Helen Bonnick MBE was on the 2025 New Year’s Honours List for work supporting families living with child-to-parent violence
Tag Archives: child to parent violence and abuse
14th October – fact of the day
Today is international child to parent abuse day!
Originally created by PEGS, October the 14th will be recognised by PEGS in England at the National Child to Parent Abuse Summit Child to Parent Abuse Summit 2026 | PEGS | PEGS; and VisAble in NewZealand CPVA conference Oct 2026 — VisAble
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11th October – fact of the day
One of the earliest written legal references to a child using violence against a parent appears in the Code of Hammurabi, from ancient Babylon, dated to around the 18th century BCE (some older sources give earlier dates). Law 195 specifically addresses a son striking his father and prescribes an extremely severe punishment: his hands were to be cut off. Historical scholarship on violence against parents identifies this as very early evidence that societies formally recognised violence by offspring towards parents thousands of years ago
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10th October – fact of the day
Break4 change the first UK evidence based group supporting families launched in Brighton 2009
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9th October – fact of the day
MYTH: “They behave fine at school, so it can’t be that serious at home.”
FACT: Behaviour can be context-dependent. A young person appearing regulated in one environment doesn’t invalidate what a parent is experiencing at home.
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8th October – fact of the day
There is no single international definition of CAPVA. However, Australia, Canada and Spain have independently created national terms and definitions to improve reporting.
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6th October – fact of the day
The Spanish Society for the Study of Filo-Parental Violence (Sociedad Española para el Estudio de la Violencia Filio-Parental; SEVIFIP) was established in 2013.
SEVIFIP assembled an 11-person expert panel, reviewed existing definitions, analysed them and developed a definition intended to be precise and useful for both research and intervention.
Since then, SEVIFIP has established Spain as a global leader in filial violence research and practice. They organise regular national conferences and developed an Observatory of VFP, publications, research activity, training and a resource map. Its current website describes a community through which professionals can exchange knowledge and access research, publications and developments in the field. SEVIFIP – Sociedad Española para el Estudio de la Violencia Filio-Parental
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Dads’ stories
At the Reframing Profession Practice conference, we heard from Al Coates. Al’s own work, research, and lived experience of child-to-parent abuse brought to the fore some of the challenges facing dads in particular.
Living with a child with complex needs and behaviour that reflects that struggle can be challenging. That’s polite and palatable language for what is often messy, difficult and scary behaviour, aggression, shouting, threats, hitting, property destruction to name a few manifestations.
Thankfully there’s a growing understanding of the behaviour that many families’ experience. Far from being a simply monolithic behaviour or a lazy stereotype the manifestation of this challenging behaviour can be complex and nuanced. One of the most refreshing aspects of the CPA Reframing Professional Practice conference was the opportunity to look closer at areas within this sphere and to that end I was asked to speak to my personal experience as an adoptive dad as well as to the direct work I do with adoptive dads living with children’s whose behaviour can be aggressive and violent.
Broadly dads remain in a small minority in terms of primary carers for children and within my experience that includes adoptive parents. Mums do the heavy lifting and we know that when we look at children’s negative behaviour it is predominantly, though not exclusively, directed at mums.
That’s not the focus of this post but it’s important to understand the broader contexts. Dads do often witness violence and aggression as well as being victims of it. Simple biology means that dads may not feel as physically vulnerable when behaviour manifests. That may be simple biology but it also may reflect mens experience of violence or the lack of it in their lives. But witnessing people you love and care for being hurt or living in an environment can be just as challenging. Impacts on mental and physical health with nervous systems set to alert constantly.
Many models of support are built by women and for women and that is wholly right but there also need to be a place for dads to talk plainly and directly to their experience. But as one dad said to me ‘when I’m in a group with my wife and she’s talking I just stay quiet, I see things differently but in a room full of women that’s not the place I can share my experience’.
That’s not to blame women but it is perhaps an indicator of why men are less present in those spaces. There are other reasons, generally men express themselves in different ways and, as said, have different experiences.
At the conference I was given the opportunity to unpack all of the above and more. I spoke of the rawness of the peer conversations and the challenges of breaking down taboos and the isolation that dads feel.
The challenges that parents face are often universal, stigma, shame, isolation and stress to name the obvious. How parents and carers experience these challenges is influenced by a myriad of factors but it’s clear that we need to create spaces where everyone can not only share but to look around the room and listen to experiences and voices that reflect our own.
Al now runs an online support service, alongside Beacon Services, for adoptive Dads living with child-to-parent abuse. You can find out more here: Dads Support Group – West Midlands and UK
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Conference reflections
As we are coming to the end of our conference theme, I have a few reflections on the importance of practitioner focused events which manage to centralise lived experience; very much what was achieved at the Reframing Professional Practice conference. This event brought together perspectives that are too often kept apart: those of practitioners, researchers and people with lived experience. As I was able to support Maria in organising the conference, I was already familiar with the arguments being presented. What was significant was seeing these different forms of knowledge placed alongside one another, in an almost chronological fashion, and recognising the possibilities that creates when viewing child to parent abuse across the life course.
Practitioner knowledge is often described as anecdotal or experiential, as though it sits below academic evidence. Yet practitioners work within the realities of complex systems every day. They understand what policies look like when translated into practice, where professional assumptions break down and what is possible within the constraints of real services. Lived experience offers a similarly important challenge to professional certainty. It shifts attention from what services intend to do to what it is actually like to encounter them. When these perspectives are taken seriously, they can expose gaps that professional or academic accounts alone may miss.
For a reader who was not at the conference, this is perhaps its central message: professional practice is not produced by one type of expertise. It is shaped through the interaction of evidence, professional knowledge and lived experience. Reframing practice means recognising that each can change how we understand the problem… and what we decide to do about it.
Coming up in October, we will have several more events:
PEGS
PEGS will once again be hosting an event of Child-to-Parent Abuse Awareness Day (October 14th), moving from their international conference format, to what they are referring to as the Child to Parent Abuse Summit 2026. If you are wondering what the difference between a summit and conference is, here is a basic description:
- A conference brings together interested parties, individuals and organisations, to engage in knowledge exchange, debate, and discussion about a topic of interest.
- A summit is a specialised and high-level meeting. It usually brings together senior leaders, experts, government officials, or important decision-makers to discuss major issues and reach agreements on important decisions.
Summits are often smaller and more focused than conferences, and the line up has not completely been announced but PEGS have previously given us some excellent online conferences, so the national summit is expected to be a good place to see the start of some important structural change. You can book here: Child to Parent Abuse Summit 2026 | PEGS | PEGS
International CPV Network
I (Nikki) am heading to Spain to share work on the UK context for the Professional Conference on Child-to-Parent Violence: “Acting Early: Prevention and Intervention in CPV,“ which will be held on 22 October 2026 at Universidad Loyola. This is an exciting opportunity to look at the international context of CPV in Spain, which produces more than half the global research on CPV. You can book your place here: https://eventos.uloyola.es/153750/detail/jornada-profesional-en-violencia-filio-parental.html
At this conference, the international practitioner-research network on CPV is being launched, which is a great opportunity for collaboration, as well as ensuring the research being conducted is relevant to practitioners who are doing the direct work with families.
If you are aware of any other events, do let us know. We will soon be moving onto a new theme about many publications in this area!
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‘Merseyside Domestic Violence Service Reopens its CAPVA referrals: From Conference Rooms to Family Homes
We are now at the mid-way point of our conference theme, and it seemed a nice time to bring together reflections on two conference events focusing upon CAPVA/CPA. Here, Chloe Booth, PhD student and CAPVA practitioner, reflects upon these events
Child and adolescent to parent violence and abuse (CAPVA) continues to sit in an uncomfortable and often overlooked space within both research and practice. Despite growing recognition, many families still experience shame, isolation, and misunderstanding when seeking support, if they even know where to look. As both a Child and Young Person (CYP) practitioner and CAPVA specialist at Merseyside Domestic Violence Service and PhD researcher with Liverpool John Moores University, I find myself constantly moving between academic discussion and the realities families face every day, allowing me a unique multi-facetted insight into the issue.
Attending the Merseyside CAPVA Conference: Evidence, Practice and Partnership in Liverpool and the Silenced: Reframing Professional Practice in the Child to Parent Abuse arena conference in London so far this year reinforced just how important those connections are. What stayed with me most was not simply the presentation of new research or experience, but the recurring message that children, parents/carers, and practitioners are still navigating systems that struggle to fully understand CAPVA in all its complexity. Across both conferences, I was struck by the emphasis on listening from the perspectives of each individual family, particularly to the voices that are often excluded from policy, research, and intervention design. Discussions around trauma, stigma, neurodiversity, and family relationships highlighted how easily CAPVA can become reduced to “challenging behaviour” or “poor parenting” by uneducated professionals, rather than understood within broader relational and social contexts.
As a researcher, these conversations challenged me to think more critically about what meaningful CAPVA research should look like moving forward, and how this should implement policy and practice. I left reflecting on whose voices are prioritised, how research findings translate into frontline support, and how we avoid creating further silencing for families already carrying significant shame and fear. This is particularly relevant within my work in Liverpool at Merseyside Domestic Violence Service, where I support children and families experiencing CAPVA directly. In practice, no two families look the same, the lived realities behind CAPVA are incredibly complex, and often deeply misunderstood. The themes explored at both conferences mirrored many of the conversations happening in frontline work, with parents/carers feeling blamed, young people struggling to regulate overwhelming emotions, and professionals trying to respond without adequate frameworks or resources. It is time for a clear definition, an understanding of where CAPVA sits within policy, and structured referral and support pathways for all professionals responding to CAPVA.
At Merseyside Domestic Violence Service, we are incredibly pleased to say that we have recently been awarded the funding to reopen our referrals for families experiencing CAPVA in Merseyside. Whether you are a professional working with families, or experiencing the issue yourself, please follow the link below to submit a referral, or simply get in touch for some advice, and we will be in contact to discuss support.
Chloe Booth
Thank you to Chloe. What we particularly liked about this piece was how well she outlines the importance to be critical in our approach to working with families. No two families are the same, their context, histories, and differences mean the way they engage with services, and the needs of the children and parents requires nuance and sensitivity.
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