There has been an amazing response to the launch of the map last week, locating specialist services for families experiencing child to parent violence, with some very lovely compliments – THANK YOU – and many comments and questions via twitter and email. For ease, I am going to combine them and try to answer as many as possible here.
The URL is a bit clunky. Is there a plan to make it easier to remember?
At the moment the project is hosted on a website designed to enable communities to network and support each other. Most of the groups are geographically based, though ours is a community of interest. We chose this platform because of convenience at the time, cost and the support offered. We would like the map to become a properly resourced resource, kept up to date and easily accessible. We would then move it to somewhere more appropriate and memorable.
What do the different colour “hexes” mean on the map?
Each “hex” represents a service. If you click on them you can learn more about the service offered. They are colour coded at the moment by the type of agency. This isn’t necessarily the most helpful way of coding them though, so it might be changed at some point.
Why only England and Wales?
A number of reasons for this. The way we have located services has been through a huge networking exercise. My own network covers England so we have been looking to exhaust possibilities here first. The Steering Group includes a representative from the Youth Justice Board, which covers England and Wales. In order to make the project manageable in the timescale we had to draw a line somewhere, and so decided on England and Wales. There is a different youth justice system in Scotland for instance, and we do not have the same “way in”. Ireland could indeed be included, as the Daphne RCPV project encompassed the work going on there, but again, time is a factor in this not being included. I know there are people investigating on my behalf though and hoping to send other links as soon as they can. Indeed, I would like to thank the many people who have passed on suggestions of services they know about, and enabled us to cover as much as we have.
Why isn’t the service I told you about included?
Sometimes agencies have decided not to be involved, perhaps because the service they provide is still at the early stages. Sometimes people have just not responded to emails and phone calls. There are lots of reasons for this and I appreciate that everyone is very busy. There is still time for more people to be included at any time. Please do keep sending suggestions, as it is good to know about the work that is going on.
Are you planning to include other types of service?
It would be lovely to be able to capture everything. This might include telephone support, peer mentoring, agencies offering support as part of a more general package, individual counsellors and counselling agencies, to name the types of help I know about. Time!
The map is very much a ‘work in progress’. Though this project is nearing the end, we hope that we will be able to find the resources to continue with it and to continue to build a picture of the help that is gradually developing for families experiencing violence and abuse from their children. And finally, do please let us know if you think it would be a useful resource for you, and in what way.
