Circuit Breaker

The Circuit Breaker Course is a programme that equips local churches to help prevent domestic violence in their communities. The course resources volunteers to be able to find meaningful engagement with potential perpetrators of domestic violence.  

Circuit Breaker hopes to reach domestic violence before it begins, by using an army of local church volunteers, equipped by the course.

Circuit Breaker provides a full ten-week package that any local church can use. The course has manuals and teaching videos, which means that volunteer group facilitators do not need to be teachers or counsellors, instead they are free to focus on building relationships and leading small groups discussions.

The programme has been going for over 20 years in over 50 locations. People are nervous at first and often think - ‘should churches even be working with these kinds of people?’  We'd have to agree that in most of our countries, domestic violence is a real problem and governments are realising that they can't just throw money at this problem and make it go away. Churches are uniquely equipped to tackle this problem in a way that government and the community sector have not been able to do.

The programme is not marketed to the community as a domestic violence programme, rather as ‘For people who want to work on their anger and temper’. “When I was a counsellor working in this area, almost everybody presented to me with that issue would not say they had a problem with domestic violence, they would say, ‘I need to work on my temper, I need to work on my anger problem’.” - Matt Boulton Circuit breaker Founder

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INGREDIENTS

To replicate this project your church will need:

• Compassionate Church Volunteers
• Online Facilitator Training
• Provider’s Licence
• Course Manuals
• Free Online Videos
• Prompt Online Support

METHOD:  

Steps to run this project:

1. Select volunteers who can love the people Circuit Breaker is designed to help.
2. Go to circuitbreakercourse.net and follow the links to the online training school
3. Complete the Facilitator Training Course & Provider’s Licence (Free for now).
4. Have your new facilitators (two per group) order their Facilitator manuals.
5. Schedule a ten-week block, launch your online Circuit Breaker program, and start changing lives in your community.

BEFORE YOU START

Each Circuit Breaker group needs two trained facilitators, and each will need to order their own copy of the Facilitator Manual from circuitbreakercourse.net. As participants are accepted for registration, they will also need to order their own copy of the Participant manual (required for group work, exercises & homework).