Tag Archives: Break4Change

January 2, 2020 · 11:29 am

A message of hope for 2020, Break4Change in Rochdale

When I sent out an invitation in November for people to write something for me, I never expected to receive such interesting contributions! I’m thrilled to be able to start a new year with the first of these contributions from Emily Nickson-Williams, who I have been following on twitter after seeing some very positive comments about the work her team were engaged in around child to parent violence. Emily is the lead for the ‘Relationships Revolution’ at Rochdale Council. She has worked in Children’s Services for the last 17 years and has pioneered a number of initiatives for vulnerable families. Her work has been described as ‘inspirational’ and her more recent efforts developing work around the relationships agenda, including responses to child to parent violence and abuse, led to her receiving the Innovation Award in 2017. Emily brings us a letter from a parent who has attended one of the Break4Change programmes running as part of this work.

I think that for me this open letter is a message of hope. Hope for other families who may be too afraid to come forward to speak to someone because of the fear of consequences from Children’s Services and the Police. The message we would like to give families living in Rochdale is this… Continue reading →

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Filed under Family life, projects

Tagged as Break4Change, Child to parent violence, child to parent violence and abuse, Rochdale, Rochdale relationships matter

August 19, 2019 · 3:52 pm

CPV, starting to count at last!

On August 7th, The BBC published a story on their website – and also covered it on national and local radio – titled Domestic Violence: Child-parent abuse doubles in three years. The BBC piece is clear and succinct, with a straightforward laying out of the statistics, comments from Young Minds and the National Police Chiefs Council (NPCC), a brief case study concerning a parent of an 11 year old girl and the help received from the Getting On Scheme in Doncaster, and a short video highlighting the work of Break4Change in Brighton. The figures were obtained through Freedom of Information (FOI) requests to the police for the period 2015 – 2018, for records of adolescent to parent violence and abuse (APVA). Of 44 forces contacted, only 19 collect the data in a way that is able to separate out APVA specifically. Continue reading →

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Filed under Discussion, news reports

Tagged as Adolescent to parent violence and abuse, APVA, Break4Change, Child-parent abuse, CPV, Tom Madders, Young Minds

October 1, 2018 · 7:12 am

CPV Conference Season!

I do love a good coincidence! It seems we are in CPV conference season at the moment, just as the political parties get going on theirs, but more impressively, the themes that are emerging for me resonate from one event to the next.

I attended the Break4Change Annual Network Event in Brighton in September, and one of the key themes of the day was the need for collaboration across services in the delivery of support for families experiencing child to parent violence. Ideally, this was seen as taking place in a multi-disciplinary project, such as B4C Brighton where Children’s Services, the Youth Offending Service, Rise (domestic abuse) and AudioActive (an arts and media charity) not only work together on a day-to-day basis but are all represented on the Steering Group. More particularly to this project, it was considered that it should be embedded in the local authority in order to be delivered effectively. Continue reading →

Child to parent violence and abuse: new thinking and approaches

The field of child to parent violence and abuse is a rapidly changing one, as new learning and understanding emerges to challenge our way of thinking and service delivery. This makes it an exciting field in which to be working – but also requires us to be on the ball with new research and training opportunities. This last year has seen important work from Dr Hannah Bows into parricide and eldercide; and more findings from a survey of parents by Dr Wendy Thorley and Al Coates, including a challenge to the definition currently in use. Have we got it wrong when we draw distinctions between children, young people and adults in the use of violence towards parents? Should we be using different approaches where children have a diagnosis of ASD or ADHD? Is this a different thing all together, or are there huge overlaps within the community of young people using violence and abuse in the home? Should we be representing this with a giant Venn diagram? Continue reading →

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Filed under Announcements

Tagged as Al Coates, Break4Change, child to parent violence and abuse, Dame Vera Baird, Dr Hannah Bows, Dr Wendy Thorley, Respect, Respond, Rosie Creer, Who's in charge

November 6, 2017 · 2:10 pm

Child to parent violence: the voice of the young person

I am very aware when writing and collating material for training purposes, that while we have significant contributions from parents affected by abuse and violence from their children, there is much less attention given to the voices of the young people concerned.

We are not without this completely. Interventions such as Break4Change specifically video young people as part of the programme, using their voices as part of a conversation with parents. Some of this material has been available in training and research reports. Television shows, such as My Violent Child, have at times included direct interviewing of the young person concerned. Books such as Anger is my Friend mediate the teenage voice though years of practice experience. Research reports may include testimony from young people, though often it will be as reported or interpreted by their parent. But Barbara Cottrell is unusual in devoting a whole chapter to the actual teenage voice in her book: When Teens Abuse Their Parents. Continue reading →

Research round-up

I’m really pleased to let you know that the reports for the Daphne RCPV project are finally completed, and these, along with related resources are now available on their website. These include conference presentations, CPV evaluation framework and tools, self-efficacy questionnaires, toolkits including those for Break4Change and NVR, and the RCPV films: “Defining CPV” and “Project Findings”. The website will be updated twice a year, so do check it out from time to time for new material. Some of these reports are also available in Spanish, Swedish and Bulgarian. Continue reading →

RCPV: The final conference

Brighton last week saw the final conference for the Responding to Child to Parent Violence Project, the second largest funded project from the Daphne111 programme, and one I have grown to feel very close to. It was something I blogged about in my very first post here, and the team have been very gracious in allowing me to ‘hang out’ with them over the last three years. The closing of a project might seem a sad occasion, but it felt more like a celebration, as each of the partner countries (England, Ireland, Spain, Sweden and Bulgaria) and programmes presented their achievements and aspirations – and indeed the growth and development of understanding and resources will continue as well as the friendships forged through work together. Continue reading →

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Filed under conference report, Research

Tagged as attachment, Break4Change, CPV, Declan Coogan, domestic violence, Norah Gibbons, RCPV, Responding to child to parent violence, responsibilisation, trauma, Tusla