Author Archives: helenbonnick

by | October 17, 2023 · 11:51 am

“You’re not alone”, a new animation from Respect Young People’s Programme

Amongst the many posts on CPA Awareness Day 2023, it was fantastic to see the new animation launched by Respect, created in partnership with their Durham delivery partners. Respect were celebrating the success of the Respect Young People’s Programme, their intervention for families experiencing child or adolescent to parent violence and abuse (known as CAPVA). This included publishing impressive new evaluation figures, provided by their Cambridge delivery partners, alongside the animation – raising awareness of the issue of CAPVA, and the support available to families.

The animation was created in partnership with Durham PCC, Durham Council and Investing in Children, and attracted much attention on the day, and it was particularly encouraging to see it covered in the Police Oracle. ‘PCC Darryl Preston, who funds the programme, says it’s an “excellent example” of how effective early intervention can be.’

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by | October 5, 2023 · 2:22 pm

CPA Awareness Day 2023

Last year the organisation PEGS organised the first CPA Awareness Day, to promote awareness and understanding of the issues, and to make more people aware that advice and help is available.

This year’s Awareness Day is just around the corner, October 14th being the proposed day, and provides a great opportunity once again to amplify voices and get the word out there.

Depending on where you work – or study – there will be different things that you can do, but here are some ideas that have worked for others:

  • Compose a message to go out through the day on social media
  • Host a coffee morning at your service
  • Invite the local press to cover the issue or to promote your work
  • Set up a stall with flyers and other materials – an ideal opportunity to chat to people who may not know anything!
  • Arrange for posters to go up in targeted places
  • Contact local politicians or commissioners
  • Write something for a professional or community newsletter
  • And share what you do – so that we can keep the momentum going even longer!

PEGS have a resource pack on their website with free to download posters and other materials if you need help in this way.

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by | September 21, 2023 · 9:10 am

Parenting children using violence and aggression – the unofficial guide!

Full disclosure – I am huge fan of Sally Donovan’s writing, having stumbled across her early on in my obsession with the issue of children using violence and abuse towards their parents, and so I become madly excited at the news of a new book from her coming out! She has not disappointed me. Sally, and Carly Kingswood who joins her this time round, both write with a gritty honesty, having lived with the subject matter for more years than they would have liked, and are living proof that you can come out of the other end with some degree of sanity, health, and most importantly hope.

The Unofficial Guide to Therapeutic Parenting for Childhood Aggression and Violence is very much written with parents in mind who are struggling with this right now – who might need to read in small chunks, to take a break every now and then to process the content, who want to understand what’s going on and why as well as top tips to help right now, and may only just be holding things together themselves. It is grim but also funny, sweary but also hugely empathetic. There are squirrels* along the way and plenty of advice about what to do when it all kicks off (the most frequently asked question at training sessions in my experience). Right at the start Sally says: “what we are talking about is not simple and it certainly isn’t nice”, but it is certainly real!

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by | September 17, 2023 · 3:48 pm

Evaluation of work with children using harmful behaviour towards parents

Calling all those involved in delivering or commissioning work to support parents experiencing child to parent violence and abuse! I am pleased to repost the information below from the University of Sheffield, who are undertaking an evaluative study into work with children using harmful behaviours towards their parents and carers.

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by | September 4, 2023 · 8:26 am

Hear ME project published

Dhriti Suresh-Eapen and AVA are thrilled to publish the findings and recommendations from their Hear ME project today.

This one-year small scope project sought to centre the experiences of mothers experiencing violence and abuse from their adult children, and to start to fill a massive gap in understanding and policy recommendations. Over the course of many months, the research team heard from those on the frontline, both as parents and as practitioners, before formulating a series of proposals which are brought together in this report.

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by | August 21, 2023 · 6:29 pm

Deprivation of Liberty stories

Summer is the time that I catch up on reading all the research papers and news articles that I have been storing on my laptop; and so I have finally found the space to pull some thoughts together. One thing that has particularly caught my eye over the last months has been the reporting on the rise in the number of vulnerable young people subject to Deprivation of Liberty (DoL) Orders.  

Children and Young People Now has run a number of articles about this, examining the reasons for the sharp rise in orders (here), and analysing the growing gap in secure care provision (here), and in this piece from the beginning of August, looking at the impact on the young people themselves, often placed at great distance from their families and support systems, in unsuitable accommodation and in situations likely to increase their trauma and vulnerability rather than aid their recovery. 

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by | July 4, 2023 · 7:08 pm

How do we keep funding going?

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. 

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by | June 22, 2023 · 11:18 am

Updating the Working Together Guidance

The government is currently working on an update to the multi-agency statutory guidance document, Working together to Safeguard Children, as part of the first phase of their plans to transform Children’s Social Care.

We want to see strengthened multi-agency working across the whole system of help, support and protection for children and their families, a system re-balanced towards help at an early point, and strong, effective and consistent child protection practice. 

Please take a look at the government website on this in order to read the consultation documents, to take part in the survey and attend the consultation events on June 29th and September 4th.

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by | June 8, 2023 · 12:37 pm

Mapping CAPVA support in Merseyside

Merseyside Violence Reduction Partnership – Child/Adolescent to Parent Violence and Abuse (CAPVA) Research

Researchers at Liverpool John Moores University are currently conducting a study on Child and Adolescent to Parent Violence and Abuse, with the aim of mapping provision across Merseyside to gain a better understanding of support availability and effectiveness, as well as how services could be improved.

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by | May 9, 2023 · 8:15 am

Introducing a new CPVA Directory!

I started posting news about the project I was working on, with others, to map provision for families experiencing child to parent violence and abuse (CPVA) in 2014, with regular updates before finally launching the page on my website in October 2015. At that time we knew of maybe 30 specialist services dotted around the country, some already well established, and others already a little precarious in their funding stream. Since that time there has been an exciting slow but steady growth in provision as different agencies have got on board, speeding up most recently through the support of the Domestic Abuse Commissioner‘s work in raising the profile of CPVA.

Keeping the Directory up to date and relevant has been a mammoth task, and one which is now beyond my capabilities with the growth in services, and so I have been working with Respect for the last year to see how it might migrate onto a new platform. Respect have a long history of work with young people using violence and abuse in the home, and importantly they also already have a large database of services within the domestic abuse arena, and so I knew that this was an area of work that they had both the experience and capacity to maintain for the future. Over the last months, all members of the old directory were contacted and gave permission to move across and the new Directory was finally launched last week!

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