Showcasing our membership: Jenny Miller at Rochdale Connections Trust

In this blog series, WRC is interviewing some of our members across the country to share their amazing work and get their views on the biggest challenges facing our sector and what we need to do about it. The interview below raises some pertinent issues about what kind of organisations constitute the ‘women’s sector’ today, the role of women’s organisations working alongside a crumbling public sector infrastructure, the devastating impacts of bad decisions on the lives of women and children, and the kinds of support deemed effective for male perpetrators of violence against women. The aim of this series is to provoke discussion within the sector, so if you have any comments on any of the issues raised in this blog post, please email our Head of Policy at [email protected]  

Jenny Miller works with domestic abuse survivors at Rochdale Connections Trust (RCT). Her organisation began as a service for young people navigating the courts system, providing mentors. They then got funding from the DWP to work with adults outside the job market:  

“We had a questionnaire that asked if they had ever experienced domestic violence. 85% of women were saying, ‘Yes.’ At the time in Rochdale, all the domestic violence services had closed. So, we tried.”  

Programmes of support 

They expanded their focus to include services for domestic abuse survivors around 2008-2009. They trained with Pat Craven to implement the Freedom Programme for women. They also started an awareness program for abusive men, which eventually led to concerns about men using these programs to manipulate the legal system during custody battles. 

“They were going into courts and saying, ‘Look at me! I've got a certificate to say that I'm fixed,’ and that didn't sit well with me whatsoever. I was asked by a solicitor to do a report on a man’s participation in the programme. I referenced his name various times throughout the report; let’s call him John. Then the victim statement came back, and the woman said, 'I see that you've mentioned his name. I wasn't allowed to have a name for 2 and a half years.’ That really cut me up because I just thought to myself, ‘What am I doing?’ You know I'm giving men more opportunities to be coercive, violent, manipulative. So, then we thought that the organisation should be doing proper perpetrator programmes because an awareness course can just lead to elevated risk for women.” 

This realisation prompted RCT to seek a more effective perpetrator program. Working with the local authority was taking too long, so they decided to implement the 'Strength to Change' program from Hull. RCT staff were trained by the program's creator and began offering a comprehensive 52-week behaviour change intervention, including individual and group sessions. Facing retention challenges, they later introduced a successful 26-week program called 'Time to Change,' which receives referrals from children's social care, family support workers, courts, and the police. 

In 2019-2020, the local authority offered to fund the training and costs to run a pilot programme called ‘Caring Dads’. Jenny and two staff members trained with the ‘Caring Dads team’ from Leeds and started to roll this out throughout the borough. This 17-week group intervention aims to engage fathers, helping them develop more child-centred fathering, and to take responsibility for ending their abusive behaviour towards their children and their children’s mothers.  Although not a perpetrator program, it incorporates elements that encourages men to reflect on their parenting and interactions with their children. This program was piloted with referrals primarily coming from children's social care.  

Women, whether current or former partners, are also provided with a support element during the man's participation in the program. Regular check-ins focus on theories of empowerment, validating women's experiences, planning for their safety, and informing them about available support. Women are also kept informed about the perpetrator's participation and progress in the program. 

Jenny was frustrated with the number of re-referrals to their women’s provision of the Freedom course.  

“Women were understanding the course absolutely, but not then linking it to their own situations.” 

So, Jenny, along with three other experienced staff members at RCT, were given time to write their own 17-week programme called ‘Free from Harm’ for women exclusively. It focuses on helping participants gain more knowledge around domestic abuse, improve self-esteem, feel empowered, increase their resilience, feel safer and able to risk assess situations and feel less isolated. There is also a peer support group for women where they can drop in, do activities together and trips out. Women use the organisation’s building four days a week exclusively as a women-only space.  

Inconsistent Support and Systemic Failures Impacting Women and Children 

Jenny shared her frustrations with the systemic issues that often hindered their efforts, such as inadequate support for women dealing with custody issues and the tendency of some programs and untrained and inexperienced staff to inadvertently empower abusers. 

Jenny also discussed inconsistent support from local authorities and probation services, highlighting challenges in maintaining regular referral processes and collaboration. The borough's massive turnover in staff, especially children’s social workers, has really impacted women and children negatively. Women have to repeat their story, and the most important aspect of this work—namely the time to build relationships of trust—is lost. 

“Local authorities end up making decisions based on historic information because of lack of long-term relationship building, biases, and lack of collaborative communications with the voluntary organisations supporting women and children.  

One woman left her abusive relationship, fleeing to a refuge away from Rochdale, but her children were placed in a local foster care placement as children’s social care stated they didn’t believe the relationship was over and they felt she was lying. The social worker also said the mum was, “too religious” and was worried about how the children would be brought up. 

Despite maintaining contact with the Children’s Centre and staff having no concerns about her parenting (even though she had to travel into the town by train twice a week to see her kids), the court case was mishandled, with outdated information and no clear plan as to how these children would  be transitioned back to their parents. Each child wanted to live with a different parent. As the mum was no longer living in the borough, the child wanting to live with her would have to change schools, which, as a Year 10 student, the court did not agree with. Until mum was back in the area, the children would have to remain in care. Rochdale housing has no duty to her as she is no longer in an abusive relationship and is housed. In a meeting requested by mum and supported by me, the social worker and social worker’s manager (both new to the borough) told mum she should NOT have been told to leave the area and couldn’t help her get back to the area other than a support letter to housing. These are people's lives that are being ruined or made more stressful with overly complicated and misdirected advice or direction.” 

“Without a proper social work system in place, you lose the ability to make decisions based on the grey areas of people's lives. You make judgements based on a particular incident, without seeing that incident in a longer-term context where you can see the progress that’s been made.”  

“The system is in crisis and is causing more and more social misery. There was one woman, without leave to remain. She was told to leave her abuser but couldn’t because she didn’t have anywhere else to go. So, her kids were removed. She did eventually end up leaving her abuser, but then ended up living with a landlord who then exploited her sexually to keep a roof over her head.” 

Insights for Supporting Diverse Communities

I asked Jenny whether she thought perpetrator programmes that offered a more ‘feminist’ analysis could be beneficial to men to understand their sense of entitlement within patriarchy. Jenny found that this could be pretty alienating to men and encourage a defensive response. Instead, she emphasised that their recognition of the impact of violent and abusive behaviour towards women and their children, and helping the men identify with their own expectations and attitudes often provided a more effective way to engage fathers in changing their behaviours. 

In a multicultural place like Rochdale, how can domestic violence services meet the needs of women from minoritised backgrounds? Jenny talked about the importance of outreach work, engaging with local mosque leaders, for example, and the importance of building relationships with other local specialist organisations to challenge the misuse of cultural and religious justifications for domestic abuse. 

Ongoing Struggles for Funding

Rochdale Connections Trust primarily funded itself, receiving occasional support from the European Social Fund and local authorities. They’ve also generated income by hiring out their premises, which gives them more wiggle room to sustain themselves. But the struggle for funding—for both male and female support programmes—continues... 

Thanks to Jenny for taking time out of her busy schedule to talk to WRC! If you would like to be interviewed for this blog series, please email [email protected]  

Photo by Chayene Rafaela on Unsplash