The 2010 report, Exposing the dark side of parenting: A report on parents’ experiences of family violence, published by the Regional Alliance Addressing Child and Adolescent Violence in the Home, South Australia, documented the results of a public phone-in exercise which took place in Southern Australia in 2008, designed to contribute to the body of knowledge on parent abuse. The report is important not just for its findings, which are broadly congruent with other similar studies, but also for the series of recommendations made: (i) the raising of community and agency awareness about child and adolescent family violence, (ii) the training and development for professionals about appropriate resources, (iii) the provision of effective accessible support for families and (iv) the establishment of a dedicated agency to provide ongoing support to parents, families and young people. Continue reading
Category Archives: publications
Parent Abuse Research Review
Another literature review came out in December 2011. The Social Ecology of Adolescent-Initiated Parent Abuse: A Review of the Literature, by Jun Sung Hong, Michael J. Kral, Dorothy L. Espelage and Paula Allen-Meares, is available on line. The abstract indicates that it focusses on context and risk factors, and suggests further avenues for research.
I plan in the near future to create a separate page here for links to articles as I become aware of them, and also a page dedicated to resources. Watch out for these exciting developments!
Filed under publications
Family Lives 2011 report
Family Lives (formally Parentline Plus) released an update to their 2010 report: ‘When Family Life Hurts: Family Experience of Aggression in Children’ in November this year. They demonstrate an increase in calls to their helpline regarding children’s aggressive behaviour, and are greatly concerned that only 56% reported having sought help with this. Continue reading
Filed under publications
Parent abuse: a psychological perspective
To what extent is it important to frame the understanding of parent abuse within a particular discipline?
Currently within Britain, and indeed around the world, different models of support have grown up as practitioners have identified the problem within their own working practice. Arguably, parents don’t care what it’s called so long as it works. So child and adolescent mental health services, youth offending teams, family assessment and support arms of children’s services, education officers and domestic violence practitioners have all variously developed their own programmes of advice and support which centre on allowing parents to share experiences, build strength in alternative ways of interacting as a family and rebalancing the power relationships. Continue reading
Filed under Discussion, publications
32 essays on parenting
The Family and Parenting Institute published a series of 32 essays this month, considering the pressures on modern parenting, what can be learnt from the reaction to the August riots in Britain, and the implications of these for parenting policy. The essays cover a range of topics through single parenting, working lives, welfare, grand-parenting, but were of particular interest to me for the discussion around parenting support: how did it come about, what does it say about the role of the state in parenting, is this what parents want? “Authors … consider the way in which parenting has become professionalised and the extent to which a deficit view of ‘problem parents’ is now in the ascendance.” Continue reading
Filed under Discussion, publications
More from Australia
Nicely furthering the debate on police and courts’ involvement, Jo Howard discusses the possibility of introducing the American Step Up model of intervention as a response to adolescent violence within the home in Australia. This paper, for the Australian Domestic and Family Violence Clearinghouse, acknowledges that the philosophical and practical differences between the two systems preclude a straightforward adoption, but there are seen to be strong benefits in a coordinated community approach that includes criminal justice options, offering a means to engage reluctant adolescents and holding them accountable for their violence.
For anyone interested, the September ADFV Clearinghouse e-newsletter is also here.
Filed under projects, publications
Some Summer Holiday Reading
Restorative responses that are high both on accountability and support are widely evidenced not only for their culturally transferability but their ability to achieve high engagement, ownership and accountability, and empower individuals to change. Step Up is a model that could also be adapted for use in schools, preventative services and a range of family service providers.
(Lynette Robinson, p32)
A series of three articles about the Step Up programme, developed within the youth justice system in the US as a dedicated response to adolescent violence to parents: Continue reading
Filed under Discussion, publications
HOLES IN THE WALL 