Implementing SBIRT in batterer intervention settings using group motivational interviewing strategies

Batterers' drinking behavior may provide an important observable risk marker for reassaults by identifying any drunkenness or high frequency drinking. This presentation introduces a curriculum that allows Batterer Intervention Group Leaders to bring substance use health education to participants by helping them review their own substance use. Batterer Intervention Group Leaders' work is to create safety for partners, engage participants accountability through enhancing self-awareness, facilitate learning and change, and provide support for that change. All of those goals are congruent with SBIRT. The curriculum employs an innovative application of SBIRT for group settings based on Motivational Interviewing strategies. For example, rather than a more traditional ‘health education' lecture by a group leader, program participants are asked open-ended questions; participant answers will then describe the benefits and costs of substance use. This curriculum enhances Group Leader knowledge about substance use, misuse, and dependent use, and their relationship to violence; presents substance use screening and health education modules that can each be implemented independently; provides alcohol and other drug screening questions for use with individuals in group settings; provides brief intervention strategies, including Motivational Interviewing principles and skills, for group settings; informs Group Leaders on trauma-informed SBIRT approaches; and informs Group Leaders on substance use disorder assessment/treatment referral resources. Trauma-informed Approaches, Substance Use and Violence, Tobacco and Secondhand Smoke, Alcohol and Pregnancy, and Resiliency are addressed. Results of a pilot using the curriculum will be presented.