With permission, I am reblogging this post by Al Coates, from his site: Misadventures of an Adoptive Dad. (Wednesday March 29th 2017). Al is a member of the DfE Advisory Group on fostering and adoption, and has been instrumental in bringing the issue of child to parent violence to the attention of the Department.
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Drawing tougher all the findings from the Survey that I’d undertaken and the subsequent findings that Dr Wendy Thorley had made sense of in the first and second CPV reports that laid it all out. It’s too much go through verbatim and a text version of a 45 minute presentation is too much to bear so here we go in eight words.
Paradigms (different professionals view it very differently
Definitions (the trouble with them)
Causes (complicated)
Prevalence (lots, 30% ish)
Impacts (massive)
Responses (shocking)
Actions
It was well received, they’re a polite bunch, but I do think the collective minds and organisations in the room took the message to heart.
Child on Parent Violence is a ‘thing.*
This is a thing that we need to act on, a complicated, ugly, painful and prickly thing that needs to be grasped. As one member noted, not a can of worms but a bucket of worms.
Actions is the interesting bit, so what do we do next?
That’s the question, what do we do with this ‘thing’, first we call it a thing and we start to raise awareness and we start to consider if this as big as we suspect and believe that we make it a part of Social Workers Continual Professional Development.
We consider how we prepare adopters to let them know it’s a ‘thing’ and it’s ok to say it’s happening.
We liaise with safeguarding and tell them about this ‘thing’.
We develop out knowledge of interventions and what works in a real world situation.
The DfE are going to talk to the Chief Social Worker about their views and knowledge.
Today felt like a start line not and maybe a consideration of what may be the first steps in removing the taboo and developing the culture that makes it ok to ask for help and ok to say you’re not ok.
I apologise that this is all a bit vague, it’s late and having thought hard about this for a long long time and lived to varying degrees with it and in it. I feel very sleepy all of a sudden.
On another note I’m thinking of getting the presentation, with other stuff, out to a wider audience and there’s even talk of putting on a free event for whoever’s interested and recording it, podcasting and you tubing it. I’m pondering that thought so if that’s of interest let me know.
All in all a good day.
*Speaking to a group of Social Workers last week a senior practitioner said “We knew that this happened but we didn’t realise it was a ‘thing’.”
If you have found this of interest then please do check out other posts on Al’s site.