This piece from the Orlando Sentinel on 4th October, reporting on responses to parent abuse following the death of Rosemary Pate at the hands of her son, has popped up a number of times in the last week, cross-posted in different places. It was good to see the topic of parent abuse getting a good airing after an earlier item appeared in the same paper in a couple of months ago (see my post of 24th August); and encouraging to see a call for early intervention to prevent abuse before it reaches this stage. Continue reading
Addressing parent abuse through Juvenile Family Courts in USA
Filed under news reports, publications
Everybody Hurts: Parent abuse on Radio Sheffield
The top story on the Radio Sheffield breakfast programme yesterday morning (October 3rd) was to do with the launch of a support group for parents being abused by their children in the Sheffield area. Toby Foster gave a very sympathetic hearing to “Anne”, who established the group to reach out to parents in the same position as herself. She has a son, now 14, who has been violent towards first his sister and then herself and others since he was 7 years old. He now has a diagnosis of Aspergers, but Anne stressed that violence to parents was not only perpetrated by young people with health issues. Continue reading
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Parent abuse: Do the math. The cost of not intervening
“Mental disorders cost the economy more than £100bn a year” …. “2 million more adults and 100,000 more children will need treatment in 2030” … “a reduction in the number of people across the UK developing mental disorders appears to us to be the only way that mental health services will adequately cope with demand in 20-30 years’ time”. Soundbites from a recent piece in the Guardian, reflecting anxiety within the NHS as a whole that the money just won’t stretch far enough; and similar discussions abound whether with regard to physical health, education, criminal justice, social care …. The list goes on. So how to fund something new, such as services for families experiencing child to parent violence, at this time of budgetary constraints and cuts, might seem to be a question too far. Continue reading
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Adolescent Violence to Parents Conference report
The Adolescent Violence to Parents (APV) conference held this week (September 23rd 2013) in Oxford was an important landmark in terms of knowledge and understanding, as the findings of the three year ESRC-funded research led by Rachel Condry and Caroline Miles were presented to a packed audience of over 130 people.
This represented the first large scale analysis of police data on APV in the UK, looking at all cases reported to the Metropolitan Police, and defined as constituting a criminal offence, between April 2009 and March 2010 (n=1892). The research looked at victim, offender and incident characteristics and then considered how adolescent violence to parents should be understood and addressed within the field of criminology in the future. Continue reading
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Weekend round-up
Over the last weeks a number of things have caught my attention and I thought it worth while bringing them all together here before they get lost.
A new journal article from Mounir H Fawzi, Mohab M Fawzi & Amira A Fouad, Parent abuse by adolescents with first-episode psychosis in Egypt, Journal of Adolescent Health, published online 16.08.13 (abstract here). The purpose of the research was to determine rates of parent abuse among this group of adolescents presenting at outpatients, and to identify the association between parent abuse and a number of socioeconomic and clinical factors. I found the article interesting for a number of reasons. It does not seem so long a time since people were asking whether parent abuse was a phenomenon confined to western societies with particularly lax forms of parenting, yet time and time again there are news items and articles emerging from societies right across the world. The findings show clear bias towards sons as abusers and mothers as victims, (apologies for the terminology which I know is uncomfortable for some people). Once again parent abuse is described as a taboo, a hidden problem, and there is a call for greater awareness raising, education and support. Continue reading
Filed under Discussion, publications, Research
Trouble in the Troubled Families Department
I have a sort of Love-Hate relationship with the Trouble Families Programme and so I like to keep abreast of developments and opinion as it unfolds, for instance the announcement last week on September 10th that 14,000 families have now been ‘turned around’.
I am torn between the belief that intensive family support can be extremely productive – and that this is in fact what brought many folk into social work in the first place – and the concern about the turn such a model of intervention has taken on the current government’s watch. Intensive Family Support Programmes have a proud heritage and it is from them, significantly, that we have learnt much about children’s violence to parents in the UK. Continue reading
Filed under Discussion, news reports, publications
Elder Abuse: Is this the same thing as parent abuse?
In June 2006 an article in the Times newspaper reported on a parliamentary Health Committee inquiry, set up in 2003 and prompted by estimates that up to 50,000 of Britain’s elderly were subject to abuse from relatives and carers. The inquiry declared the abuse of the elderly to be Britain’s “last hidden abuse scandal.” This weekend the Observer has reported on former health minister, Paul Burstow’s concern that figures show as many as 370,000 older people were abused in their home last year – a “hidden national scandal” – and that the number is likely to increase to nearly half a million by the end of the decade. These figures are based on data extrapolated from a survey of 2000 people in 2007. Nevertheless, they suggest that this is a story that has captured the imagination of those in power. Continue reading
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New Adolescent Violence to Parents website goes live
I was really thrilled this week to see the new website from Rachel Condry and Caroline Miles at Oxford University.
This website has been developed from the ESRC-funded research project ‘investigating Adolescent Violence towards Parents’ based in the Centre for Criminology at the University of Oxford. The site shares findings from the project and draws together knowledge and experience of APV from research, policy and practice.
As well as disseminating the research findings, the site will provide an important place to link to the forthcoming book from the research.
Practitioners and researchers will be meeting together in Oxford on September 23rd for the release of the research project findings. I look forward to attending and posting more news from this important gathering.
Silent Cries: a child’s account of living with violence
Amongst the many factors that have been identified with regard to children’s violence to parents, the experience of living with domestic violence has been found to have significant prominence. Yet the way this influences children’s behaviour is itself multi-layered and will vary from family to family.
The normalising of violence, anger and disdain for the parent who failed to protect themself or the children, “stepping up to the plate” once the abusive adult is no longer in the household – these are the links commonly cited, but we hear less of the child who fights back at the time in attempts to protect one parent from the other. A book, which I was sent this week, opens up this aspect of parent abuse, in what the Yorkshire Post described as “an intensely moving account” of domestic violence through the eyes of a child. Continue reading
Filed under Book review
Parent abuse roulette
It’s hard not to feel a sense of helplessness – as well as fury – when reading pieces such as this from the Orlando Sentinel last week. Reporter, Kate Santich, has put together a litany of examples of extreme violence from children towards their parents, but finds little in the way of help: thresholds for intervention not met, parents charged with abandonment, children locked up without attempts to investigate or change behaviour, and in a nation where therapeutic support must be paid for. She reports on the situation in the States, yet the examples could be from anywhere. Continue reading
Filed under Discussion, news reports
HOLES IN THE WALL 