It was wonderful to see this piece on Professor Rachel Condry. Published by the University of Oxford, highlighting her journey into academia, her pioneering research into adolescent-to-parent violence, and her upcoming research project.
Rachelhas been a long time advocate for challenging assumptions around family harm, a supporter of HITW, and we particularly like this quote from the piece
“‘What we need is for people to be asking the right questions and, for that to happen, the problem has to be named in policy and in local authority documents. Families shouldn’t automatically be seen as part of the problem. Professionals need the curiosity to understand what people are really experiencing.”
We last heard from Sophie Cero in October 2018 (https://holesinthewall.co.uk/2018/10/31/an-eye-for-detail-an-interview-with-sophie-cero/) when she was starting her Fine Art PhD, taking a unique approach to investigating the violence from a child to their parent. Now that this is completed, Sophie has written us an update and included some art work from the research. While other people have used art work as part of the therapeutic process, as a diary record, or as a method of illustrating research, this was the first time that the whole project has been undertaken from a visual point of view.
You might find it helpful to reread the earlier blog first to remind yourself about her work.
Sophie is the first in our ‘mothering’ series, and we are happy to welcome her back to HITW
Explored through my artistic practice, in writing, film and objects, my Royal College of Art, PhD research project ‘Little Horror. At home with filial violence’, sought to make visible the maternal experience of CAPVA, which, as perhaps the last taboo, is one of the few instances where it is almost impossible for a mother to own and tell her own life story. Revealing it challenges the very nature of motherhood and places the mother in the role of both victim to and creator of the problem. Someone who she may love and fear simultaneously, and who above all, she wants nurture and to keep safe. To turn away from nurture and to reject the child for reasons of safety is almost impossible, every turn has a devastating consequence, every aspect of life into trauma in waiting, making the mother trapped in an impossible life with an impossible child. This mother must both protect and survive her child.
In the seven years of study, the most compelling finding I have encountered is how commonplace the experience is. When describing my research, I found it astounding how many people had had an encounter with it in some form, be it from a sibling, a neighbour or their own child. On the opposite side to this, I had several instances of open disbelief, of misunderstanding, of incredulity, with the listener being convinced that surely, I had mis-spoken, I must have meant the mother being abusive to her child.
Working through art practice as opposed to more traditional research strategies, allowed me to develop my own methodology and to form an inquiry that would be hard, if not impossible to replicate through usual research gathering approaches. It allowed me to think around the spaces of events within the home, and to find common themes that occur within objects and places, and commonalities across different ages of mother and child.
Finding no existing direct artistic representations, my research sought out contemporary parallels that held elements of the experience within them, in art, film and literature, taking a wide frame of reference from disparate sources ranging from Lacan to Family Guy. This study was initially underpinned by the idea of CAPVA being akin to ‘the maternal unheimlich’, considering Freud’s writing on The Uncanny, when viewed through a maternal frame. This led to the realisation that CAPVA bears resemblance to the horror film genre, relating to key elements such as ‘the scary place’, ‘the final girl’ and ‘the ominous atmosphere’. This applied to all horror tropes except for that which makes horror exciting, enticing and unpredictable, ‘the jumpscare’. Here the scares are expected and known.
I worked with existing testimonies from mothers that highlighted domestic objects as being integral to violence within the walls of the home, the objects acting as if witnesses to events. This methodology allowed for difficult stories to be retold and represented through a universalised, fictional birth mother and her (ungendered) child, Mymmy and Vic, as holders of trauma events.
I used a process of writing and diagrammatic drawing to analyse and represent the episodes of abuse, with the final outcome being to assimilate the ‘object events’ into a film script, which documents a day/18 year period of the relationship between Mymmy and Vic. It is my intention to further the research and to find funding to realise the film script in the near future.
Since embarking on the project in 2017, when research was sparse and awareness very limited, it is heartening to see that interest in the subject has increased and I hope this will continue.
Suggested Image(s)
Sophie Cero. Safeguarding wallpaper (Christmas edition) 2024
Sophie Cero. Object Event (crockery) 2021 – diagrammatic timeline drawing
Sadly it is not possible to read the final paper as it has been embargoed to protect those involved, but Sophie is on Instagram as sophie_cero and you can view more of her work there.
If you are at all interested in Adoption and LinkedIn, you will already be aware of Claire Agius, a PhD student from Manchester Metropolitan University, who has recently submitted her PhD and kindly created a post on her emotionally-aware research with adoptive parents for the final blog on our adoption series.
Adoption is one route to permanence for children who cannot remain with their birth families. Many have lived through neglect, abuse, or significant early adversity. Adoptive parents step forward to provide stability and care, but they cannot heal trauma alone. When systems delay, misdirect, or fragment support, families are left carrying unbearable burdens, and the stability adoption promises is put at risk.
My doctoral study explores the impact of raising a child with trauma on adoptive parents’ mental health and examines how systemic structures help or hinder families. Conducted between 2022 and 2025, the research combined in-depth interviews with adoptive parents and post-adoption professionals with a participatory, film-based process that enabled parents to revisit and re-interpret their own stories. Parents co-edited emotional “touchpoints” from their filmed interviews, first for emotional processing, and later for collaborative meaning-making. This innovative two-stage process revealed not only what families said in the moment, but how they later understood their struggles, providing rare insight into why problems persist across time.
Methods and Approach
The study engaged adoptive parents and post-adoption professionals across England. A distinctive feature was the use of filmed narrative interviews, later revisited with parents through an adapted Experience-Based Co-Design (EBCD) process. Parents co-edited their most painful or telling moments, “emotional touchpoints”, which became the basis for deeper reflection and co-analysis. Importantly, emotions often shifted between the first and second viewing: what was raw distress initially was later reinterpreted with new perspective. This temporal dimension offered a richer understanding of how families live with and make sense of ongoing struggles.
Key Findings: Five Causal Mechanisms
The research identified five systemic mechanisms that help explain why adoptive families encounter the same challenges again and again:
Crisis-Led Logic → Invisible Early Struggle
Services are triggered by visible breakdown, not early distress. Parents described desperate pleas for help that went unanswered until crisis loomed. Professionals echoed this dynamic, explaining that thresholds and funding criteria meant they were often forced into reactive rather than preventative roles.
Unsupported Care Work → Relational Burnout
Parents’ own emotional needs are rarely recognised. The relentless labour of advocating, soothing, and managing daily crises falls heavily on them, with little formal or informal support. Professionals noted that while therapeutic resources might be offered for the child, parental wellbeing was considered a lesser priority in post-adoption support planning.
Mistrust and Marginalisation → Silenced Insight
When parents seek help, they are too often met with suspicion or blame. Instead of being recognised as experts on their children, they are treated as the problem. Several professionals reflected on how mistrust erodes open communication, acknowledging that risk-focused cultures can silence parents’ perspectives.
Families must navigate siloed services, repeated assessments, and defensive institutions. Parents spoke of becoming “experts by necessity” in order to access what their children required. Professionals described a fragmented landscape that left them struggling to coordinate support or act decisively across organisational boundaries.
Service-Defined Progress → Residual Struggle
Support is often withdrawn once narrow service criteria are met, even if families continue to struggle behind closed doors. Services may focus on keeping placements intact while overlooking the wider toll. Professionals described similar frustrations, noting that time-limited interventions often forced them to close cases prematurely, even when they suspected families would continue to need help.
Impacts and Implications
Together, these mechanisms explain why adoptive families experience persistent strain. Parents’ mental health suffers, siblings carry secondary trauma, and placements teeter on the edge of breakdown. For government, the cost is twofold: the human suffering borne by families, and the financial burden of avoidable crises across social care, education, and health.
The findings carry important implications at multiple levels:
For families: parents’ mental health declines under unsupported care work, and siblings experience secondary trauma that remains invisible to services.
For systems: a crisis-led, fragmented model means resources are mobilised late, at greater human and financial cost. The Adoption Support Fund, while valuable, is shaped by bureaucratic gatekeeping. Parents described decisions made by staff without sufficient trauma knowledge, leading to inappropriate or stop–start provision. Trauma-informed practice must extend from top to bottom of the system, including commissioners and fund-holders as well as frontline practitioners.
For knowledge and practice: by marginalising adoptive parents’ perspectives, services lose access to vital expertise. This study shows that film-based, participatory methods can surface and revisit lived experience in ways that expose persistent problems and open space for collaborative solutions.
Recommendations
Based on these findings, five preliminary priorities for reform are proposed:
Invest in early relational support – Commission services that intervene proactively, building resilience within the first year post-placement.
Support the whole family – Embed provision that includes parents’ mental health and siblings’ wellbeing alongside the child.
Reduce bureaucratic gatekeeping – Simplify and standardise access to the Adoption Support Fund so families can receive timely help.
Embed trauma-informed practice system-wide – Extend trauma awareness beyond frontline therapists to commissioners, fund-holders, and policymakers.
Value lived expertise through co-design – Involve adoptive parents directly in shaping provision, policy, and evaluation frameworks.
Conclusion
Adoptive families are willing partners in the work of healing trauma. But they cannot do it alone. By using filmed interviews and a co-interpretive process, this study demonstrates both the human and systemic costs of current approaches, and the potential of participatory, trauma-informed methods to generate change. Adoption will remain a sustainable route to permanence only if support is early, relational, and family-centred, and if adoptive parents’ lived expertise is recognised as central to system redesign.
Claire’s ’emotional touchpoints’ will no doubt resonate with many families, and what we really like about her work is the relevance to practice. The recommendations may seem common sense, but they highlight the very real challenges experienced by adoptive families. Do connect with Claire if you are interested in learning more.
Adoption is in crisis — and change is no longer optional.
We’ve created a full report and an executive summary, both of which include the Impact Pathway — a resource designed to support more effective, trauma-responsive and recovery-focused planning and intervention.
PATCH Pathway: Adoption Crisis Brought Into Focus
A comprehensive exploration of what’s going wrong — and what needs to change. It captures the voices of adopters, insights from experts, and the reality of lived experience.
PATCH Pathway: Executive Summary
A concise overview for time-pressed professionals. It lays out the key challenges and introduces ideas for real, preventative change.
PATCH Impact Pathway: Prevention in Practice (this is highlight in full in both documents above)
A practical approach to ensure support before breakdown — for families, carers, and systems alike.
The truth is simple: we are failing families. Trauma is being ignored. Systems designed to protect are instead contributing to breakdown — and the cost is paid by children, families, society, and the future of social care itself.
If you’re a professional, you already know: recruitment is low, disruptions are rising, and families are breaking down. You know change is needed.
I write to you as an adoptee, an adopter, a social worker, and the founder of PATCH. This work is born from personal experience and professional commitment. It doesn’t claim to have all the answers — but it’s a start. A conversation. A catalyst.
At its core is a simple message: if we don’t change how we treat adopters and foster carers, we won’t have any. And if we don’t support caregivers, parents, and families — we are not supporting children.
One cannot be done without the other.
We invite you to read, reflect, and join us in driving the change that children and families urgently need.
The BBC has recently been working with families across the North East of England to explore their experiences of ‘child violence against parent’, raising awareness of the postcode lottery and parent blame impacting parent and their children: Child violence against parents: Victims plead for support – BBC News
BBC Politics North highlighted this in their segment on the 16th of March, speaking to Durham County Council’s Jackie Staff, Durham Police and Crime Commissioner Joy Allen, parents and social workers in the North East, and our own Dr Nikki Rutter from Durham University. You can see this on BBC Iplayer: Politics North (North East and Cumbria) – 16/03/2025 – BBC iPlayer
The Anna Foster show at BBC Newcastle also welcomed Dr Nikki Rutter on the 17th of March to speak more about some of the real challenges facing families living with this form of harm. Holes in The Wall was mentioned as a resource. You can access this until the 15th April 2025 via BBC Sounds: Anna Foster – 17/03/2025 – BBC Sounds
A pilot to provide specialist support to families affected by child to parent abuse has been celebrating its positive outcomes.
The pilot has already offered support to 81 children and young people and their families.
Over 70 practitioners across Norfolk Children’s Services, Norfolk Youth Justice, NIDAS and some Norfolk schools have been trained to deliver Respect’s accredited intervention ‘The Respect Young Peoples Programme’ also known as the RYPP. The intervention is for families where children or young people aged 8-18 are displaying repeated abusive and harmful behaviour towards their parent or caregivers (including stepparents, adoptive parents, foster carers and kinship carers). This abuse can be physical, verbal, emotional, psychological, sexual, financial, damage to property, coercive and controlling.
Norfolk’s Police and Crime Commissioner, Sarah Taylor, said: “Thanks to funding from the Home Office’s Perpetrator Fund, this pilot has given us a rare opportunity to work closely with families experiencing child- and adolescent-to-parent violence and abuse. Some families experiencing this type of violence or abuse have said that they feel stuck between a rock and a hard place as they don’t necessarily know how to best cope with the situation but don’t want to get the police involved. By working with other organisations including NCC’s Children’s Services, Youth Justice and NIDAS, this project has worked with families to help transform the support available, which in turn has helped them navigate these difficulties.
“Early findings show this work had had a profoundly positive effect on families involved, with a reduction in the need to involve the police or other services in interventions.”
“This joined up approach represents true partnership working. The Child and Adolescent to Parent Violence and Abuse (CAPVA) project has been overseen by my office and delivered in partnership with Respect, Norfolk Constabulary, Norfolk Integrated Domestic Abuse Service (NIDAS), Youth Justice, Norfolk Children’s Services and Brave Futures.
“As part of the project, NIDAS recruited two full time CAPVA advocates, a UK first, and Brave Futures provided therapeutic support for young people who require extra support prior to engaging in the RYPP. I am delighted that this project has trained 72 practitioners to deliver the RYPP directly to families and the work by these practitioners will provide a lasting legacy.”
Justine Dodds, Head of Respect Young People’s Service, said: “The Respect Young People’s Service (RYPS) has been delighted to work with the Norfolk Police and Crime Commissioner this year and last. The programme has two dedicated Children and Adolescent to Parent Violence and Abuse (CAPVA) workers whose only role is to work with families on this specific type of abuse.
“This is the first time the Respect Young Peoples Service has trained staff in schools. This has been very exciting, with the potential to reach families before they hit crisis point and are forced to contact statutory services.
“The awareness raising work that we have delivered across children’s services and police is helping to improve understanding and empathy, and to identify what is often a ‘hidden harm’.
“We want to champion our partners and the people that we have trained so far. This programme has the potential to be truly transformational and preventative by stopping CAPVA, before it starts.”
The Respect Young People’s Programme – how does it work?
The Respect Young People’s Programme (RYPP) is voluntary, and both the young person and their parent/guardian must consent to take part and be willing to engage. The programme avoids blame and works together with both the parents/carers and young person, seeing them all as part of the solution. The programme is designed to enable families to identify negative behaviour patterns and work towards positive outcomes.
RYPP practitioners provide support, insight, and simple solutions to help to improve family relationships via weekly structured sessions and takes approximately three or more months to complete. Sessions are varied and use a variety of creative tools and techniques, underpinned by theoretical models – primarily social learning theory, cognitive behavioural approaches, restorative justice, and conflict resolution.
One RYPP practitioner supporting their client said:
“The family engaged well throughout and really took on board everything within the sessions. I feel very proud of how far they’ve come and the improvement in their relationship and conflict resolution.
“The positive change in behaviour and reduction in aggressive, violent and or abusive behaviour has been wonderful to witness and reinforces my belief in the programme.”
Therapeutic support for children and young people
As part of the CAPVA Project, therapeutic support is provided to children and young people via a new service known as Changing Futures. Delivered by Brave Futures, a spokesperson explained the benefits: “Changing Futures provides a safe environment where children and young people can explore their emotions, gain deeper insight into their behaviours, and minimise their impact on others. Our support encourages self-regulation and equips them with healthy coping strategies to better manage their future. We are already witnessing the positive effects of this therapeutic approach, as children and young people are building trust, applying strategies learned in sessions, and showing improved engagement with education and employment.”
Families have their say
One young person after taking part in the Respect Young People’s Programme said: “It’s 100% helped me and mum and we have conversations every day. It’s not just helped me but it’s helped my whole family. We’re much happier now.”
Parents have fed back on how the programme has improved family life. One parent said: “It has been really helpful. My child has taken some tips from it and has been taking some things in and has been thinking a little bit before they act.”
Another parent said: “It is the first time in four years I have felt we have a worker who understands the issues, listens and affirms, and is able to come up with effective and positive interventions and it has been a completely invaluable experience which we will continue to benefit from. We’ve loved working with our RYPP worker.
Early findings from the pilot have shown that all RYPP practitioners have reported a reduction in violence and abuse for the families that have completed the programme.
*After completing the programme, 93% of parent/carers surveyed said it had helped to improve their relationship with their child. A resounding 100% of their children said that it had helped to improve their relationship with their parent/caregiver.
In March 2024, partners, practitioners, and academic experts came together to discuss best practice and to share academic research at The Nest in Norwich. The day’s conference provided an opportunity for services across Norfolk to raise awareness of CAPVA, to network and to shine a light on the great work already achieved.
On October 14th, 2024, Parental Education Growth Support (PEGS) hosted an International Child to Parent Abuse (CPA*) conference online. The conference was well attended, provided British Sign Language Interpreters for every presentation, and there were a range of speakers from around the globe with the goal of fostering “a collaborative environment where stakeholders can share knowledge and strategies to better support those impacted by CPA” (PEGSupport.co.uk).
A clear thread which ran through the day was the way in which different professionals, practitioners, and researchers were using a public health approach to understand CPA.
The first speaker, His Honor Judge James Burbidge, highlighted that substance misuse is often found in cases that are seen in the Crown Court, providing two case examples of adult children, one was initially charged with attempted murder of her mother, the second was an adult child who had sexually assaulted his mother and planned to physically harm her. Julie Mackay provided case examples of patricide in her afternoon presentation. Substance misuse and serious mental health issues of the adult children were considered a prominent feature in every presentation. Amanda Warburton Wynn’s case study of a grandson who murdered his grandmother also referred to significant mental health issues and the pressures of mutual caring responsibilities. The lack of support for those supporting children or grandchildren with mental health challenges is a clear issue which has led to terrible outcomes for whole families.
More positively, PEGS have been working with Brightstar for many years, and they provide sessions for young people at risk of causing harm through a needs-based understanding (i.e. if a person has their needs met, they are less likely to cause harm). With a Believe, Belong, Become throughline, Brightstar begin each session with boxing, helping young people to meet their affective needs and regulate their emotions, they then continue to a behavioural session talking through thoughts and feelings (affective needs, relational needs). The importance of recognising unmet needs was also outlined by Jeremy Todd (Family Lives) through a violence-reduction programme of work in which parents are supported to understand and not normalise of minimise the harm, which includes supporting children with their neurodivergent, mental or emotional health needs.
Other, specific, CPA intervention programmes were outlined by Dr Andy Newman. A particular challenge in ‘what works’ for CPA is the lack of consistency, lack of long term data, and whilst many of the interventions mentioned have shown promising outcomes, it is clear that there is no one-size fits all, with some interventions being applied on populations they were not designed for (i.e. positive behavioural support for autistic children when it was designed for children with learning disability). What is clear is that there are many excellent services available, so much so that responses may be positive because of the good working practices, rather than the usefulness of a particular intervention.
NHS Safeguarding reported similar challenges, particularly regarding the relevance of neurodivergence and poor mental health in this area; that diagnoses are not labels, but a useful lens in which to understand a child’s experiences in the world. This concurred with Amanda Holt’s findings, who also found that parents would focus on the wellbeing of their child over their own safety. Both presenters, as well as Dr Silke Meyer in the afternoon session highlighted that a whole family approach, one which recognises that they have individual needs, as well as family needs, is important. Furthermore, recognise the wider family or systems, as many children live outside the family or with others in a parenting role.
A more systematic approach to tackling CPA was identified by Sarah Townsend who shared findings from her Winston Churchill Memorial Trust Travel Fellowship, exploring how New Zealand could learn from the UK and Australia when implementing policy guidance. How policy can stay ahead of progress is a challenge through, as highlighted by Emma Pickering, tech-facilitated abuse is evolving faster than policy-makers can keep up, and this has resulted in harmful artificial-intelligence generated imagery. Furthermore, just parents increasingly monitor their children’s locations using technology, children are doing the same for their parents.
How to help families through the lens of public health was clear throughout, with an emphasis on looking at how certain features of a person’s identity creating additional barriers to accessing support. Kate Fejfer spoke to how those from Eastern Europe have specific challenges when accessing support for domestic abuse more broadly, whereas Polly Harrar (CEO The Sharan Project) talked through the challenges South Asian families, and particular mothers, have when navigating CPA. Vulnerabilities of older adults was discussed by Rebecca Zirk, with Richard Robinson (Hourglass service) advocating for an older person’s commissioner, as Northern Ireland and Wales have one, but England and Scotland do not.
PEGS is continuing to engage in a myriad of awareness raising activities of CPA, led by their founder Michelle John. Comments relating to the conference can be found on social media via #StandWithPEGS, and employers are encouraged to sign their CPA covenant to support any employees living with CPA.
What would be the first thing to do if you were starting from scratch?
Not the usual question I am asked. In the past it would have been “how much is there?”; more recently the enquirer would be asking for priorities from a list of recommendations. But I was meeting last week with Sarah Townsend, Principal Advisor to Te Puna Aonui, the New Zealand joint venture to improve the whole-of-government approach to family and sexual violence.
When an election is called, civil servants are subject to strict rules about what they can and can’t do. The work of government is in effect paused until the new administration takes office. This means that from 24th May it has not been possible to learn any more about the Home Office Consultation on terminology and the definition of child to parent abuse; and more importantly that it is not clear what will happen after the election on July 4th. Having been banging on about this for at least the last ten years, and having just this week announced my retirement, I am struggling not to take this personally!
HOLES IN THE WALL 