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Separated Men! You don’t have to lose your shirt, your kids or your life.

Men Exploring New Directional Strategies

The MENDS Program is more than just a support line. It is a structured program offering proven and practical strategies for men during or after separation and through significant relationship transitions.

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What is the MENDS Program?

Men Exploring New Directional Strategies (MENDS) is a program designed to address men’s needs during or after separation or significant relationship change.

The program provides a validated and structured clinical process to audit your life and to upskill in critical areas of challenge and adjustment.

It is a practical program using best practices and guided psychological principles developed over 30 years of real-world practice. It addresses challenges, high-risk and counterproductive reactions to the breakdown of significant relationships including:

  • Emotional Issues
  • Physical and Health Effects
  • Rights and Responsibilities
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Module One

Critical Self-Auditing

Emotional Processing

Stress Management Strategies

5

Module Two

Understanding Children’s Needs and Challenges

Establishing Child-Focused Care Arrangements

Maintaining Optimal Father-Child Relationships

5

Module Three

Reviewing Relationship History

Understanding Healthy Relationship Styles

Establishing New Healthy Relationships

Module One

Critical Self-Auditing

Emotional Processing

Stress Management Strategies

3

Module Two

Understanding Children’s Needs and Challenges

Establishing Child-Focused Care Arrangements

Maintaining Optimal Father-Child Relationships

3

Module Three

Reviewing Relationship History

Understanding Healthy Relationship Styles

Establishing New Healthy Relationships

It is often thought that problems and solutions during separation are primarily legal. However, the MENDS program addresses the wider range of concerns both internally and externally that men experience.

The program is held in small group sessions typically of 8 to 12 men. Each session is managed by a trained MENDS facilitator. Participants often experience friendship and positive associations with other men also going through similar experiences.

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Program Delivery

The MENDS program is delivered in an online learning format. This involves online learning materials, reading, reflecting and completing activities outside of the online sessions.

In addition, the MENDS program places significant emphasis on connection and includes regular face-to-face sessions with your program facilitator and other participants in the MENDS program. These sessions are held as virtual face-to-face meetings via online conferencing tools.

By joining the MENDS program you will be required to participate in group sessions and commit to completing intersession tasks. Your outcomes are directly related to the input and energy you bring to each session.

The program design contains three progressively delivered modules that interconnect and provide a validated structured pathway for change.

Program Pathway

The program design contains three  progressively delivered modules that interconnect and provide a validated structured pathway for change.

Module 1

Knowing who you are is the platform for planning and decisions that are more likely to be responsible and sustainable. And basically, no relationship you ever have can be better than the one you have with yourself.

1. Introduction and Assessment
This step provides men who are interested, but as yet undecided about their involvement in the program. It has two major parts: the first, to provide sufficient information critical to informed decision-making; the second, to conduct an assessment for those who have contracted to participate. A participant starter pack is provided at this juncture and needs to be read prior to the commencement of the program.
2. Review and Redirection
As well as taking care of several housekeeping/ administration aspects of the program, this session establishes the “tone and level” of the program itself. MENDS provides a rather unique and functional balance between formal (structured) and informal (therapeutic) elements. Facilitators model an efficient yet supportive role to various activities during this session. This coaching and mentoring approach, together with actual participant application, is critical to outcomes achieved. Consistently reinforcing a culture of self-responsibility and self-learning; with an expectation of positive change, enhances program efficiencies and impacts.
3. Reconnecting With Self
This is the first session of the three (3) core modules of the program. Common challenges for men in relationship crises are reviewed. Truly reconnecting with self is the starting point of a critical audit process requiring honesty and effort. This session provides an effective platform to enable participant changes based on practical self-examination. Its’ importance as a foundation cannot be overstated.
4. Health Issues
The need to foreground a ‘practical stress management’ approach to meet participant needs. May be delivered by either a guest presenter or by the regular MENDS facilitator. The focus is to target practical strategies to address high-risk symptoms and behaviours.

Module 2

This module also offers an opportunity for participants who currently don’t have children to audit their relationship status as a child to existing (or deceased) parents and to further address the intergenerational impacts of such.
5. Review and Redirection
This is the first R&R session following the first two (2) content sessions (Sessions 3 & 4) focused on “self” issues. This session is provided so that integration and reinforcement of key ideas and practical strategies associated with “Reconnection with Self” can occur.
Facilitators and other group members can provide timely support and feedback to individual progress reports. A key facilitator strategy is to focus clients on their present functioning and challenges.
6. Reconnecting With Children
The focus is on children’s needs, however, remaining empathetic to participant emotionality; e.g. grief, anger, confusion and fear. Increased skills and awareness in this area assists personal healing and transition through separation (or reconciliation). This material is also relevant to those with adult children re;

  • The potential for each member to be a future step-parent or even biological parent to further children
  • Better understanding of self from childhood and family of origin experiences; thus also assisting reconciliation if possible.
7. Legal Issues
This session assists participants in awareness of legal rights and responsibilities. A qualified Family Law practitioner is invited to present an overview of the major legal issues including divorce, property, residency and contact arrangements. This session provides an overview rather than an individual legal consultation.
Note: the MENDS program developed a handout ‘A Consumer’s Guide to FLP’s’ to address the needs of those participants who needed to engage a legal practitioner earlier than this session.
8. Review and Redirection
This R&R represents a critical review juncture of the course. It is intentionally positioned following the first two (2) core modules regarding ‘self’ and ‘children’, and immediately prior to the remaining “Reconnecting with Others'” module. At this point, participants should have completed all sections of the Structured Autobiography. Group processes should now be reflecting high levels of interpersonal support, openness and disclosure among participants.

Module 3

The program strongly encourages graduates to become involved with follow-on, post-MENDS support groups to maintain program gains.

9. Reconnecting With Others
This session has been designed to assist participants to identify the many difficulties inherent in re-establishing their former or a subsequent intimate relationship following a relationship crisis or separation. The approach reinforces the critical need to examine one’s own set of values, beliefs and contributions to past key relationships.
10. Men’s Issues
Members of an existing post-MENDS group are ordinarily invited as guest presenters to talk about men’s groups and issues and to particularly highlight their involvement with ongoing personal development.
It is preferred to use previous MENDS graduates who have continued their personal development in a stable post-MENDS group.
11. Review and Redirection
This is the last R&R offered in the program and provides an opportunity for participants to review their personal progress to date. At this stage of the program, relationships between group members should have matured, so that significant sharing and mutual assistance in problem-solving is ordinarily already occurring. A practical format (i.e. Post-MENDS groups) will have been offered and highlighted to graduates to continue with self-development opportunities.
12. Assessment and Graduation
This session provides important elements of ‘closure’ for the MENDS program. Graduation sessions are opportunities to celebrate and affirm positive growth. Wherever possible (or appropriate) previous guest presenters may be invited to the final part of the graduation to reinforce participant efforts and outcomes throughout the course.
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What People Say About MENDS

“The MENDS program is simply the most promising community health measure to come along in this whole field. It capitalises on men’s liking for structure and information, and at the same time through peer support reduces the likelihood of men acting in impulsive, or counterproductive ways. By reducing fear, giving clear structure, and doing so in an educative, group-based way, it taps into men’s responsiveness to peer pressure to be sensible, reflective, and not give in to fear and panic – which in men usually turn into combative or violent impulses”

Steve Biddulph Psychologist, family thereapist & author (Manhood, Raising Boys and others)
Steve Biddulph

“Dealing with poor past behaviours and stress coping patterns I now think part of me had been angry for a long time. Even when things at home were okay, it didn’t take too much to get me going. I guess I was just one of those blokes who kept working my arse off; hoping that one day it would all turn out alright … well it didn’t. MENDS really helped me go through my life and sort things out; actually to start again I suppose; and with the same wife.”

Brad N MENDS Graduate
Brad N

“How you handle this devastating time in your life will determine your future, particularly that all-important relationship with your children. Don’t try to struggle through on your own. Other men have the experience to help you. MENDS is a much needed resource for our community.”

Bettina Arndt Psychologist, author & columnist for Sydney Morning Herald & The Age
Bettina Arndt

“A friend of mine had graduated from MENDS and was still meeting with some of the guys even after the program was finished. I’d watched him and how he got his life and job back together. He seemed more settled and happy about things. When my relationship came to the sudden end that it did, I know I had to go and check it (MENDS) out; and I’m really glad I did. I’m pretty sure my life would have turned out differently if I hadn’t.”

David J MENDS Graduate
David J

“I have found that in the aftermath of separation, men may experience a vast array of new circumstances for which they are often poorly equipped. This integrated course is designed to meet the needs of the whole man, including relationships, child-rearing, legal, health & nutrition. The well trained facilitators are men of integrity and compassion who have often successfully faced these issues in their own lives. The course is coming from the right place and acknowledges the healthy role that a community of men can have in supporting men in difficult times”

Dr. George Burkitt General Practitioner specialising in men’s health and counselling
Dr. George Burkitt

Process To Get Involved

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Step 1

Review the website, sign-up and pay for the program.

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Step 2

Complete an online Psychological Assessment Screener (PAS)

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Step 3

Your PAS is reviewed by our clinical team prior to acceptance. If concerns are identified within your PAS, you will be refunded and our team will contact you with suggested strategies.

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Step 4

On successful review of your PAS, you will be invited to join our online learning platform and will be welcomed into your MENDS intake group. Your course facilitator will make contact to talk about the program.

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Step 5

You will perform initial reading tasks and complete a health and legal checklist.

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Step 6

Your program will commence. You will be required to commit to complete course work each week and attend the weekly scheduled face-to-face virtual meeting sessions.

Commit to a new way of life now.

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