Anyone done the Freedom program?

[lavent]

I escaped from an abusive relationship 6 months ago and my DV support worker wants me to start the Freedom Program when the DC go back to school.

Has anyone done it and was is useful?

I'll have to take newborn DS along with me so don't want to start if it's no good.

The freedom programme is amazing.
I went on the training before I left the public sector and was extremely impressed.
I'd like to do it as 'me', I found so much of the training day useful with regard to previous relationships. It made me realise that behaviour from my DSD towards my DM had had a negative effect on my own expectations of relationships for years. I'm not in an abusive relationship now but nearly all of my previous ones have been.

It is fantastic! Do it!

I wish everyone did it. I wish it was in schools (age-appropriate). I wish my 87yo mum would go (age-appropriate, again).
It is brilliantly written and signed. Written by a woman called Pat Craven who wrote Living With The Dominator and the course is devised from that.

12 sessions featuring one aspect of abusive behaviour each session. Very relaxed - you can come and go, step outside, step back in, leave etc; tea, coffee, chat; meeting other lovely, ordinary women in same/similar position. Some offer free childcare. Facilitators well-trained and sensitive.

Not least it opens your EYES!

Signed? Don't know what I meant there!

It's the course that offers free childcare btw (not the women lol)

It is helpful enough but I'll stick my neck out a bit and say if you read here regularly you probably know most of it.

Thanks all - yes I think social services will pay for childcare for my 2yr old but my newborn is too young for the setting so I'll have to take him along but he's only a few weeks so not disruptive really and if I can nip in and out should be ok.

No you don't duvet!!! Headworker, king of the castle? Do you know that from here?

Yy you can certainly get the gist from here but we need very specific, pinpointed info to conclusively shore us up, now and in the future, in the face of the dazzling array of abusive tactics an abuser uses. The Freedom Programme gives us that. It is invaluable, priceless.

There's something about the solidarity of sitting in a room full of women who all 'get it' which is invaluable. The freedom programme helped me so much. It's acknowledgement and validation, plus a real life hug and a cuppa from people who truly understand. Learning that these men perform so many of the same behaviours made me feel less alone, to be able to nod along with each others shared experiences which were so similar to my own really helped me to change my own outlook for the better.

Try a couple of sessions. It can be hard going emotionally but in my experience it was so worth it.

Free childcare is offered on the premises. You turn up, put your child in childcare, go to another room to do the programme, knowing your child is fine.

It can be hard-going emotionally but not all of it is at all. There is a lot of camaraderie and, well, relief: that it's not just you; that others have experienced the exact-same things. It gets to the point you know exactly what someone in the group is going to say next - bcs you've experienced the exact thing and so have the others. There's something even comical about the transparent tactics abusers use - I may have cried at times but i laughed just as much. Black humour I suppose. The FP pops the abusers bubble, their power: rumbled!

No more free childcare here they said due to funding cuts. The ladies who run the course visit me at home as they're from the refuge I stayed at.
They've had a massive cut in funding since April

Well, I did it online. Parts of it were helpful and I'd definitely encourage anyone to do it but it wasn't a huge revelation for me personally

Bloody hell. I suppose you romped through the bible and got that in one, too

What's up springy?

I did say I'd encourage anyone to do it, but I had been reading on Mumsnet for years before doing it so I'd already got quite a lot of it. I'm still WTB so I'm not saying 'hey look at me, I had this all down sorted' - it's just that I think I expected to feel different somehow, and didn't.

I would still absolutely tell anybody to do it as apart from anything else the support from others is invaluable; I missed that as I did it online like I said.