Course Details
Dates: Tuesday 30 June – Thursday 2 July 2026
Time: 9:00AM – 4:00PM each day (1-hour break)
Location: 11 Pattie Street, Cannington, Ground Floor Training Room
Morning and afternoon tea, lunch, resources, pen, and notepad will be provided.
Cost: $1,550 per participant (includes GST)
Course Overview
This three‑day specialist training program builds the knowledge, skills, and applied practice required to work safely and effectively with men who use family violence. Grounded in evidence-based frameworks and reflective experiential learning, the course supports practitioners to understand perpetration patterns, coercive control, and risk, while strengthening the microskills and groupwork capabilities essential for accountable, non‑collusive intervention.
Across three intensive days, participants explore family violence typologies, risk indicators, and professional responses; develop practical engagement and intervention techniques for individual work; and build confidence in facilitating groupwork that promotes responsibility and behavioural change. The program emphasises safe practice, ethical responsibilities, and reflective integration, enabling practitioners to apply learning directly to real‑world contexts.
Who is this course suitable for?
- Practitioners working directly with men who use family violence, including counsellors, case managers, group facilitators, and intake workers.
- Team leaders, coordinators, and practice leads seeking to strengthen specialist capability within family violence and related service systems.
- Organisations wanting to build workforce capacity in safe, accountable, evidence‑based intervention with men using family violence.
Course Breakdown
| Day 1 | Family violence typologies, coercive control, risk indicators and professional responses | Participants build a shared foundation in perpetration patterns, coercive control, risk escalation, and risk-responsive intervention. | Welcome and course framing; family violence typologies; coercive control as pattern-based abuse; gendered experiences of abuse, entitlement, power and control; victim-survivor and child impacts; key risk indicators and escalation markers; professional responses to risk. |
| Day 2 | Microskills for working with men in individual counselling and case management | Participants strengthen engagement and intervention microskills that support accountability, reduce collusion, and work effectively with resistance, denial, shame, anger, and blame-shifting. | Direct practice stance; empathy and accountability; joining without colluding; questioning and reflective responses; summarising for accountability; strategic silence and interruption; understanding resistance; working with minimisation, denial and grievance; perception suspension; direct practice in case management and counselling; documentation and referral. |
| Day 3 | Groupwork skills for men’s behaviour change. | Participants build confidence in facilitating groupwork, establishing accountability culture, managing resistance and disruption, and using activities that deepen reflection and responsibility. | Purpose of groupwork; intake and pre-group preparation; readiness for participation; group agreements; boundaries and norms; facilitating respectful challenge; responding to difficult group dynamics; dominance, silence, deflection, grievance and triangulation; co-facilitation; maintaining safety and structure; group-based interventions. |
| Applied learning and reflective integration are part of this course. Additionally, there’s opportunities for two post training 1-hour reflections. | Participants consolidate learning through observed role plays, feedback, reflection. | Integration of risk, accountability, engagement and intervention; observed role plays in individual and group contexts; structured feedback; reflective practice; recognising drift, triggers and rescue responses; practice transfer planning; supervision and ongoing development. |
Specialist trainers:
Tori Cooke
Tori Cooke brings deep specialist expertise, warmth, and real-world practice wisdom to this training. As Director of Pandora Projects, she has more than 25 years of clinical practice, governance, and senior management experience across Western Australia and Victoria. Tori is widely recognised for her work with both victim survivors and people using abuse and violence, and for her commitment to building workforce capability through practical, evidence-based training. Her approach combines strong family violence knowledge with reflective, applied learning that helps practitioners grow confidence and skill in complex practice.
Dawson Ruhl
Dawson Ruhl from Phoenix Support Services brings more than three decades of experience in human services, family violence intervention, training, and systems reform. He began his specialist career in the family and domestic violence sector as the inaugural manager of the Domestic Violence Intervention Program, at a time when men’s behaviour change and victim support responses were emerging in Western Australia. Dawson is also recognised for his contribution to broader reform and collaborative responses, including projects in the Kimberley and earlier work helping establish coordinated criminal justice responses to family and domestic violence. His training style is grounded, thoughtful, and shaped by long experience across practice, leadership, and system development.
With more than 55 years of combined experience, Tori Cooke and Dawson Ruhl are exceptional educators who bring depth, credibility, and real practice wisdom to the room, giving participants a rare opportunity to build sharper skills, stronger confidence, and more thoughtful, accountable responses in their work with men using family violence.
What will you take from this course?
By the end of this course, participants would have gained the skills on:
- A clear understanding of family violence typologies, coercive control as pattern-based abuse, and the impacts on victim survivors and children.
- Practical tools for identifying risk indicators, recognising escalation, and responding with risk aligned professional actions.
- Strengthened microskills for engaging men in individual counselling and case management, including strategies for addressing denial, minimisation, grievance, shame, and resistance.
- Skills for facilitating groupwork with men who use violence, including managing challenging dynamics, promoting accountability, and maintaining safety and structure.
- Experience applying intervention strategies through observed role plays, structured feedback, and reflective integration.
- Increased confidence in using evidence based, non-collusive, and ethically grounded approaches in both individual and group settings.
- Strategies for reflective practice, recognising practitioner drift and triggers, and planning for ongoing professional development and supervision.
Note
Given the nature of the skills and topics, full attendance across all four days is required for successful course completion.
Portions of this training have been mapped to Units of Competency and could carry over potentially towards future accredited training.
Participants will be invited to provide feedback at the end of each day.
No refunds are available, however, deferral to a future course when scheduled, may be possible for extenuating circumstances.
