Putting men’s abuse of women on the childcare agenda : an innovative specialist domestic abuse project

The MAZE project is an innovative specialist domestic abuse service that undertakes intensive work with women affected by domestic abuse and their partners. This paper will describe the project and present findings from a small evaluation undertaken in 2010. Examples from MAZE work with individual women, direct work with men, and the MAZE project contribution to multi-agency work are used to illustrate how and why the project is successful and the challenges in achieving this. An important theme arising from this work is the central importance of keeping focused upon the safety of women and children, and upon understanding, assessing and addressing the risks and responsibilities of the domestic violence behaviours. Importantly this turns professional attention towards men and their behaviour and benefits women and children. Whilst the MAZE project is an example of innovation in service user-led organisations, it also demonstrates new directions for working with high risk families where domestic abuse is a feature