Tag Archives: domestic violence

by | March 21, 2013 · 4:44 pm

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 →

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by | February 2, 2013 · 5:44 pm

Child to Parent Violence Webinar

Parenting UK, part of the charity, Family Lives, holds regular events to support practitioners, including, recently, a webinar on the subject of Child to Parent Violence, presented by Oliver Standing, Policy and Projects Co-ordinator from  Adfam, and Sara Hassell, a Family Co-ordinator with Family Lives. Oliver was talking about a recent research project. Sara was addressing work she does in a primary school and the tools she uses working to support abused parents. The organisers have made a video of the presentation available to all interested parties (which lasts just under an hour and three quarters), and also links to documents mentioned and to supplementary material. Continue reading →

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by | January 25, 2013 · 2:24 pm

“Parent abuse is a serious problem”

A tragic story today from Tulsa, of a son, charged with the murder of his mother. There was apparently a history of violence from him in their relationship and he had been arrested in the past for domestic violence assault and battery as the accompanying video makes clear.

Missy Iski, Director of Programs and Counseling at DVIS, comments on the piece, encouraging people to talk more about the serious problem of parent abuse. She gives phone numbers of helping agencies in the Tulsa area.

I was reminded of a journal article from Walsh and Krienert of 2009 which drew distinctions between child to parent violence and parricide. Their own study suggested that these were two distinct problems. Nevertheless, abused parents report frequently feeling fearful for their lives, sometimes with good cause as demonstrated here.

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by | January 7, 2013 · 4:12 pm

A Review of Parent Abuse in 2012

Looking back over the last year, I was re-reading my post of January 1st 2012, which I concluded by saying

As we enter the new year, the task before us is to clearly and honestly set out the facts of parent abuse, without resorting to scare mongering and without blaming one side or another; and to do so in a way that politicians, policy makers, practitioners and public all come to recognise that abuse for what it is, and seek to support the whole family to turn their lives around.

2012 certainly proved to be an interesting and exciting year in the field of parent abuse work as people got to grips with the task at hand! Continue reading →

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by | October 3, 2012 · 10:26 am

Understanding Parent Abuse in under 90 minutes?

Writing some training materials recently, I’ve been forced to be more concise than usual about the main issues facing practitioners working in the field of parent abuse at the moment. An hour and a half doesn’t feel very long when there is so much to say!

So far, this is what I’ve come up with. Continue reading →

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by | September 30, 2012 · 8:32 am

“Parent abuse is a domestic violence issue”

Yet another training opportunity, this time in County Wicklow, Ireland, on Thursday 8th November. The day long seminar is amazing value at €35, including a 3 course buffet lunch. Why would you not go!

Participants will hear from academics and practitioners across disciplines, looking at different aspects of support for parents.

The course programme and details for booking are here.

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by | September 20, 2012 · 8:24 am

News of Break4Change

The Brighton and Hove Argus recently published an article about the Break4Change project as part of a domestic violence feature.

Break4Change, addressing parent abuse, has now run 6 successful courses, with the 7th due to start in October in Brighton.  The model, which includes work with parents and young people separately, and places high value on restorative features, is the subject of an ongoing evaluation by researchers at Brighton University, and interest has been sparked around the world, in countries as diverse as Sweden and Bulgaria, Spain and Ireland. Continue reading →

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by | September 19, 2012 · 8:48 am

Widening of domestic violence definition offers hope in parent abuse

A lot of coverage in England and Wales this morning as the Home Office announced the widening of the definition of domestic violence. From March 2013 this will include “coercive control” and lowers the age to include 16 and 17 year olds.  While the government’s intention was to make support more readily available to younger victims, the hope is that youngsters abusing their parents will also be covered by this change as the definition seems to make this possible. Changing the definition is of course only the first step. The way that the police respond to calls will be vital to any progress on this front, so a need for training still; and of course without the availability of resources and the setting up of local protocols the changes remain meaningless.  I am hopeful though!

For a useful discussion about what the changes will mean, see this article from Jo Sharpen in the Guardian.

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by | September 13, 2012 · 4:04 pm

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 →

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by | August 8, 2012 · 9:45 am

No one could accuse the PAARS team of a lack of commitment!

I met with the practitioners from PAARS this week to find out more about what they are doing, and to make their project more widely known.

PAARS, which stands for Parent Abuse and Reconciliation Service, is a small, locally based parent abuse project which got off the ground at the beginning of the year with a Lottery grant and three members working evenings and weekends after finishing their day jobs. Joe Lettieri, Ayse Adil and Karen Hunter work as learning mentors and parent support advisors in a secondary school in the London Borough of Enfield. With many years of service between them, they were very familiar with the story of parents struggling with the twin demons of domestic violence and abusive teenagers, young people acting out their anger and pain in risk taking and violent behaviour, but with no available support services on which to call. Even within school, the team was unable to offer a joined up response, and so they formed PAARS to fill the gap. Continue reading →

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