"One thing that is often overlooked in conversations about family violence is that supporting children sometimes means helping the adults in their lives change."
A collaboration between researchers at UConn Health and the Yale School of Medicine is advancing efforts to address family violence by helping fathers became safer, more engaged parents and coparents.
The program, Fathers for Change, addresses shortfalls in many traditional domestic violence intervention programs by helping fathers understand and regulate their emotional responses, develop healthier coping strategies, and reflect on multigenerational patterns that may contribute to violence within families.
Fathers for Change was developed by Carla Stover, Harris Professor in the Child Study Center at the Yale School of Medicine. Stover and Damion Grasso, Professor of Psychiatry and Pediatrics at UConn Health, have worked together to evaluate a statewide implementation of the intervention and are currently conducting a large-scale randomized clinical trial. Treatment is delivered to men referred by the Connecticut Department of Children and Families, with the goal of reducing family violence and child maltreatment.
"One thing that is often overlooked in conversations about family violence is that supporting children sometimes means helping the adults in their lives change," says Grasso. "Accountability is essential, but accountability alone is not always sufficient to create lasting change. Many fathers who use violence have their own histories of trauma, adversity, and disrupted relationships."
The Toll of Family Violence
In heterosexual couples, men are statistically more likely to be the primary perpetrators of intimate partner violence, with women and children often bearing the greatest impact.
In the United States, about 1 in 6 children experience domestic violence. Many of these children also experience emotional or physical abuse, neglect, or other forms of maltreatment. While both men and women can experience and perpetrate violence, men are more likely to inflict severe physical harm, engage in coercive control, and commit sexual violence, increasing the risk of injury and long-term psychological consequences.
"When fathers change, children and families benefit, and that is ultimately what this work is about."
For children, exposure to intimate partner violence and other forms of adversity can have devastating effects on emotional, social, and physical development, with consequences that can extend well into adulthood.
Although many interventions focus on supporting mothers and children affected by family violence, research suggests that approximately 70% of children continue to have contact with their fathers following child welfare or criminal justice involvement. As a result, addressing fathers' behavior remains a critical component of prevention and intervention efforts.
"Most efforts to address family violence focus almost exclusively on mothers and children, even though many children continue to have contact with their fathers after child welfare or criminal justice involvement," says Grasso. "My own research has consistently shown that exposure to domestic violence is often intertwined with other forms of child maltreatment and adversity. If we want to improve outcomes for children, we have to address the behaviors driving the violence while also helping fathers build healthier relationships with their children and coparents."
Programs designed specifically for fathers often focus on challenging beliefs about intimate partner violence, women, and gender roles. These interventions are typically delivered in group settings and are intended to be educational. However, they often do not address the underlying drivers of violent behavior or systematically teach skills for emotional regulation, identifying triggers, and effective communication. In addition, fathers' co-parents and children are generally not involved in treatment.
Fathers for Change takes a different approach. The intervention focuses on helping fathers better understand their emotions, triggers, thoughts, and behaviors, as well as how they interpret their co-parents' and children's actions and intentions. In addition to individual sessions, fathers may participate in optional sessions with their co-parent and child to support healing and strengthen family relationships.
"Fathers for Change does not excuse harmful behavior, but it recognizes that lasting change requires developing new skills, healthier ways of managing emotions, and stronger relationships with children and coparents," says Grasso. "When fathers change, children and families benefit, and that is ultimately what this work is about."
Evidence-Based Impact
Evidence supporting the intervention has emerged through the Connecticut Department of Children and Families' Intimate Partner Violence - Family Assessment Intervention Response (IPV-FAIR) initiative, which incorporates Fathers for Change into statewide services. In a sample of 204 participating families, co-parents reported significant reductions in intimate partner violence and children's exposure to conflict. The intervention was also associated with lower rates of subsequent abuse and neglect reports compared with families referred to DCF that did not receive Fathers for Change.
The intervention's effectiveness has also been demonstrated in three smaller clinical trails comparing Fathers for Change with traditional batterer intervention programs. These studies found reductions in family violence following treatment and at three-month follow-up assessments. Participants also showed improvements in substance misuse, negative mood symptoms, co-parents' mood symptoms, and children's self-reported posttraumatic stress symptoms. Researchers additionally observed improvements in father-child interactions, with fathers demonstrating less intrusive and more harmonious behavior during play.
In March, Grasso, Stover, Danielle Shayani, and Adele Hayes, both in the University of Delaware's Department of Psychological and Brain Sciences, published a study in the peer-reviewed journal Traumatology comparing Fathers for Change to an individualized batterer intervention program. The study found that Fathers for Change reduced family violence through improvements in cognitive-emotional processing.
According to the researchers, cognitive-emotional processing helps fathers engage in deeper self-reflection, better understand the origins of their behavior, and develop ways of responding more effectively to stress and conflict.
The project was initially funded through an NIH R21 grant awarded to Stover, along with 2022 and 2025 seed grants from the UConn Institute for Collaboration on Health, Intervention, and Policy (InCHIP).
That work helped lay the foundation for a larger award from the NIH's Eunice Kennedy Shriver National Institute of Child Health and Human Development, which is supporting an ongoing clinical trial comparing Fathers for Change to the Duluth Model Domestic Violence program. The study will help determine the efficacy of Fathers for Change in reducing family violence and child maltreatment and improving child mental health outcomes.
If the findings continue to support the intervention's effectiveness, the research team plans to focus on broader dissemination and implementation in community settings.
Researchers are also working to better understand the mechanisms through which change occurs, including improvements in father-child relationships, emotional regulation, and reflective functioning.
"Ultimately, our goal is to make effective father-focused interventions more widely available within child welfare, behavioral health, and family-serving systems," says Grasso.
Stover and Grasso are currently recruiting
