Tag Archives: CPVA

A Personal Announcement

When I started this website in 2011, I had very grandiose ideas – bringing together everything in the world about CPVA into one place, while simultaneously being incredibly naïve about how I would achieve that – or how long I would carry on for! As it happens, it has proved to be both a challenge and a privilege to keep it going for so long and to learn so much myself along the way.

In June this year I announced my plans to retire, and although I had been winding things down for a while, I was absolutely clear that ‘Holes’ should carry on, and so I have been working with a number of people over the last months to ensure this can happen. 

I am delighted now to let you know that from November 2024 this website will be managed by a team of people with vast experience in this area of need and work, in terms of research, practice, training and personal experience; a team made up of Capa First Response and Durham University. I hope and believe that, under their leadership and management, ‘Holes’ will carry on – and indeed develop in the future – to reach an even bigger audience, and provide a more comprehensive and helpful service for all those who access it. I am pleased to leave it in good hands, and look forward to seeing how it develops over the next 10 years!

In the meantime, thank you all for all your support and encouragement; for the contributions that many have made in terms of advice, content and comments, and indeed for all the work that you all do. I hope you will continue to supply all of those for the new team going forward, and that you will join me in wishing them all well.

Very best wishes, Helen

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The new Eastenders CPA storyline

It’s not the first time, of course, but that doesn’t stop the excitement when the issues surrounding child to parent violence and abuse (CPVA) are brought to greater public awareness through inclusion in a popular soap on TV or even the radio!

We’ve had Coronation Street in 2015, and Holby City in 2018 to name but two, and I was definitely convinced The Archers was touching on the issue when Jamie Perks started causing trouble around 2010; and now in 2024 we have an announcement that Eastenders will be featuring a storyline examining the relationship between Tommy Moon and Kat Slater over the course of the summer.

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Finding the right words: what I meant

We often think about the language we use in work with families where there is harmful behaviour from children, but more usually in terms of what we call it (see this sentence!) or the terms we use to describe the various family members involved. This week I have been reflecting on the difficulties that arise when the language we use as professionals is different to that used by parents. I have written about this before, and included a reference in my book to a blog by Raising Devon where the author talks about the difficulties in getting help while she referred to her child’s behaviour as “tantrums” rather than “rages”.

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Deprivation of Liberty stories

Summer is the time that I catch up on reading all the research papers and news articles that I have been storing on my laptop; and so I have finally found the space to pull some thoughts together. One thing that has particularly caught my eye over the last months has been the reporting on the rise in the number of vulnerable young people subject to Deprivation of Liberty (DoL) Orders.  

Children and Young People Now has run a number of articles about this, examining the reasons for the sharp rise in orders (here), and analysing the growing gap in secure care provision (here), and in this piece from the beginning of August, looking at the impact on the young people themselves, often placed at great distance from their families and support systems, in unsuitable accommodation and in situations likely to increase their trauma and vulnerability rather than aid their recovery. 

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Introducing a new CPVA Directory!

I started posting news about the project I was working on, with others, to map provision for families experiencing child to parent violence and abuse (CPVA) in 2014, with regular updates before finally launching the page on my website in October 2015. At that time we knew of maybe 30 specialist services dotted around the country, some already well established, and others already a little precarious in their funding stream. Since that time there has been an exciting slow but steady growth in provision as different agencies have got on board, speeding up most recently through the support of the Domestic Abuse Commissioner‘s work in raising the profile of CPVA.

Keeping the Directory up to date and relevant has been a mammoth task, and one which is now beyond my capabilities with the growth in services, and so I have been working with Respect for the last year to see how it might migrate onto a new platform. Respect have a long history of work with young people using violence and abuse in the home, and importantly they also already have a large database of services within the domestic abuse arena, and so I knew that this was an area of work that they had both the experience and capacity to maintain for the future. Over the last months, all members of the old directory were contacted and gave permission to move across and the new Directory was finally launched last week!

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Resource Tool in development

A message from Silenced:

We would like to hear from people with a lived experience of child to parent violence and abuse to inform a resource tool that can be used by professionals supporting families experiencing #CPVA.

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Senior Practitioner wanted!

THIS POST IS NOW FILLED

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#CPVA What about the Men?

We talk a lot about how child to parent violence and abuse disproportionately affects women – citing the ‘availability’ of mothers because of their particular caring responsibilities, and the societal messages that young people pick up. We talk about more boys than girls, and more young men than young women, using harmful behaviours – and indeed their behaviour being perceived as more harmful, or more likely to bring them to the attention of the police. These are real issues and ones which deserve our attention and our consideration.

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Crime Survey – gathering data

For as long as we have been writing and talking about children’s violence towards parents, there has been a sense of frustration that there is not better data available to inform research and practice. We have even looked at ways to include questions in the Crime Survey – so how could I pass by an opportunity to publicise this latest piece of research!

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CAPVA Briefing Papers free to download

I am absolutely delighted to finally launch a series of Briefing Papers on the topic of child and adolescent to parent violence and abuse (CAPVA), which I have had in mind to create for over 5 years, and which Vicky Baker has now most wonderfully helped to bring to realisation over the last few months!

Briefing Papers 1, 2 and 3 (front pages only)

The idea grew from an increasing number of calls to discuss a range of particular angles on child and adolescent to parent violence and abuse, but which inevitably began with a half hour spent explaining what we were talking about before getting down to the meat of the conversation. It was clear that there was a space for a succinct overview of the main issues to do with CAPVA in a way that could be digested in a short space of time, and that would be equally helpful for anyone coming to this issue fresh – whether as a practitioner, a commissioner, a journalist, or indeed as a politician.

Working together with the benefit of having recently completed the rapid literature review for the Domestic Abuse Commissioner, with a wealth of knowledge from Vicky’s PhD studies, and with the background of many years listening to people about their experience and work, we have written 3 separate papers, each with three pages, explaining in turn what we mean by the term child and adolescent to parent violence and abuse, why it happens, and what can be done to support families

The finished 3 papers are free* to download, and we hope that you will feel able to share them widely with colleagues and even to use them in your own work as the need arises.

Inevitably, with a topic about which we continue to learn on a daily basis, they will need updating as ideas evolve and understanding develops, and so you are encouraged to offer comments and feedback. Let us know if they have been useful, how they were used, what else would have been good – bearing in mind that if they get much larger they will cease to be briefing sheets and will be a book instead!

A massive thank you to Vicky for all the work she put in to these. They honestly would never have happened without her.

Download Briefing Paper 1: What’s the Problem? here

Download Briefing Paper 2: Why does CAPVA happen? here

Download Briefing Paper 3: So what can we do? here

* Some people have suggested we should be charging for these. We have decided to keep them entirely free to download and we hope many people will do so. However, if you would prefer to make a monetary contribution, then please feel free to donate to a local charity supporting families suffering any type of abuse.

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