Parenting by Men Who Batter: New Directions for Assessment and Intervention

What is the best way to work with fathers who have a history of abusive behavior? This question is among the thorniest that social service and criminal justice professionals must deal with in their careers, and in this essential new work Jeffrey L. Edleson, Oliver J. Williams, and a group of international colleagues examine the host of equally difficult issues that surround it. Beginning with the voices of mothers and fathers who speak about men's contact with and parenting of their children, the authors then examine court and mental health services perspectives on how much involvement violent men should have in their children's lives. The second half of the book showcases programs such as the Boston-based Fathering After Violence initiative and the Caring Dads program in Canada, which introduce non-abusive parenting concepts and skills to batterers and have developed useful guidelines for intervention with these fathers. Visionary but also practical, Parenting by Men Who Batter distills the most relevant policy issues, research findings, and practice considerations for those who coordinate batterer programs or work with families, the courts, and the child welfare system. It guides professionals in understanding men who batter, assessing their parenting skills, making decisions about custody and visitation, and modeling treatment programs that engage fathers in their children's lives while maximizing safety.

About the Author

Jeffrey L. Edleson is a Professor in the University of Minnesota School of Social Work and Director of the Minnesota Center Against Violence and Abuse. Over the past two decades Dr. Edleson has conducted intervention research at the Domestic Abuse Project in Minneapolis and served as a consultant to the U.S. Centers for Disease Control & Prevention and to the National Council of Juvenile and Family Court Judges. An Associate Editor of the journal Violence Against Women , Dr. Edleson has published widely on domestic violence, groupwork, and program evaluation. Oliver J. Williams, Ph.D. , is the Executive Director of the Institute on Domestic Violence in the African American Community and Professor in the University of Minnesota School of Social Work. He has worked in the field of domestic violence for over twenty-five years as a battered women's advocate, batterer intervention counselor, trainer, and researcher. He has also been involved in several national advisory committees and collaborated with the Family Violence Prevention Fund, National Council of Juvenile and Family Court Judges, and other domestic violence and social service organizations.