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Conference: “Understanding Men’s Violence. Towards a Violence Free Society” 17/11/03 Feedback from evaluation sheets filled in by delegates on the day

Please note: Every comment has been included, those that relate to the venue and the refreshments will be reported back to the Hilton Hotel, we did our very best before the day and we feel that this feedback reflects we achieved our aims.

• Thank you – a well organised day!
• A good range of experience represented by the speakers who gave us food for thought.
• The workshop by Eli Godsi was beneficial
• Nice lunch
• Comfortable setting.
   

• Excellent conference

• Increased my knowledge greatly in understanding why men are violent as well as some of the tools required to work with this target group.

• Good to be in the company of like-minded people.

Excellent, interesting, stimulating, thought provoking, useful, affirming and very important subject treatment.

Brilliant – encouraging when I have always looked at issues in life on a psychological level. Men are human & have been damaged. I think & hope that this kind of work will escalate.

Keep up the pioneering work. Nice to know that Karl has found the Christian hand who heals and changes & restores lives.

An excellent day that has shown me how important my job on the frontline is. This conference has shown me there are a lot of people who care. It has also shown me why a lot of clients don’t like the services. Bottom line has to be “all you need is love”.

More please! Found the day very thought provoking. An interesting selection of speakers – I enjoyed hearing about their challenging and imaginative work. It’s good to know that the issue is being addressed at all levels. Enjoyed hearing from Karl - very moving. Good book stall – wondered about ‘Raising Boys’ (Steve Biddulf) (forgotten) fathers…

Nice touches – water available etc.

Lastly… I like listening to you Sue!

Excellent day, very thought provoking. Excellent Speakers. Would have liked a list of the books that were on display and/or an opportunity to purchase books written by the speakers.

I have found today really helpful and invigorating! To hear the respect with which individuals can still be viewed and helped despite their actions. As a Sure Start worker in Keighley I would be particularly interested in hearing particularly of any further work in helping the children who have seen and heard domestic violence.

Good, wide approach, sought to address both origins of male violence a means of addressing it. In terms of how the issue affected my appreciation of the event, the main hall had several flickering light fittings, and having epilepsy, these were the cause of some discomfort.

Definitely thought provoking & humbling

Makes me feel that, however small I want to make a difference – and I will.

It has been a very informative day. I suggest more frequent of these types of conferences , to enable people to be aware, perhaps more involvement by service workers.

Simply Brilliant – keep up the process.

Perhaps promote work in upper schools with the boys to help them understand their own masculinity fears and life.

Also help young man to accept that it’s ok to have feelings and to talk especially about health.

Helping them to deal with life in general. More communication between professionals not just health and lets not forget the victims.

Very thought provoking – but also gave me confidence that the work I am doing in schools with year 5 children (9-10 year olds) is where we should be concentrating more effort! Then we won’t have so many men at these groups in the future!

Really interesting new ideas but forward for discussion. Really enjoyed the input from practioners (Trefor and David) – good practical ideas to put into practice. Informative session from Elie – brought up emotive issues which are not easy to address.

(Not enough food for those of us last in the queue). “Frozen Terror” gave food for thought. Work needs to be started with young men and women in school (Maggie Warwick at Education Bradford is looking into this).

Very though provoking and made me challenge some of my thinking.

More work to be done in schools on a systematic basis not ad hoc as it seems to be done currently on emotions, relationships, managing behaviour etc.

A very good day – well worth attending. Dave’s workshop was very good, but needs to open up group discussion more. Thank you

More training days like today & please! In house training would be very effective too. Thank you for an informative, funny and poignant day.

Content:

Interesting and thought provoking sessions. Valuable and stimulating contributions from speakers.

Venue: OK

Refreshments:

More variety and longer portions would have been appreciated – especially more salad and vegetarian food.

Coffee – OK. Tea - not very palatable

Speakers – interesting broaden my view helpful towards the theme.

Venue – OK parking was a problem

Food – not enough or good enough for veg.

Well attended – hope to take the view and idea’s into my practice.

Useful to hear different experience and perspectives about the perceptions of boys, young men & of men. I would have valued some greater emphasis on the actual sexual exploitation of girls, boys, young women and young men by adult male predominantly. However I applied a lot of the knowledge shared today to help me take the issue forward in the structures I work in a multi agency context.

Really excited by conference content. Lots of questions and thoughts, provoked especially about the role of family and statutory services in the lives of violent men. Was there anything that could of promoted change of behaviour earlier?

Attending the conference has encouraged me in the counselling work I do with men presents with violent behaviour in the sense of highlights the importance of helping them understand their behaviour. The pressure on workers is to provide a quick fix – support from informed, like-minded, experienced workers is essential. Thank you

• Incorporate training on these issues into initial teacher training courses – enable teachers to help children (not just boys) develop stratergies for living particularly in primary school.
• Assertiveness for boys and girls
• Community projects which support parenting (difficult as can be disempowering to women so better to do with young people in non stigmatising ways)
• Look at more flexible approaches to education – more creative ways of working as some approaches disempowering.
• Lots of opportunities via TV and other media to support exploration of intentity and relationships.
• Personal is political – influence politicians to look at again at prison system and to take a more outcome focused approach – what we have got now doesn’t achieve outcomes which are useful and helpful toe families and communities.
• Funding for assessment and treatment programmes. – there are not enough.
• Don’t forget women can be violent too and are often judged more harshly than men – need to ensure that services are there too. Also – women are often victims – need to understand and work with this too.
• We should stop pathologizing men generally and look more closely at the messages society is giving men and women - need to influence this.
• Look at how schools/schooling is constructed – major issues which need addressing.
• Change our political system which are about power, influence and competition – more collaboration – solution confused – less point scoring.
• Start listening to people – use narrative in therapeutic approaches. Train medical professionals better – medicine is an inherently oppressive profession – needs to look carefully at itself if it wants to achieve cost effective outcomes.
• Thank for the day – can’t think of any more things just now.
• Just a note to say the event was a great success and I found it to be very helpful and relevant.
• Although I attended as EYCP chair re BMDC, in the ‘day job’ I have a lot of involvement with men in this area, it struck me that CAFCASS would need some information on the programmes so that we as practitioners can refer.
• We are at: Kenburgh House, Manor Row, Bradford. BD1 4RW

I am sure we would be needing to know more particularly on those cases where feedback from a course may influence the Courts view of child contact.

• An extremely interesting and informative conference. Issues were raised I hadn’t even thought about before. Pre-conceived judgements were also shown to be wrong. It would be really useful to have the overheads as handouts as it is really difficult to take notes and listen to a difficult and complex subject.
• Just a quick note to say thank you for conference on Monday, I was absolutely drained come the end of the day, I listened so hard! Heavens knows how the rest of you were. I understand you will be very busy at the moment but at some point I would like to have a chat with you if possible. One of our GP’s and myself found the day very interesting and both hope that I can implement it in some way, here at work. Anyhow thank you and I will be in touch soon if that’s ok.
• Many thanks for arranging yesterday’s conference. It was a fantastic achievement with all these speakers, and venues set up. And the beginning must have been a nightmare! Glad it wasn’t me…
• Re ideas: can’t think of any. Suggestions re parking? All day was £7+ at the hotel… might be cheaper elsewhere?
• Idea: lunch needn’t be compulsory so people would opt to have the official lunch. After all, some might have quite liked to have popped into Bradford for a quick look at the shops?
• Mike: essential but maybe it was inconvenient for speakers to end up having to hold it. One speaker definitely loathed it. Couldn’t it go on a stand? I prefer body mikes = no problem if turn head etc.
• Screen: was the equipment checked well in advance eg day before? It was a tragedy we didn’t see the visuals.
• Water: only found it by chance. All drinks should be together?
• Keep up the good work.
• PS Could I be on a mailing list re conference? I’m a retired teacher so have no professional ‘interest’ but I certainly learned a lot yesterday. Internal mail – does anyone live in Ripon? Long shot!

• Really enjoyed Elie’s presentation – plus was impressed with his coolness in the face of technology challenges!
• Venue was good – I may not have been able to face it (Monday morning traffic, unfamiliar city centre) if I hadn’t been able to come by train. Also meal and refreshments good for the numbers and the time available.
• Would have been nice to have had a female speaker. Line-up was male dominated with the only woman up the front dealing with ‘housekeeping’ and comfort issues (was this Sue? You didn’t introduce yourself!) Bit of gender-stereotyping on the programme. Are men ‘experts’?! (Small grumble – whoever did the labels spelt ‘psychologist’ wrongly!)
• Would have liked more on ‘breaking the cycles’ of violence – particularly on prevention and early intervention (maybe for a future event). I work on a Sure Start programme attempting to address this with an early attachment project working with pregnant couples and families with very young babies.

• (I have been moved to comment myself here that we specifically chose only male speakers as we feel there are plenty of women, but not enough men taking the issues of men’s violence seriously, and those men we chose to speak have broken new ground in their fields of work. My apologies also for not introducing myself, I was actually very nervous & ‘flapping around’ at the beginning as I had only just found out Dave Morran was on his way but would be late –he missed his flight having been delayed because of a ‘suicide’ on the rail track of the train he was on. Sue Dominey)

What is the human being? What is his nature? Why was man created. Basic anthropological question. Only the theistic view makes sense. Who made man? – God. If you leave God out of the equation – you never find the solution/answer towards ‘building a violence free society’. Built into the very nature of the human beings is the soul/spirit (holistic). There is a law written into the heart of man. This law was stamped on their soul. Modern psychology and scientific psychiatry has taken God and the spiritual out of the care. It needs to be restored. Karl mentioned that an essential component in his healing process was becoming a Christian. I talked afterwards to him about this fact and he said it wasn’t the setting to talk about ‘Christianity’ – But said he believe that his conversion to Christianity was the single most important factor in his healing and saying goodbye to violence. The whole subject of “spirituality and mental health” needs to be put on the cutting edge of the agenda.

Absolute Psychological Assessments. Psychopathy Checklist. ‘If you make me an appointment I wont talk’

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• Firstly thank you very much! You certainly achieved your aim as far as I am concerned AM& PM! And I’m really glad and grateful to have had the opportunity to attend workshop 6.
• Hope, too that there will be many more, perhaps smaller “outreach” conferences as a result of this one, i.e. for workers at community level (and you are very welcome to ask us to provide our meeting house here as a venue!)
• One aspect that wasn’t touched upon really was how it can indeed be that a woman does unwittingly perpetuate violent behaviour, because she has herself been “programmed” from early childhood to respond in an “unhelpful way” which helps the perpetrator think that she is the one who will take responsibility and so doesn’t expect anything else and cannot see herself what is happening or cannot by herself find a way out of her own “unhealthy” behaviour as easily as some outside the situation judge she should do. (Relates to personal experience, so can tell you more if this here seems strange or unclear.)
• What I am very glad about is this: at no time was there anyone who suggest “this is how it is and this therefore is the ‘medicine’ for it”. All acknowledged and even emphasized the individuality of humanity within the social/economic/political etc context.
• Also I am glad that someone other than a teacher has understood the dilemmas of being a teacher in this day and age, and the daft system within which one has to either accept the working conditions or has to decide to leave altogether.
• I liked the atmosphere created by the speakers who time and again showed us their awareness of their own strengths and limitations and thus encourage openness (if only at least towards oneself).
• Also I found it reassuring that success is judge in terms of people and their engagedness with themselves and their world and not in terms of points on a scale artificially created to slot people into categories or in terms of the commercial success of a “programme to fit all”.
• Wonder how one could bring together those who work with men and those who work with women and the James Nayler Foundation to form a very inwardly strong and committed network capable of working early with in families everywhere (not just those obviously displaying aggressive behaviour but also create a general awareness that this behaviour is there in wealthy upper class families – I once lodged and lived in such a family – the violent (very violent!) father was outside the home a very well respected, very clever orthopaedic surgeon! All the time, though, it feels quite important that everyone involved needs to be strong enough to resist the corrupting forces of “the market place”. For they seem to be capable of destroying so many good ideas and practices – Don’t know the answer of ‘how?’ though, except that for ex.charity status gives more freedom here.
• Sorry am no good at filling in evaluations on the spot. Hope this is of some use.