It has been a real privilege to be engaged in the work to raise awareness of child to parent violence over the last year; and indeed in compiling this blog and the accompanying pages. It has seemed as if 2013 has been the year that things have really taken off in the UK, with one major piece of research reported and others underway in Britain, attracting huge media attention. Despite budget cuts local authorities have found money for training events, as children’s violence has become such an issue in their work. Projects and responses have emerged across all disciplines as the need has been identified. Significant work has been done by the Youth Offending Service in promoting good practice and publicising the work of specialist projects. Elsewhere a pilot is well underway in Victoria, Australia, and papers are emerging from around the world as practitioners and academics seek to understand the phenomenon and support families in distress. Continue reading
Tag Archives: Parent abuse
Parent abuse coverage during the international week to end violence against women
BBC Radio Northants provided a comprehensive backdrop to the NADA (Northamptonshire Against Domestic Abuse) Domestic Abuse Conference which took place in Kettering on Wednesday 27th November, during this International End Violence Against Women week. Stuart Linnell used his breakfast show to introduce the issue of parent abuse and to interview parents as well as keynote speakers at the conference. You can listen again here for the next few days. Continue reading
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
Filed under Discussion, news reports
Welcoming in a new era
As the new Director of Public Prosecutions, Alison Saunders, takes up her post this month, it looks as if her appointment may herald positive moves within the parent abuse field.
As she drew near to the end of her term as London’s Chief Crown Prosecutor, Saunders spoke in an interview of the disturbing scale of abuse perpetuated by teens against their parents and seen in the courts, with news that more than 50 boys and girls aged 13 or under, and nearly 850 older juveniles have been prosecuted for domestic violence in the past three and a half years in London alone (includes parent abuse and teenage relationship abuse). This follows the publication of the findings of the Oxford University based research which found 1892 incidents of violence in the home (including damage to property) by 13 – 19 year olds reported to the Metropolitan police between 2009 and 2010 (and here). Saunders was at pains to state that such abuse was not confined to one section of society, but drew attention to the issue of nurturing as linked to the apparent growing lack of respect within families. Continue reading
Filed under Discussion
East Midlands Practitioners Peer Learning
I have just spent an exciting and inspiring morning with representatives of the Youth Offending Service across the East Midlands at their first Regional Practitioners Peer Learning Event in Nottingham. Around 50 – 60 had gathered to learn more about responses to adolescent violence to parents, and – importantly – to formulate action plans for their own areas before they left.
I was privileged to open the session, setting the scene with an overview of parent abuse, before Anne-Marie Harris from the Youth Justice Board spoke about upcoming developments at a national level. The feasibility study on the introduction of special domestic violence courts within the youth court system is not due to report until December, but Anne-Marie indicated that a number of practical and ethical difficulties have been identified around this direction of travel. Nevertheless, opportunities remain for creative thinking around service delivery, including programmes similar to the Step Up model. Continue reading
Filed under conference report, projects
Parent Abuse covered by the BBC
Following on from the Guardian article at the weekend, there has been coverage across radio and TV regarding the findings of the Oxford University research study into adolescent to parent violence. You can listen to an interview on the BBC Radio 4 PM programme here for the next week (about 50 minutes in). In it ‘Jane’ describes living in fear of her son after a violent assault with a knife, the guilt and shame experienced by parents in her situation, and the help she received from the Rosalie Ryrie Foundation in Wakefield. Her son spent one year living out of the home, but has now returned and with the help she receives she has been able to be more confident in the way she responds to his behaviour, walking away when necessary and establishing good boundaries – feeling safer, though not entirely safe still at this time. Rachel Condry, author of the study, and Joe Lettieri, of PAARS in Enfield, also appeared on the early evening BBC London News television programme, and the interview is to be shown again this evening in the late news programme.
Filed under news reports, radio and video, Research, TV
A growing problem in Ireland
This piece in the Irish Times dropped into my inbox over the weekend.
Declan Coogan addressed the Annual Work Conference in Dublin, hosted by the National Family Support Network, with details from his own work in the UNESCO Child and Family Research Centre in NUI Galway, and as project leader in Ireland for the EU-funded project ‘Responding to Child to Parent Violence’. Reporting that this is the one of the fastest growing issues in calls to parent-support organisations such as Parent Line, he gave examples of children as young as eight terrifying and violently assaulting their parents. He also spoke about his programme of Non-Violent Resistance (NVR), which has been found to be helpful in work with families experiencing parent abuse.
You can read more about NVR in an earlier post on this site. Details of the international conference in Galway in June 2014 will be posted on my Events and Training page as soon as they become available.
Filed under conference report, news reports
Addressing parent abuse through Juvenile Family Courts in USA
This piece from the Orlando Sentinel on 4th October, reporting on responses to parent abuse following the death of Rosemary Pate at the hands of her son, has popped up a number of times in the last week, cross-posted in different places. It was good to see the topic of parent abuse getting a good airing after an earlier item appeared in the same paper in a couple of months ago (see my post of 24th August); and encouraging to see a call for early intervention to prevent abuse before it reaches this stage. Continue reading
Filed under news reports, publications
Everybody Hurts: Parent abuse on Radio Sheffield
The top story on the Radio Sheffield breakfast programme yesterday morning (October 3rd) was to do with the launch of a support group for parents being abused by their children in the Sheffield area. Toby Foster gave a very sympathetic hearing to “Anne”, who established the group to reach out to parents in the same position as herself. She has a son, now 14, who has been violent towards first his sister and then herself and others since he was 7 years old. He now has a diagnosis of Aspergers, but Anne stressed that violence to parents was not only perpetrated by young people with health issues. Continue reading
Filed under radio and video
Parent abuse: Do the math. The cost of not intervening
“Mental disorders cost the economy more than £100bn a year” …. “2 million more adults and 100,000 more children will need treatment in 2030” … “a reduction in the number of people across the UK developing mental disorders appears to us to be the only way that mental health services will adequately cope with demand in 20-30 years’ time”. Soundbites from a recent piece in the Guardian, reflecting anxiety within the NHS as a whole that the money just won’t stretch far enough; and similar discussions abound whether with regard to physical health, education, criminal justice, social care …. The list goes on. So how to fund something new, such as services for families experiencing child to parent violence, at this time of budgetary constraints and cuts, might seem to be a question too far. Continue reading
Filed under Discussion
HOLES IN THE WALL 