Second Chance started its present Domestic Non-Violence Support Program for men and women in 1990. Originally, we began as a volunteer group of people who were attending our Abstinence Support Groups who were having problems with being recently clean and sober and not having anger management coping skills. Today, many of our groups include volunteers from Second Chance’s Abstinence Support Groups who are seeking a non-violent lifestyle.

This original program gradually expanded to include people from the courts and the probation systems. We became an approved Batterers Treatment Provider in 1993 by the Alameda County Probation Department.

Today our Domestic Non-Violence Support Program has twenty groups. We provide Anger Management and Domestic Non-Violence Group Counseling in Newark, Union City and Hayward. Many of our group participants are from out of Alameda County and some are even transferred from other states. Our goal is to stop violence, we have groups that meet a various times of the days in order to accommodate various schedules.

The domestic non-violence groups are two hours long and are for fifty-two weeks; the Anger Management groups are one hour and are ongoing. All of our facilitators are Certified Batterers Treatment Instructors.

Our groups focus on the causes, prevention and treatment of domestic violence and inability to control anger. Because we are primarily a drug and alcohol abuse treatment center, we focus on these problems as contributing to lack of impulse control and domestic violence.

We have always been a support group, meaning that the men in the groups (and the women in the women’s groups) support each other in learning and maintaining a lifestyle of non-violence. They support each other during groups and call each other during crisis times. We feel that occasionally a phone call will help with becoming centered again and remembering the tools of non-violence.