Start Intervention > People who are causing harm
 

Are you hurting someone or in a pattern of hurting people?  Do you want to stop hurting people?  Has someone you care about told you that you need to stop hurting them?

The person you hurt could be your partner, parent, child or another family member, they might be a flatmate, friend, someone you just met, co-worker, or someone else.

Taking responsibility for your violence and choosing to change (taking accountability) is important work, and it is very hard to do by yourself.  You deserve support, and you will need it.  It may be hard to find people who want to support you without letting you off the hook.  If you genuinely want to stop your violence, look for people who won’t make excuses for you—they are unlikely to be your close friends.

This toolkit has resources to help you find support to change and be responsible for the harm you have caused.

If you have found this website by yourself, and you are working out what to do without support, there are tools here that can help work out what is most urgent for you (see the topics below).

If you already have lots of support, for example if you’re part of a community or whānau that wants to do something about the violence, this website can help you work out a plan for your situation.

Either way, a good place to start is How can you take accountability, which has tools and information about stopping and being responsible for the harm you have caused.  Reading about the approach on this website might make an accountability process less scary, and help you resist the urge to avoid or control the process.

 

Introducing the model


Every response to violence is different, this isn’t a step-by-step model to follow.  Your intervention (people responding to your violence) might be simple and short-term, or longer and more involved.  You might only need one or two tools to work out what you need to do, or you might work through all of the topics and tools. 

You don’t need to read everything.  Find the tools or information that help you.  Focus on what is most urgent and what people are asking you to do.   

We’ve noticed that responses to violence have four main phases, with a slightly different focus at each phase.  We’ve arranged the questions that people want help with into 8 topics.  

 

Phases of an intervention

Topics to help

There are 8 topics with information and tools.  Your intervention doesn’t need to include all these topics, and you don’t need to be involved in everything that happens.  This website contains a lot of information and resources—don’t be overwhelmed.  Focus on what is most urgent and useful.  The best place for you to start is probably How can you take accountability.

If you have a specific goal, like finding people to support you to change or taking accountability, find the topic about that goal.  If you find there are gaps you need to fill or other goals you want to work on, you can go to those topics as you need.

This list gives you an idea of where to find the information and tools you want on this website.

  • How can you take accountability?

  • What is going on?

  • How do you stay safe?

  • Who can help?

  • What do you want?

  • What support does the person who was hurt want?

  • How do you work together as a team?

  • How are you doing?

Values

If you want to do something about your violence (past, present or future), the FAQs and Basics sections explain how violence works and how this approach stops violence, and the Real stories section has examples of people using this model.  Start by reading those sections if you have time (the About section has more background to the model and organisations involved).

If you want to quickly check if this model might work for you without reading those sections, the following tools may help.

Let's Begin
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