What do you want?

• What is this topic about?

  Setting goals that:

  1. Can be agreed on enough for everyone to move forward
  2. Help guide the next steps
  3. Create ways to measure success
  4. Guide you to do something about your violence, repair the harm and change your attitudes and behaviour away from violence and towards responsibility.
     
     

  The goals may change at each phase.

  • Getting started

    If only one or two people are involved at the start, then goals might be more individual than a group process.  The most important goals to start with may be short-term: immediate safety, gathering people to help or finding someone to call for support.  Long-term goals are good for giving you or your group direction.

    Key questions

    • What do you and the group want?
    • What do you and the group not want?
    • What would you and the group consider a success?

  • Planning

    As your group plans an intervention and maybe brings more people together, the goals may expand.  Your group may need clear long-term goals to guide you.  Your group may need a process for agreeing on goals.  If you started off setting goals on your own, they might expand to include the group or you may share your goals with others and make sure that they understand and agree with them.

    Key questions

    • Does everyone know and agree with the goals?
    • Can the group reach consensus on the goals?
    • How can you turn the goals into a set of steps?
    • Are the goals realistic?

  • Taking action

    By the time the group starts to take action, you should have a set of goals that you all understand and agree with.

    Key questions

    • Are the goals still realistic?
    • Does everyone know and agree with the goals?
    • What goals have you reached?

  • Following up

    You can return to goals to measure your success, to celebrate what you were able to achieve, and to remind yourselves of what you need to keep doing in the future.

    Key questions

    • Have the goals been met?
    • What has not been met? Why not?
    • Can anything be done to meet the goals?
    • Can the group let go of unmet goals?

• Why is it important?

  Working out what your group wants from an intervention gives it direction.  Goals can guide you through hard or confusing times.  Goals remind people (including you) what they are working towards and what is expected of them. 

  People can usually agree that they want violence to end. But what they mean by that and how they think it should happen can be very different, and this can lead to conflict.  The tools in this topic help your group discuss those differences, so that you can agree on a set of goals.  The tools help you make concrete goals, so you know when you’ve met them.

  Goal setting in 6 basic steps:

  1. Be clear about the outcomes you want and don’t want—your goals
  2. Be clear about any limits you have, things that you will not agree to—your ‘bottom-lines’
  3. Come together as a group to work out group goals and bottom-lines (people may have to compromise to reach agreement)
  4. Separate short-term goals from longer-term
  5. What are the most important goals? What are the easiest to achieve?
  6. Turn these goals into a plan of action that can be changed as needed.
     
     

  • Different situations may call for different types of goals

    Think about the relationship the violence happened in, and what the outcome for that relationship might be.  Goals can include what you want that relationship to look like.  For example, does the person you harmed want to stay in close relationship with you, do you want a close relationship with them?  Do they want to co-exist but not in close relationship?  Do they want nothing to do with you? 

    • In a current close relationship that you both want to keep going (eg, partners, parent or child)
      • Goals may include being in a healthy relationship together
    • In a current close relationship that you don’t both want to keep going
      • Goals may include separating safely, and living safely in the same community
    • In a past relationship, you don’t want to be close or reconnect
      • Goals may include separating safely
    • In a current but not close relationship (co-workers, friends, members of an organisation) where you have to share the same spaces or circles
      • Goals may include staying peacefully in the same community
    • If you have no relationship with or don’t know the person you hurt
      • The relationship may not be part of the goals.

  • What could goals look like?

    Goals can be about the people affected:  

    1. Supporting the person who has been harmed

    Goals focused on the health, safety and other needs or wants of the person who has been harmed.  May include children, whānau, pets and others who rely on them.  This should be a priority in most interventions.

    2. Accountability of the person doing harm

    Goals focused on supporting you to recognise, end and take responsibility for the harm you caused, whether or not you meant it.  Includes changing attitudes and behaviours so that the violence won’t happen again.

    3. Community accountability and social change

    Goals focused on communities seeing how they are responsible for harm, and making changes so that harm will not continue.  This includes harm a community caused, as well as harms that the community allowed or did nothing about.

  • You can also think of goals as responding to what a situation needs.

    1. Goals about ending the violence, like:

    • To tell at least one trusted person about what is happening
    • To find out about one crisis line I can call in an emergency
    • To share this website with my close friends
    • To make an appointment with a stopping violence programme to end my violence.

    2. Goals about being free from violence, like:

    • Want the physical violence to end completely
    • Want all verbal abuse to end
    • Want my children to be free from violence
    • Want to be able to argue without getting violent.

    3. Goals about letting go of control, like:

    • To manage my emotions when people don’t do what I want
    • To manage my fears about my partner going out without me
    • To manage my fears about my partner working
    • To manage my frustration with my children
    • To take responsibility for what I am feeling.

    4. Goals about safety, like:

    • To have an emergency plan and at least two people I can call in an emergency
    • Want my children to feel safe
    • Want my friends and partners to feel safe around me.

    5. Goals about relationship, like:

    • To feel like I can be in this relationship without my partner/ parent/ child/ sibling fearing me
    • To end this relationship completely
    • To end this intimate relationship but stay friends
    • To end this relationship but be able to co-parent our children
    • To end this relationship but be able to be around each other at family events
    • Want my friends to help me to stop my violence
    • To have some people I can trust.

    6. Goals about the way the intervention is carried out, like:

    • To meet the person I hurt face-to-face
    • To be dealt with compassionately
    • Do not want the police involved.

    7. Goals about you, from others, like:

    • That you stay away and stop all contact
    • That you stay away and stop all contact until the person you harmed feels safe
    • That you understand and admit what you have done
    • A sincere apology
    • Repair in the form of __
    • That you stay away from the following places: ___
    • That you get the following help: ___

    8. Goals about the community (might be whānau, friends, an agency or group), like:

    • The community to understand how they supported your violence
    • The community to make guidelines about safety and violence so this does not happen again.

  • What are limits or bottom-lines?

    Your bottom-lines may be what you need to stay involved in the intervention, what the intervention does, or limits like the amount of time you have.  They might be limits people involved in the intervention put on working with you.

    A bottom-line protects you while letting you stay involved.  It is not an attempt to stay in control.  Think about whether you have any absolute limits to participation.  Make these clear so that other people know.

    For example:

    • I can be involved in this intervention, but I do not want to work with ___
    • I can only meet about this on weekday evenings
    • I will meet with people if they give 24 hours warning.

    If you set a bottom-line that others won’t work with, be prepared to think about whether there is another way to get what you need.

    Other people will have bottom-lines that you will need to respect too.  Many of them may be about you.

  • Things to think about

    Goals can come from different people in a situation of violence, like the person who was harmed, you or community allies.  Goals can also be about people in a situation of violence.  They might be about safety, supporting people being harmed, community responsibility, or supporting you to be responsible and to change.

    The goal setting process may be challenging for you.  Group goals including those of the person you hurt may feel unfair or oppressive.  You might feel judged and that you have no control.  You may be handed a list of goals that you didn’t help make, but that include things you need to do.  

    Your own goals might change throughout this process.  You could have goals like thinking about why people see your actions as bad, thinking about their effect on others, taking responsibility, remaining connected to people you care about, or stopping your pattern of violence.  You can ask for support to help you.

     

    About the person harmed

    Many interventions base their goals on what the person who was harmed wants.  Their goals are important.  The person who was harmed has suffered most, and often understands what happened better than anyone.  Giving them control over the goals of the intervention can be an important part of ending violence.

     

    About community allies

    Communities are also harmed by violence and have a responsibility to challenge violence.  Their goals may be balanced with those of the person who was harmed, and perhaps yours.

     

    About the facilitator

    This toolkit works best with a facilitator.  They may be a friend, whanaunga or community member.  They may be a helpful professional or someone working in an organisation who is willing to work with the values and approach behind this model.

    This is a unique approach to dealing with violence and may be unfamiliar to people used to working with violence.  It may even be against their policies.  Your group can share this website with people who could be a facilitator and see if they are comfortable with this approach.

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