Engaging fathers in individual treatment for intimate partner violence can improve outcomes for families

Key takeaways for caregivers

• In the United States, many children witness intimate partner violence, which puts them at risk for maltreatment and emotional and behavioral difficulties.
• While women and men in the United States are almost equally likely to experience intimate partner violence (around 50% versus 45%, respectively), the impact of men’s violence on women is far more severe, with higher rates of serious physical injury and harm as well as negative consequences for women’s emotional, psychological, economic, and long-term health.
• Current systems of care, including courts, child protective services (CPS), and behavioral health programs, are not doing enough to engage fathers and reduce ongoing violence that children experience.
• Fathers for Change (F4C) is an intervention that assists fathers by working on their emotion regulation and reflective functioning (the ability to understand their own mental states and reflect more accurately on how others may be feeling) to improve their relationship with their child and reorient their relationship with their coparent.
• Among fathers referred for intimate partner violence interventions, those who completed F4C had a significantly lower chance of being subsequently reported to CPS for maltreatment than did fathers who did not complete F4C.
• F4C is a promising alternative treatment to traditional batterer intervention programs, which are the standard and most widely implemented intervention for men who engage in intimate partner violence.

This blog post is based on research originally published in Beebe, R., Fish, M. C., Grasso, D., Bernstein, B., DiVietro, S., & Stover, C. S. (2023). Reducing Family Violence Through Child Welfare Intervention: A Propensity Score-Matched Study of Fathers for Change. Journal of Interpersonal Violence, 38(21-22), 11666-11691.

Intimate partner violence through a child’s eyes

Following is a fictional account of intimate partner violence as seen by a child. Based on clinical material from cases related to F4C, it illustrates how current practices can affect children in homes with this type of violence.

Nobody explains it to me. One day my Dad was here, and then he was gone. No goodbye and no answers to my questions. It was all a blur, I heard yelling, and when I came out, I saw my mother crying. I was staying in my room like they told me to, but then I saw police outside and I wanted to see what was happening. I saw them putting my Dad into the back of a police car. I don’t want him to hurt my mom, but now I just feel confused. I miss him, even if things weren’t perfect. I just want to know that he is safe. I don’t even know if I am safe. My mom says not to worry and I don’t think she wants me to ask her about it. All I know is that something bad happened, and now my Dad isn’t here. I don’t know where he is and I am not allowed to see him. I don’t know if he is ever coming back.

Photo by cottonbro studio on Pexels

Intimate partner violence is prevalent

Intimate partner violence is a pattern of behavior that can include physical, psychological, and sexual abuse between romantic partners. It can lead to confusion and worry among children not only when incidents happen, but during the ongoing responses to those incidents by parents and systems like CPS and the courts.

This type of violence is more common than most people realize: According to the most recent report of the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, 1 in 2 women and 2 in 5 men experience some form of sexual violence, physical violence, or stalking. Compared to male victims, female victims are much more likely to be injured or develop symptoms of post-traumatic stress disorder.

The impact of intimate partner violence on children

Almost one in five children in the United States has witnessed intimate partner violence, which can result in significant trauma-related symptoms. Symptoms can include anxiety, depression, aggression, sleep problems, intrusive memories of the trauma, and increased startle responses or irritability.

When intimate partner violence is present, especially in homes with children, the immediate response from the criminal justice system and CPS is often to separate the perpetrator from the family to keep everyone safe. While this solution may be necessary (at least temporarily), it can leave children feeling afraid and confused.

Many children in the United States who witness intimate partner violence end up involved in the child welfare system, sometimes because of the violence alone, but also due to overlapping problems like neglect, physical abuse, or parental substance misuse.

Even when families are brought into the system, the cycle of abuse often continues.

CPS reports are official documents created during an investigation following a concern about a child’s safety or well-being. After any report of intimate partner violence in a home with children, police usually initiate a CPS investigation. In fact, exposure to intimate partner violence is a contributing factor in as many as 70% of CPS cases.

Even more alarming: Even when families are brought into the system, the cycle of abuse often continues. Repeat abuse happens in 30% to 60% of cases. The current systems and supports for this type of violence are not reducing the cycle of abuse sufficiently.

Why current interventions fall short

Rather than addressing behavior change in the abusive parent (most commonly fathers), services and supports in the United States are often directed primarily toward survivors (most often mothers). This puts the burden of healing and change on the mothers, while the fathers are either marginalized in terms of their importance to their children or are required by courts to attend one-size-fits-all programs that may not address the root problems causing their violent behaviors.

Lack of focus on fathers’ abilities to be better role models for their children can be a missed opportunity to facilitate repair in families.

When courts order fathers to complete an intervention for intimate partner violence, the men are usually sent to an intervention program for offenders or batterers. These programs are typically delivered in a gendered group format and are focused on different ways men use violence, coercion, and control in their relationships, while teaching anger management skills.

For many fathers, these programs fall short, with low completion rates (30% to 60%) and negligible benefits related to repeat violence across diverse populations in the United States and Canada. The group and educational format of batterer intervention programs lacks the flexibility to address the needs of individual fathers and does not directly assist them in re-establishing a relationship with their children. Lack of focus on fathers’ abilities to be better role models for their children can be a missed opportunity to facilitate repair in families.

Rewriting the script: How Fathers for Change (F4C) empowers fathers to take accountability for their behavior and actively change

F4C is an individualized therapy approach developed and currently implemented in the United States that switches the narrative. Rather than labeling men as batterers or offenders, the focus is on a motivator for change, their role as fathers. While traditional offender programs confront patterns of coercion and teach anger control, F4C focuses on fathers’ ability to understand themselves and regulate their emotions, while restoring relationships with co-parents and children.

Photo by Ketut Subiyanto on Pexels

F4C challenges fathers to think about how they want to be viewed as a father and how a healthy relationship with their co-parent is crucial to their children’s health and well-being. This approach fosters men’s intrinsic motivation to change their behavior to be the father they imagine and that their children deserve.

The program’s approach to engaging fathers has proven successful, with completion rates ranging from 67% to 80%, outperforming traditional offender programs. F4C does not excuse fathers’ acts of violence, but meets them where they are and encourages them to gain an understanding of their past experiences (e.g., trauma) that contribute to their dysregulation and engagement in intimate partner violence.

Measuring F4C’s effect on repeat CPS reports

To determine whether F4C leads to behavioral change, we examined how effective the program was in eliminating CPS reports of abuse and neglect in the year after the program ended.

We identified 297 fathers in a northeastern U.S. state who had been referred to F4C by CPS due to an incident of intimate partner violence and who had completed the program between 2015 and early 2020. Then we matched those 297 fathers to 297 fathers who had not received the F4C treatment because of long waiting lists in their area. (Fathers in this comparison group were referred to other services targeting intimate partner violence, although information about whether they participated in an intervention program was unavailable).

All fathers in the study were between 18 and 60 years old and in heterosexual relationships with a biological child under age 14. To hone in on the impact of the F4C program, the comparison fathers were matched to the F4C fathers on factors like ethnicity/race, age, number of children, severity of past intimate partner violence, number of previous CPS reports, history of past substance use, CPS risk assessment, and geographic location.

The results were striking:

• Only 14% of fathers (40 of 297) who completed F4C had a new CPS report for any form of maltreatment or intimate partner violence in the year after they began the program.
• In contrast, 27% of fathers (80 of 297) in the comparison group had a new CPS report in the year after CPS referred them for services to address intimate partner violence, a rate similar to typical reports after completion of other batterer intervention programs.
• Put another way, the rates of repeat CPS reports were cut in half for fathers that completed F4C.

Overall, this demonstrates that F4C affects intimate partner violence significantly, reducing fathers’ engagement in violent behavior at home. And it shows that families can become safer by supporting fathers’ development and healing.

Healthy fathers raise healthy children

Our results are clear: When programs invest in fathers by tapping into their desire to be present, loving parents, they can achieve real, measurable reductions in harm to children. F4C does not promise perfection; it simply asks fathers to show up, reckon with their past, and learn healthier ways to protect and care for their children.

Photo by RDNE Stock project on Pexels

Fathers or families seeking treatment like F4C should look for programs or individual providers that do not focus solely on gendered/power dynamics, but ask fathers to examine the causes and motivations of their violent behaviors, understand their nervous system and how to regulate it, and push them to increase their reflective capacity both for themselves and in relation to their children and co-parents.

• To build on these encouraging findings, researchers are continuing to examine this field and projects are working to increase access to F4C programs. Current projects within the U.S. seek to:
• Track the benefits of F4C based on reports from the victims of intimate partner violence regarding reductions in the fathers’ violence and substance use and improvements in parent-child relationships.
• Track the benefits of F4C in different populations that were not part of our study but have participated in the program (e.g., same-sex couples) and explore how the program might be adapted for other populations.
• Identify specific components that help make the program successful in reducing intimate partner violence and how they work together in the process.
• Offer F4C in more northeastern U.S. settings, including Veterans Affairs health care facilities in New England, and work with community agencies to expand to states beyond the northeast, including Florida, Missouri, and Virginia.

At its heart, F4C is about seeing what is possible when researchers and practitioners shift from a lens of shaming and punishing fathers through criminal sanctions, loss of contact with their children, and court-mandated batterer intervention programs to offering them a supportive opportunity to change while still demanding an end to their violence. Within that shift lies the hope for safer homes, healthier fathers, and brighter futures for children.