomes by their very nature. “If you don’t have insurance,” said Philhower, “that’s okay too. We will now offer the Sliding Fee Discount program as another option” to completing the class. And while HRP is “still a men’s focused group,” Philhower said, “the curriculum focuses on increasing distress tolerance and emotional regulation skills,” while it “works to understand the core beliefs of a person and help that person change their thinking, address other mental health concerns, and identify the characteristics of healthy relationships.”

Also included in the 12 week program, said Philhower, are education on power and control, what constitutes abuse, and what types of abuse exist.” Joel Davison (MSW, LCSW) is currently running the Healthy Relationships Program, Philhower said.

“The HRP group has transitioned from a punitive type of educational group to a therapeutic, skills-based self help program designed to work with individuals to change unhealthy and toxic relationships,” Davison said, “and learn to build healthy and satisfying relationships.”

And while a smaller number of women than men engage in abusive behavior toward partners, Family Services is waiting as Beacon Light Behavioral Health’s outpatient program is developing a group targeted to serve females struggling with exhibiting abusive behaviors. For more information on that program and where it stands, Philhower said, interested individuals can contact the BLBH outpatient recovery center at (814) 723-1832.

“Being in an abusive relationship is hard to get out of,” said Philhower. “The abuser will degrade the person so they have little self-esteem or self-confidence. This then gives the abuser power and control over that person. The abuser can isolate the person so they have no friends, no money. The abuser can make that person feel like they are nothing without them. Abuse is not only physical, but emotional, verbal, financial, spiritual, and sexual. Those who stay in the relationship are scared to death to leave. They may not have any support socially, emotionally, or financially,” said Philhower. All of those inroads that abusers use, they use for the purpose of crippling their partner, and keeping them immobile.

Even when it doesn’t ultimately work, said Philhower, “when a person leaves an abusive relationship the probability of being killed dramatically increases.” So when people surrounding an abused partner say they can’t understand why that person stays, they fail to see the reality of the situation. “How can you blame a person for staying,” asked Philhower, who added that the general public doesn’t know enough about the complex dynamics of abuse and abusive relationships. “Things look fine when you see people, but that’s not necessarily what is going on at home.” Those being abused, said Philhower, “are embarrassed,” not to mention that they harbor some hope that their partner – a person they loved at one point – may change. The hope that “they’re sorry. It will stop, but it doesn’t” Philhower said. And while the HRP is one resource in the community for those who see or experience abuse, it is just one of many, according to Philhower, who agreed that A Safe Place (814-726-1030 or 1-800-338-3460) should be a great starting point for anyone looking for information on leaving an abusive situation.

Philhower said that participation in Family Service’s HRP need not be court ordered. “You can be self-referred,” Philhower said. All a person needs to do is call Family Services at (814) 723-1330 and staff there will complete an evaluation to ensure that HRP is an appropriate group based on an individual’s presenting issues. Potential HRP participants will then be placed on a waiting list and once the current 12 week cohort has completed a new cohort will be formed from waitlisted names, Philhower said. HRP is a 90 minute program currently being held at FSWC in North Warren on Tuesday evenings.

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