Category Archives: Research

by | September 20, 2012 · 8:24 am

News of Break4Change

The Brighton and Hove Argus recently published an article about the Break4Change project as part of a domestic violence feature.

Break4Change, addressing parent abuse, has now run 6 successful courses, with the 7th due to start in October in Brighton.  The model, which includes work with parents and young people separately, and places high value on restorative features, is the subject of an ongoing evaluation by researchers at Brighton University, and interest has been sparked around the world, in countries as diverse as Sweden and Bulgaria, Spain and Ireland. Continue reading →

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by | September 13, 2012 · 4:04 pm

House of Commons Launch of Parent Abuse Report

The Adfam / AVA report into how parents deal with children who use substances and perpetrate abuse, “Between a rock and a hard place”, launched yesterday at the House of Commons, catalogues the shocking experiences of parents and their attempts to access support. Continue reading →

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by | July 11, 2012 · 7:11 pm

Supporting families of substance using, abusive young people

While it has long been known that substance abuse by young people was in some cases associated with parent abuse, there has been very little written about the connection. (eg Gallagher’s work)

A 2010 research report, entitled “Supporting families affected by substance use and domestic violence”, which has just been brought to my attention, goes some way to opening such a discussion. The report, by Dr. Sarah Galvani, sought to build the research base with two groups of family members whose needs have not been adequately recognised up to now: young people and Family Member Support Providers, (individuals personally affected and seeking to support others by semi-formal means). Initially it had been anticipated that these adults would be concerned with domestic violence between adult members of a household, but they were surprised to discover that they were in fact working with parents and grandparents affected by abuse from their children and grandchildren. Continue reading →

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by | May 14, 2011 · 1:42 pm

You wait around for years and then two come along together!

Five years ago, when I first began seriously investigating parent abuse, the studies and research papers were largely coming out of Canada, Australia and the USA. The statistics available came from relatively few older studies and were considered unreliable because of the ways they were obtained – the types of questions asked, who they were asked of, numbers involved etc. Nevertheless, they had served to highlight that this was a real issue and one which would not go away. Questions were being asked: how big a problem was this really? Was it confined to certain ethnic or socioeconomic groups, what were the causes, and what sorts of help were effective? Importantly, another question was emerging, as to how we should understand the phenomenon, from a sociological / feminist point of view – was it linked with domestic violence, or with youth crime and delinquency? Continue reading →

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