This poster has been on display until recently at my local underground station. We may quibble with the statistic, but it’s helpful to remember sometimes that the majority of young people do not offend in any way, in view of some the news items (here and here) that I have picked up over the last couple of weeks following the launch of a book by Dr. Aric Sigman. (The Spoilt Generation: Standing Up to Our Demanding Children, 2011, Piatkus Books) Continue reading
Filed under Discussion
Two more training opportunities have come to my attention recently.
Eddie Gallagher will be visiting the UK at the beginning of September 2011, before heading off to Spain for an international conference. He is inviting offers for training workshops particularly. He can be contacted at gallagher@aanet.com.au
Lynette Robinson, of Alternative Restoratives, is organising a professional awareness raising conference regarding adolescent to parent violence on September 22nd 2011, in the north of England. Lynette comes from a youth justice background where restorative justice has been used for some time, and she has done some interesting work in applying this approach to families experiencing parent abuse. More information at http://www.alternativerestoratives.co.uk/teen_violence.htm
Filed under Training opportunities
ON a recent Eurostar journey, I found myself seated in a carriage, judging by appearances, designated for parents and babies. Little ones cried, were fed and burped, everyone smiled; and if they fussed too much their long suffering parents walked up and down or took them to look out of the window. Not so, the woman travelling alone with a toddler three rows back. Whether from anger, frustration or simple exhaustion, this child screamed for the full two hours of the journey, interspersed with the kicking of seats and the hurling of fists, toys, legs and head at her mother, who worked desperately to calm her. At first passengers were patient, then heads were turned, and finally, as if one, they rose to stare. Not one, mind, offered to help. As if hypnotized, the mother took her child, still protesting, out of the carriage and the cacophony was thus muted for the remainder of the journey, till both returned, drained of everything, ten minutes before we arrived. As we left the carriage, a few kindly souls, fellow travellers, remembering their own attempts to pin a two-year-old child into a confined space for two hours, murmured pleasantries, or helped with her bags, to assuage their guilt. Continue reading
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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
Filed under Research
HOLES IN THE WALL 