In March 2013, at a conference in Nottingham, a speaker warned us: we cannot make this a new thing – we have to help people understand it as something that is already their responsibility.
Indeed, the use of harmful, violent and aggressive behaviours towards parents and carers is not a new phenomenon, but the way we interpret it and seek to bring help has changed significantly in even the last 20 years. Not so much now about the tyrannical child, or a behavioural challenge or poor parenting, as about connection, communication and seeking for control, about mental health and an understanding of the very real risks faced by some parents. At the time of that conference, there were few specialist services in existence, and organisations were just coming to realise the extent of how many families in the UK and around the world were affected by child to parent violence.
Ten years on, with the benefit of a significant amount of research and with growing attention to the issue at national and local governmental level, many more organisations have been able to apply for, and receive, grant funding to set up and develop bespoke services for families. For instance, just recently in Norfolk, a 2-year pilot of the Respect Young People’s Programme has been made possible through a grant of £625,000 from the Home Office.
And the National Lottery, BBC Children in Need, Comic Relief, national and local grant making organisations, not to mention cake sales, sponsored walks and fundraising concerts – all these now regularly fund the establishment and growth of specialist CPV support.
Agencies commit to delivery of a programme, they find funding and train practitioners to deliver the services. Sometimes these are sessional staff. Sometimes large parts of the workforce are offered training to understand and respond when families come for help. A quick glance at the directory of services (now located on the Respect Young People’s Service website) shows how many more services have been established since that conference in 2013.
But what happens when the 2 years are over? Or what happens when budget cuts mean that staffing is cut to the bone and so called “core tasks” become the focus of the role to the exclusion of broader family support?
Over the years there has been a steady but constant closing of established programmes as funding has come to an end and new applications have been unsuccessful, whether within statutory services or stand-alone projects. Sometimes these have eventually been replaced locally by new programmes. Sometimes the gap in provision has been long. Ironically as more and more services are developed, there are more people applying to the same pot of money and so it becomes harder to define the USP that might secure the bid.
Not a new thing, and not a clever word play either, but reality. Already very much part of the services that are offered by local and national agencies, in that child to parent violence and abuse brings harm to parents, to siblings, to the child or young people themselves and ultimately to the whole of society. It may be associated with poor mental health, disability, domestic abuse, criminal or sexual exploitation, youth violence, poor educational attainment, poor employment prospects, homelessness and even death. It is not a distinct thing that sits outside of mainstream responsibilities. It is very much a part of the core work of health, of education, of policing and justice, of children’s social care and even adult social care. It is sometimes a facet of domestic abuse, sometimes a part of adoptive life, of experience of neurodivergence. And of course work in all these areas arguably needs significantly greater funding – that is politics.
What we need is a comprehensive rethink – understanding family life in the round, the interconnectedness of different parts of our lives, reflected in the way services work together, in the way that work is funded, and in the way that child to parent violence and abuse is understood and resolved.
I had the privilege of talking this through with a representative from the London Violence Reduction Unit recently. Following on from the work they commissioned last year, a comprehensive needs assessment of child/adolescent to parent violence and abuse in London, culminating in the publication of a report, they are asking similar questions as they seek to implement the recommendations. How can work for families affected by CPV be embedded in services such that it is understood as a core part of the work, a fundamental part of the offering that views the family as a whole, working across departments to see all the needs as interlinked – and that is less vulnerable to cuts?
Work to look at the different ways this might be achieved is now underway, and will be evaluated as part of the programme. I look forward with great interest to the findings as they emerge.
HOLES IN THE WALL 