Child abuse and neglect increase the risk of behavioural, physical, and mental health consequences that threaten health and well-being. It continues to be a global problem despite decades of research, the existence of child protective services, legislation, and other support services. Most intervention approaches do not adequately support fathers, husbands or partners who use violence as it does not address trauma-related issues and the need for reparation (Humphreys et al., 2019). Building services and programs that integrate a trauma-specific approach to support men and/or fathers who use violence within their families is needed. When working with fathers who perpetrate violence in their interpersonal relationships toward their children and family, it is critical to see them not just as perpetrators of violence but also as victims of their own history of child abuse or trauma who are traumatized themselves. Family Services of Peel developed a trauma-specific manual to train service providers who work with individuals who have been exposed to trauma. The modules are evidence-based and address the effects of trauma on the brain, behaviour, self-concept, and interpersonal relationships. Some tools that have been shown to have some effectiveness in men who use abuse are Narrative Exposure Therapy (NET), Narrative Exposure Therapy for Forensic Offender Rehabilitation (FORNET), Integrated Cognitive Behavioural Therapy (CBT), Trauma Focused CBT (TF-CBT), Integrated Addiction and Trauma treatments (i.e., ATRIUM, TARGET, TREM, COPE, etc.). Integrating skill-building around stress management, emotion regulation, relationships, and parenting can support clients to function more effectively in their daily lives and support their trauma recovery. It is essential that counsellors adopt these approaches from an equity, anti-oppression intersectional, social determinants of health perspective that acknowledges experiences differ across groups based on various individual, familial, community, and societal factors that intersect to influence past, current, and future life circumstances. Such a perspective will also enable counsellors to take a client-centred approach, understanding the specific experiences and needs of the individual client in order to build a trauma-specific treatment plan that is most appropriate for
them.