Using the Good Way model to work positively with adults and youth with intellectual difficulties and sexually abusive behaviour

Abstract

The Good Way model is being used increasingly in New Zealand and Australia in both community-based and residential programmes for the treatment of adolescents and adults with intellectual difficulties who have sexually abusive behaviour. It is also being used with children and, in adapted forms, with mainstream adolescents and people of indigenous cultures. Early process evaluations of the model have been positive. This paper focuses on work with those with mild intellectual disabilities, and proposes that, in addition to being a useful framework for treatment, the Good Way model can also be used both as a practical, constructive neutralization and as a way to develop adaptive “explicit theories” with these clients, particularly when it is used jointly with the preferred clinical approach of developing individualized, self-narratives of desistance and rehabilitation.

Keywords:

• The Good Way model
• working positively
• treatment framework
• constructive neutralizations
• explicit theory
• rehabilitative self-narratives
• sexual offending
• youth and adults
• intellectual and learning difficulties

Acknowledgements

I wish to acknowledge the help and support of Lesley Ayland and all those at WellStop. Also, thanks to Tony Ward for his inspiration, Ruth Mann for her NOTA keynote address and Shadd Maruna, whose work has helped us to understand what we have been doing.