Perpetrator program attrition and participant engagement strategies

Monash Investigators: Professor Kate Fitz-Gibbon and Dr Jasmine McGowan

Other investigators: Drs Nicola Helps and Brittany Ralph

Partner organisations: No to Violence, Bethany Community Support, Center for Non-Violence, inTouch Multicultural Centre against Family Violence, Taskforce Community Agency, Relationships Australia.

Project contact: Professor Kate Fitz-Gibbon, email: kate.fitzgibbon@monash.edu

This project is now complete

The Monash Research Team were contracted by the Victorian Government to conduct research into the factors that influence a family violence perpetrator’s engagement in, and disengagement from behaviour change programs. The project was carried out across five stages of data collection and the research team engaged with over 170 participants including people using violence, affected family members and Victorian behaviour change program practitioners.

The Final Report was published in August 2024 and can be accessed here.

In addition to the Final Report, the project leads – Prof Kate Fitz-Gibbon and Dr Jasmine McGowan also prepared two sets of guidance to inform practitioners and policy makers in translating the research findings into policy and practice.

You can access these here:

A project webinar was delivered on the 17  September 2024. The webinar can be viewed below.

About the project

Since the Royal Commission into Family Violence (RCFV) there has been substantive investment in the development and delivery of perpetrator interventions, including behaviour change programs. The diversity of programs developed recognises the need for a suite of perpetrator interventions and provides ongoing acknowledgement that there is no one model that suits all people who use family violence. There remains, however, limited understanding of what factors influence a perpetrator’s engagement in, and disengagement from an intervention, what strategies are used by practitioners to support and enhance program engagement, and how this impacts program attrition.

This project  sought to directly address that gap in knowledge by developing evidence-based strategies to enhance perpetrator engagement in interventions, and in turn, to minimise program attrition rates.

To achieve these research aims the project considered the extent to which program timeliness, accessibility, cultural appropriateness, individual circumstances, holistic support, and flexible responses impact upon participant engagement and program attrition rates.

Research design

This project employs a multi-method research approach to be carried out across five phases:

Funding acknowledgement

This project is funded by the Victorian Government. For further details about the Family Violence Research Program 2021-2024, click here.