ECINS Helps Australian Nonprofit Establish Rehabilitation Program for Aboriginal Domestic Violence Offenders

Organisation:

• The Aboriginal Male Healing Centre (AMHC) is a not-for-profit organisation based in Newman, Western Australia that provides an alternative to incarceration for men who use violence against women and children. The organisation aims to heal these men and break the cycle of violence.

Challenges:

• Due to systemic oppression of the Australian aboriginals and the political roadblocks surrounding representation and government support of the country’s native people, social funding for AMHC was scarce.
• Because AMHC’s client are perpetrators, their organization was viewed as somewhat unpalatable, which was also an obstacle for nonprofit fundraising.
• Prison systems were the only source of data on violent offenders, which caused the government to dedicate more funding to incarceration, instead of rehabilitation.
• To provide the best support, AMHC practitioners had frequent interaction with their clients, however, with no budget for technology or a formal administrative structure, they had been having casual meetings with clients and were not recording any data.
• AMHC realized if they had a true case management system, they could record data, show evidence of results, and therefore be able to apply for grants, attract socially enterprising investors, and receive more funding to grow their organisation and support more clients.

Solutions:

• The ECINS Foundation offered AMHC a fully funded case management system, recognizing that AMHC had a valuable rehabilitative model that could create better outcomes for the community.
• AMHC utilized the Case Management Module as a monitoring and evaluation tool, whereby they could collect data to measure the scale of the local domestic violence problem, including the number of perpetrators, violent incidents, and the impact of those situations on the immediate family, relatives and community as a whole.
• With a streamlined case management solution in place, the AMHC added the Client Engagement Module to their system which allows the organisation to engage with more people independent of their current location on a mobile app and gives clients ownership of their healing process.

Results:

• Use of ECINS has allowed AMHC to develop a fully holistic approach to breaking the cycle of domestic violence in their community by creating a rehabilitative alternative to prison.
• AMHC intervention allows an offender to be supported and held accountable on a social, physical, emotional and mental journey toward breaking the cycle of violence in their own life and family.
• With the Case Management Module, AMHC has been able to collect statistical data that proves the need for domestic violence rehabilitation programs, as well as the efficacy of their own interventions. This data has allowed them to expand their services to more people in need, and at the same time, build an application for government funding to develop a residential facility to further their support offerings.
• Seeing the expanding support capabilities with the use of ECINS, other social support organizations in Newman are now partnering up with AMHC to collaborate on wraparound support services for these clients.

Testimonial:

“The kindness and generosity of the ECINS team – their persistence and patience with us — is reassuring and encouraging. ECINS is one of the reasons that we keep at the forefront of what we set out to do.” – Devon Cuimara, Founder & CEO, Aboriginal Males Healing Centre

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