Tag Archives: CPV

News from the 2013 Youth Justice Convention

The Youth Justice Convention, hosted over two days in Birmingham, UK, at the end of November, included this year a seminar on children’s violence to parents (CPV).  The convention is an annual event – this was the fourteenth – and is an opportunity to debate and discuss the latest youth justice policy developments. All the seminars are archived online and can be accessed here. (Update 2017: these videos don’t seem to be available any longer)

The CPV seminar, number 20 in the archive, was chaired by Paula Wilcox, with Martyn Stoner of Break4Change, and Paul Morris and Vicky Hodgson, from Hull Youth Offending Service, where a Step Up project has been piloted. Each gave a presentation of their project with a discussion at the end about differences and similarities. Continue reading →

Leave a comment

Filed under conference report, radio and video

Parent Abuse: the victim / perpetrator problem

When I speak with people about children’s violence to parents, the question of terminology regularly raises its head: How helpful is it to talk about ‘victim’ and ‘perpetrator’ in cases of parent abuse? So this post has been in the making for some time, but was finally brought into being after I was sent a link to a piece in the Sheffield Star last week. It may be lacking a few references so please feel free to comment on this with links to relevant articles.

The news piece itself is very clear in identifying the 20 year old man as the perpetrator of violence, and the mother as the victim. We may agree or not that the judge overstepped the mark in his summing up; but read through to the comments stream and a dissenting voice emerges – as well as a reminder not to jump to conclusions without knowing all the circumstances. Continue reading →

4 Comments

Filed under Discussion, news reports

Child to Parent Violence: Insights from Spain

Over the last few months I have been conscious that this blog has focused very much on events in the UK, with some coverage of Australia and the US and little from elsewhere. But I am also aware that the readership spreads right across the world; and so I would like to try to bring some broader content to  “balance” things out a little. I know that there is important work going on in many other countries, from reading bibliographies and from following news and events, through colleagues attending international conferences as well as from a google alert.

In this post I want to bring together some information regarding work on child to parent violence (CPV) in Spain. I would value any comments or contributions on this to further expand my knowledge. Similarly, I hope that practitioners and researchers from around the world will take the time to let us know what is going on where they are. We can all be encouraged in hearing of the progress and developments of others. Continue reading →

1 Comment

Filed under Discussion, publications, Research

“An alignment of the planets”

Returning to the topic of themes that emerged from the recent conference on domestic violence by children against parents, in Nottingham, I’d like to look at 2 more ideas that caught my attention.

Launching the conference, Jo Sharpen, from AVA,  described it as very timely, and indeed, throughout the day, speakers referred to a series of events that support our focus on the issue of child to parent violence at this time. The changed definition of domestic violence in England and Wales (with the publication of the Home Office Guidance to which AVA contributed), was highlighted and declared helpful in recognising that under 18s could be abusive, though bringing parent abuse within the domestic violence umbrella was also considered problematic, because of the important differences between CPV and IPV and the potential criminalisation of young people (see my earlier post for more details). March also saw the publication of the UK Government Action Plan: A call to end violence against women and girls, and the launch of the EVAWGUK policy. Though parent abuse is sadly still not specifically mentioned, it does offer opportunities to discuss the issue more widely. Continue reading →

Leave a comment

Filed under conference report, Discussion

“Once your awareness is raised, doing nothing is not an option”.

Picking up on a phrase from Jenny Bright in the last post, it has seemed that almost everyone I have spoken with recently has described the point at which they learned about parent abuse as an epiphany. It was, after all, the reason I have given for setting up this site. Each of us responds to that experience in our own way, whether by further study, setting up local provision, or even running a blog; but many describe the need to “raise awareness”. It got me wondering what we actually mean by that phrase. Continue reading →

Leave a comment

Filed under Discussion

Emerging themes 1: CPV and IPV

In my last post I referred to the emergence of a number of themes through the day as we met last week in Nottingham. I want to return to one of these now, namely the issues around conceptualising child to parent violence as domestic violence.

This is something that has been covered by a number of people in the past (e.g. Holt or Hunter, Nixon and Parr), but it keeps re-emerging for a number of reasons. Firstly, much of the work being developed in Britain at the moment is taking place within agencies also dealing with adult intimate partner violence, forcing the issue as adjustments are made to approaches or expectations. Secondly, the change in definition of domestic violence within Britain to include perpetrators aged 16 upwards, has been hailed by some as a positive move, allowing the open discussion of the topic in a new way, and the recognition within policy of the reality of parent abuse. Continue reading →

2 Comments

Filed under conference report, Discussion

Something else to worry about!

There are a lot of reasons why we might be anxious about the influence of Disney in the children’s clothes and games markets. We might justifiably be concerned about the effects on young people of so much time spent in front of a screen. But I’m not quite ready to include an inevitable slide towards parent abuse among my reasons!

Not having a subscription to the Times newspaper, I bought a real, paper copy last Thursday, 28th February, in order to see the write up of the grant awarded to the University of Brighton for their CPV research. The half column write up on page 5 told me only what I knew already, but I was attracted to an article in Times2 by Helen Rumbelow, and extracts from a book by Sue Palmer, under the headline, Unhappy Daughters: how we are raising a troubled generation. Continue reading →

Leave a comment

Filed under Discussion

A PhD in Child to Parent Violence

A unique opportunity is advertised this week for students interested in undertaking funded research into the gendered aspects of CPV, under the guidance of Dr. Paula Wilcox at the University of Brighton.

Full details here.

Applications by January 25th, study begins February 2013

Leave a comment

Filed under Research

House of Commons Launch of Parent Abuse Report

The Adfam / AVA report into how parents deal with children who use substances and perpetrate abuse, “Between a rock and a hard place”, launched yesterday at the House of Commons, catalogues the shocking experiences of parents and their attempts to access support. Continue reading →

Leave a comment

Filed under projects, publications, Research

Supporting families of substance using, abusive young people

While it has long been known that substance abuse by young people was in some cases associated with parent abuse, there has been very little written about the connection. (eg Gallagher’s work)

A 2010 research report, entitled “Supporting families affected by substance use and domestic violence”, which has just been brought to my attention, goes some way to opening such a discussion. The report, by Dr. Sarah Galvani, sought to build the research base with two groups of family members whose needs have not been adequately recognised up to now: young people and Family Member Support Providers, (individuals personally affected and seeking to support others by semi-formal means). Initially it had been anticipated that these adults would be concerned with domestic violence between adult members of a household, but they were surprised to discover that they were in fact working with parents and grandparents affected by abuse from their children and grandchildren. Continue reading →

Leave a comment

Filed under projects, Research