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
Tag Archives: Parent abuse
They F*** You Up
Reading an interview with author, Norah Vincent, this week, I came over all philosophical. Vincent was speaking to Emilee Lindner for Buffalonews.com, about her new book, “Thy Neighbor”. The particular passage that got me thinking was this:
Q: One of those “lines” in the book is where you explain that it’s OK for children to reject their parents, but it’s not OK for a parent to reject their child. Why do you think that’s a taboo in society? Continue reading
Filed under Discussion
October Training in Nottingham
Nottinghamshire Domestic Violence Forum are running a repeat of their June training day on October 5th 2012.
Addressing Young People’s Abuse of Their Parents, 9.45am – 4.30pm
Fee: £85 per delegate, inclusive of lunch and refreshments
Nottingham Voluntary Action Centre: Ash Room
Trainers: Kate Iwi and Dr Chris Newman
This course will explore the issue of young people’s abuse of parents. The
day will cover the impact of domestic violence on young people, prevalence
and dynamics of parent abuse, building strengths in the parent/ child
relationship,. The afternoon will focus on practical skills for working
with parents experiencing abuse from their children, exploring family
systems work and identifying simple techniques to utilise with young people
to help stop their abuse.
The trainers are both experienced practitioners and trainers; having worked
extensively with perpetrators.
The booking form is available here.
Filed under Training opportunities
Strong links between different kinds of family violence
An interesting juxtaposition of topics on Woman’s Hour today. Amongst the early items, Jenni Murray interviewed Lisa Harker, Head of Strategy at the NSPCC, and Radio 1 presenter, Gemma Cairney, about the shocking frequency of teenage relationship abuse. Gemma’s documentary “Bruising Silence” aired on Radio 1 tonight, and the NSPCC published a report, “Standing on my own two feet” in 2011, described as the first ever study of abusive relationships among teenagers (downloadable from the NSPCC website). Among the findings, from the University of Bristol, were that 25% of teenage girls and 18% of boys had experienced physical violence in a relationship. In a lot of cases, there was a strong association with witnessing violence in the home, or with peers or family members – 20% of girls had seen domestic violence. Continue reading
Filed under Discussion, radio and video
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
Filed under projects
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
Problematising young men
Dr Helen Baker has kindly sent me details of an article which was published in Criminal Justice Matters in March this year, Exploring how teenage boys are constructed in relation to parent abuse. The full citation is: Helen Baker (2012): Exploring how teenage boys are constructed in relation to parent abuse, Criminal Justice Matters, 87:1, 48-49
She develops these ideas further in the Social Policy and Society themed issue, of April 2012 issue (Vol. 11, issue 2), Problematising the Relationship between Teenage Boys and Parent Abuse: Constructions of Masculinity and Violence, in a paper which was first presented at a symposium at Sheffield Hallam University in March 2010.
Filed under publications
Respect 6th National Practitioners Seminar
I have come to anticipate a stimulating and informative experience from Respect’s Practitioner Seminars. Yesterday’s, in the London Borough of Haringey, was the 6th national conference, the first to be held in partnership with a local authority, and it certainly lived up to all expectations. Continue reading
Filed under Discussion, projects, Training opportunities
Safeguarding issues in child to parent violence
A lot has been written about the difficulties in adopting a safeguarding response to the issue of parent abuse. First of all, it falls outside the normative model of child as victim, to which the responses are generally geared; and the safeguarding of vulnerable adults guidance is not usually applied to the parents in these situations, as they are not considered vulnerable within the specific terms. Continue reading
Filed under Discussion, publications
Something to celebrate!
This week I celebrate one year of this blog.
When I first became aware of the issue of parent abuse, in the early 80s, we had no idea of what to suggest to help the parent who had approached us. By the time I engaged in some serious research, in 2004-6, there was a small but growing body of knowledge about this aspect of family violence, and a number of programmes had been developed, mostly in Australia, New Zealand and the USA and Canada. A year later, a discussion on parent abuse was one of the items in the BBC’s Woman’s Hour, a flagship radio programme, which goes out 6 days a week. Continue reading
Filed under Uncategorized
HOLES IN THE WALL 