These tools guide people who have caused harm and their community to recognise, stop and take responsibility for their violence. These questions are for you. None of them should be turned back on the person you hurt.
Key Questions
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What attitudes, behaviours and experiences led to the harms?
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Who directly caused the harms?
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Who allowed these harms to happen, even if they did not directly commit them? Have people supported your violence?
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Who did you harm?
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What are the results of these harms, even if unintended?
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What and who do you care about?
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What people can influence and support your change?
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What specific changes does the group want?
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What are some specific ways to know that change has happened?
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How can the group support long-lasting change?
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These tools include questions to help you think clearly about the situation of violence, what information to share with people who are helping, and how to keep information up-to-date. It will probably include hearing about your violence and its effects from the person you have harmed. They are likely to have a different understanding of your actions than you.
Key Questions
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What is going on?
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What kind of harm, abuse or violence is happening?
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Who is being harmed?
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Who is causing the harm? (Is it you alone? Are you being supported by others?)
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What can be done?
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How dangerous is your behaviour?
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These tools consider risks, danger and safety plans. Violence of any form can cause harm. Taking action to respond to violence can also cause new risks and dangers. This topic includes tools to figure out how to stay safe or reduce harm during the intervention. This includes your safety.
Key Questions
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What are the risks and dangers now?
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Who is at risk?
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What is the level of risk? None, low, medium, high, emergency?
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What are the risks and dangers if you take no action?
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Who needs to be protected?
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How can you support others safety (for example, by staying away from the person you hurt, getting rid of weapons, etc)?
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What are the next steps?
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This approach brings people together to overcome violence, even if it is only a couple of people. These tools guide you through who can help, what they can do to help, and how to bring them in to help. The tools help identify who might get in the way or make things worse, and who might help if they have some support.
Key Questions
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Who can help?
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Who can get in the way?
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Who is a good person to support the person who has been harmed?
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Who is a good person to support the person causing harm?
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Who could be a better ally with some support?
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What kind of help do they need and who can give it?
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These tools help work out the outcomes your group wants. They separate goals that may be wishful or beyond the group’s control, from those that are possible and in line with the group’s values.
Key Questions
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What do you want?
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What do you not want?
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What can you do to move towards your goals?
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Does the wider group share the same goals?
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What can you do as a group to move towards these goals?
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Are these goals realistic and within your control?
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How can you state these goals as concrete steps?
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Working well together is an important and challenging part of an intervention. These tools can help with communicating, making decisions and sharing information.
Key Questions
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Who can work together?
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Does everyone know and agree with the goals?
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What are their roles?
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How will the group communicate and co-ordinate?
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How will the group make decisions?
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These tools check that the intervention is going well, that the group has goals and is moving towards them. This topic includes tools for individuals to check that they are doing their best to achieve the goals.
Key Questions
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Is the group ready to take the next step?
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How did it go?
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What did the group achieve?
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Did the group celebrate their achievements (even the small ones)?
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What needs to change?
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What is the next step?
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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.
People who are causing harm
“Accountability is not based on legal or financial liability, but rather the mana of an individual and her or his community.”
Heitia Raureti
“I'm a person and I'm no better than anybody else. I'm a person and I can also change. ... Through talking about the things that I'm most ashamed of, that shame became transformative for me.”
When someone is first thinking about responding to or stopping violence, which can be at any time in the violent situation. It may have been a one-off or been going on for days, months or years. It may have happened long ago or recently, or it might still be happening.
Getting started:
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Can be started by anyone—the person hurt, a friend, whanaunga, neighbour, co-worker or community member, or the person doing harm.
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Often involves steps suchg as naming the violence, thinking about what you want, finding people and resources to help, and thinking about what can get in the way.
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Includes thinking about risks and ways to increase safety.
Examples of Getting started steps include:
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Looking for help on the internet and finding this website
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Talking to someone you trust about your violence and brainstorming what to do
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Asking for help with your violence
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Thinking about past harm you caused and deciding to do something about it.
You can get started at any time:
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A pattern of violence is becoming clear and you want to do something before it gets worse
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A pattern of violence has got so bad that you need to do something
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Whānau, friends, neighbours or co-workers have found out about your violence and want to do something
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The police or child welfare have been called
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You have found this website and feel like you have more support to change
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You feel ready to do something.
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When someone has done the ground work and is getting ready to take action to respond to, stop or prevent violence.
Planning/preparation:
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Can involve bringing more people in to help
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Can involve setting goals, thinking about what help is needed and what you can do to take accountability
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Includes thinking about risks and ways to increase safety.
Planning/preparation steps include:
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Figuring out who else can help
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Holding a meeting of people who might be able to help
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Thinking about risks and dangers as the intervention starts, and figuring out a safety plan
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Making a schedule of people who can stay with the person who was hurt for support and safety
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Thinking about who needs to know about your violence
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Preparing an ‘accountability plan’, including what harm you have done, people who can support change, what you need to do, and consequences if requests are not met.
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When someone takes action to respond to, stop or prevent violence.
Taking action:
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Is a deliberate step or set of steps
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Can be carried out by anyone—the person hurt; a friend, whanaunga, neighbour, co-worker or community member; or the person doing harm
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Can include supporting people who have been hurt, dealing with people doing harm, bringing people together for support, growing the understanding and responses of friends, whānau or community members
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Includes thinking about risks and ways to increase safety.
Taking action steps include:
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Someone staying with the person who was hurt at their home for support and safety
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Someone contacting you to request a meeting
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Meetings with you, where you might be asked to do or not do things by the person you hurt and others (for example, to stay away from some places, to join a stopping violence programme, to ask your friends to stop defending you, etc)
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Taking steps to be responsible for the harms you have caused
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Writing a statement acknowledging the harm you caused
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Holding a community meeting about your violence and the group’s steps to do something about it
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Getting rid of any weapons.
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To make sure action steps are working towards the values and goals of the intervention; to check if changes are needed; to tell whether new events or changes have come into the picture; to tell how close the intervention is to its goal; to tell whether the intervention needs to be paused, sped up, changed or brought to a close.
Following-Up:
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Is a deliberate process after each action step, at particular times or at the end of an intervention
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Can involve everyone or a smaller group of people
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Is an important part of keeping on track
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Can include plans to respond if violence happens again
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Can involve a process for checking in to see how things are going after an intervention ends
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Should happen even if action steps are never taken or things don’t go as planned
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Includes thinking about risks and ways to increase safety.
Following up steps include:
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Checking in with people who were going to take an action to see what happened
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Checking that the actions and results of actions met the group’s values, goals and safety needs
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Checking that the actions and results of an entire intervention process met the group’s values, goals and safety needs.
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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
This website might help you if you:
☐ Want to respond to, stop or prevent a situation of violence (violence intervention)
☐ Look for solutions within your family, friend network, neighbourhood, church, sports club, workplace or other community group or organisation
☐ Can think of at least one other person who can support you to take responsibility for what you’ve done and stop your violence
☐ Want help to recognise, stop and be responsible for your violence (accountability) without excuses (without colluding) and without denying your humanity
☐ Are willing to work with others in your community
☐ Are willing to work over a period of time to make sure that solutions last.
If you checked all the boxes, you may be ready to continue with this approach. If you aren’t sure about any of these, see if the FAQ or one of the real stories answers your questions.
The Values Checklist will show you whether you share values with this approach.
Creative Interventions developed this model to end violence, and to lead to healthier ways of being in community with each other. The short version of the values that guide this approach is in the Checklist below (a longer version is in the Basics section). Do these fit with you or your group?
You can list your own values or kaupapa under Values to guide your intervention (in your own words), Guiding Questions if another set of values fits your group better. The principles of Communities against Rape and Abuse (CARA) and the kaupapa of Te Wānanga o Raukawa are examples of other sets of values.
You can download these files, adapt them to your group, and share them with people as they join.
The following values guide us in our work together to respond to, stop or prevent violence (violence intervention). Think about what these values mean to you. We hope that you will agree to these values and let them guide your involvement in this intervention.
If you don’t agree, think about what changes you want. Can you include these changes? Or do they show disagreement that needs more discussion. Be clear about changes you want and what this means for your involvement.I understand and can agree to the following values:
☐ Collectivity or community responsibility (working together as a group)
☐ Holism (considering the potential wellbeing of all people involved)
☐ Safety and risk-taking (recognising that safety sometimes requires risk-taking)
☐ Accountability (taking appropriate levels of responsibility for ending violence)
☐ Transformation (working towards positive change for all)
☐ Flexibility and creativity (can adjust to new challenges and opportunities)
☐ Patience (accepting that change can take time)
☐ Building on what we know (building on people’s values, experience and strengths)
☐ Sustainability (creating ways to make changes that can last a long time)
☐ Expanding our work (making changes and lessons that can help others)
☐ Others:
We don’t expect that your values and ours will be a complete match. Different language may make more sense to your group.
Use these questions to think about the values (individual or group) you want to guide your planning, preparation and actions to deal with violence. If your group can’t agree on a set of values, you may find it hard to work together (see How do you work together).
Guiding questions:
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What is important to you?
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At times when you have tried to change your own behaviour, what has helped? What has made it hard?
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What are some guiding principles that have helped in your life?
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What are some values that you hold even if they have been hard to keep up?
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What values do you think will lead to lasting positive change?
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You can write a set of values using this checklist. If helpful, compare your values with the Creative Interventions list, the CARA list and the Wānanga kaupapa. Which ones would you like to keep?
Our Values
The following values guide us in our work together to respond to, stop or prevent violence (violence intervention). Think about what these values mean to you. We hope that you will agree to these values and let them guide your involvement in this intervention.
If you don’t agree, think about what changes you want. Can you include these changes? Or do they show disagreement that needs more discussion. Be clear about changes you want and what this means for your involvement.
Our Values
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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.