When we think about work with child to parent violence, the agencies which typically come to mind, and indeed the ones that have attracted the most debate in terms of service provision, would be the police, domestic violence bodies, children’s services, youth offending, health or perhaps schools. While the work of academics such as Judy Nixon, examining the impact of intensive family support, drew attention to parent abuse as part of the bigger picture of disruptive and dysfunctional family life, there has not been the focus on housing support that might have been warranted. So it was very interesting to make contact with the Family Support Project workers from Wolverhampton Homes Housing Inclusion Team, as a result of the recent conference in Nottingham, and to explore with them the work that they do in this field. Continue reading
Author Archives: helenbonnick
Resolving child to parent violence requires an assertive, intensive and persistent approach.
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“The shame mums won’t talk about”
Great to see a piece in Woman’s Own magazine (April 8th 2013) covering parent abuse. Media interest flourished in the wake of the announcement of the grant awarded to the University of Brighton to study child to parent violence, and this is one of the results. The piece includes two case studies, the finding from the Metropolitan police area that reports of child to parent attacks account for three percent of all domestic violence cases, and detail from PAARS, who found that more than half of the abusive youngsters they worked with were boys and aged 13 – 15. Jeremy Todd of Family Lives also adds some comment about possible reasons for the violence, and advice to parents about what to do when an argument breaks out; and there is a link to this website. It’s good to hear that the violence has now ended for the two families featured.
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“An alignment of the planets”
Returning to the topic of themes that emerged from the recent conference on domestic violence by children against parents, in Nottingham, I’d like to look at 2 more ideas that caught my attention.
Launching the conference, Jo Sharpen, from AVA, described it as very timely, and indeed, throughout the day, speakers referred to a series of events that support our focus on the issue of child to parent violence at this time. The changed definition of domestic violence in England and Wales (with the publication of the Home Office Guidance to which AVA contributed), was highlighted and declared helpful in recognising that under 18s could be abusive, though bringing parent abuse within the domestic violence umbrella was also considered problematic, because of the important differences between CPV and IPV and the potential criminalisation of young people (see my earlier post for more details). March also saw the publication of the UK Government Action Plan: A call to end violence against women and girls, and the launch of the EVAWGUK policy. Though parent abuse is sadly still not specifically mentioned, it does offer opportunities to discuss the issue more widely. Continue reading
Filed under conference report, Discussion
“Once your awareness is raised, doing nothing is not an option”.
Picking up on a phrase from Jenny Bright in the last post, it has seemed that almost everyone I have spoken with recently has described the point at which they learned about parent abuse as an epiphany. It was, after all, the reason I have given for setting up this site. Each of us responds to that experience in our own way, whether by further study, setting up local provision, or even running a blog; but many describe the need to “raise awareness”. It got me wondering what we actually mean by that phrase. Continue reading
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PACT: the Leeds response to adolescent to parent violence
It’s always exciting to hear how different projects are going. Here Jenny Bright, of the Leeds Youth Offending Service, brings us up to date on her work raising awareness about adolescent to parent violence, and devising a programme for families.
Following an inspirational awareness raising day facilitated by Lynette Robinson and Sally Fawcett (who was at that time working with Lynette at Alternative Restoratives) in September 2011, I have been determined to raise awareness of the issue of child to parent abuse across agencies in Leeds and to develop a specific response, based on promising practice from the UK and further afield. Once your awareness has been raised, doing nothing is not an option! Continue reading
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A “ground-breaking” and “inspiring” conference on adolescent violence in the home
I’m really pleased to have received the following report from Jo Howard on the recent conference held in Melbourne, Australia in February.
The Adolescent Violence in the Home Conference: Supporting Collaboration Across the Justice and Community Sectors, focused on strengthening collaboration between the justice and community sectors to provide enhanced support to parents and family members who experience it and the adolescents who use violence in the home. The conference, delivered by Peninsula Health, with the support of Department of Health and Legal Services Board Victoria, attracted 260 delegates from a variety of sectors including government, police, legal, justice, education, alcohol and drug, family violence, family, youth and health services with representation from almost all Australian states and overseas. Continue reading
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Emerging themes 1: CPV and IPV
In my last post I referred to the emergence of a number of themes through the day as we met last week in Nottingham. I want to return to one of these now, namely the issues around conceptualising child to parent violence as domestic violence.
This is something that has been covered by a number of people in the past (e.g. Holt or Hunter, Nixon and Parr), but it keeps re-emerging for a number of reasons. Firstly, much of the work being developed in Britain at the moment is taking place within agencies also dealing with adult intimate partner violence, forcing the issue as adjustments are made to approaches or expectations. Secondly, the change in definition of domestic violence within Britain to include perpetrators aged 16 upwards, has been hailed by some as a positive move, allowing the open discussion of the topic in a new way, and the recognition within policy of the reality of parent abuse. Continue reading
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Domestic abuse by children against parents conference, March 14th
What a fantastic day yesterday was! I’m still buzzing and full of ideas on how to take things forward. It was a great opportunity to meet up with over 100 practitioners, mostly from the north of England, as well as an amazing line-up of speakers. Thanks to Central Conference Consultants Ltd for their superb organisation! Continue reading
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Job done?
So the last few weeks have been pretty hectic following the announcement on February 26th, of the grant awarded to the University of Brighton for research into child to parent violence. The significant media interest in the issue of child to parent violence mirrors what was seen in Melbourne, following the announcement there of the development of the Keeping Families Safe project. It seems likely that there will be further coverage in national papers, local radio, women’s magazines and perhaps even television in the near future. With the conference coming up in Nottingham this week, which will include a presentation of interim findings from the work being undertaken at Oxford University by Rachel Condry and Caroline Miles, it is an exciting time to be involved in the raising of awareness or indeed in the implementation of work with families experiencing this type of abuse. Continue reading
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Something else to worry about!
There are a lot of reasons why we might be anxious about the influence of Disney in the children’s clothes and games markets. We might justifiably be concerned about the effects on young people of so much time spent in front of a screen. But I’m not quite ready to include an inevitable slide towards parent abuse among my reasons!
Not having a subscription to the Times newspaper, I bought a real, paper copy last Thursday, 28th February, in order to see the write up of the grant awarded to the University of Brighton for their CPV research. The half column write up on page 5 told me only what I knew already, but I was attracted to an article in Times2 by Helen Rumbelow, and extracts from a book by Sue Palmer, under the headline, Unhappy Daughters: how we are raising a troubled generation. Continue reading
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HOLES IN THE WALL 