Tag Archives: Parent abuse

by helenbonnick | October 21, 2013 · 9:52 am

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.

Addressing parent abuse through Juvenile Family Courts in USA

This piece from the Orlando Sentinel on 4^thOctober, 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 24^th August); and encouraging to see a call for early intervention to prevent abuse before it reaches this stage. Continue reading →

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Filed under news reports, publications

Tagged as Amanda Holt, Brezina, Child to parent violence, domestic violence, early intervention, Family violence, Parent abuse, Rosemary Pate, Santa Clara Juvenile Domestic and Family Violence Court, Sarah Buel, Step Up

by helenbonnick | October 4, 2013 · 12:11 pm

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 →

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Tagged as adolescent to parent abuse, Amanda Holt, Child to parent violence, Everybody Hurts, Parent abuse, Radio Sheffield, Toby Foster

by helenbonnick | October 1, 2013 · 1:37 pm

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 →

Weekend round-up

Over the last weeks a number of things have caught my attention and I thought it worth while bringing them all together here before they get lost.

A new journal article from Mounir H Fawzi, Mohab M Fawzi & Amira A Fouad, Parent abuse by adolescents with first-episode psychosis in Egypt, Journal of Adolescent Health, published online 16.08.13 (abstract here). The purpose of the research was to determine rates of parent abuse among this group of adolescents presenting at outpatients, and to identify the association between parent abuse and a number of socioeconomic and clinical factors. I found the article interesting for a number of reasons. It does not seem so long a time since people were asking whether parent abuse was a phenomenon confined to western societies with particularly lax forms of parenting, yet time and time again there are news items and articles emerging from societies right across the world. The findings show clear bias towards sons as abusers and mothers as victims, (apologies for the terminology which I know is uncomfortable for some people). Once again parent abuse is described as a taboo, a hidden problem, and there is a call for greater awareness raising, education and support. Continue reading →

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Filed under Discussion, publications, Research

Tagged as A Bad Mum, A Kind of Trouble, Caroline Miles, Fawzi Fawzi and Fouad, lou purplefairy, Parent abuse, Rachel Condry, troubled families

by helenbonnick | September 16, 2013 · 7:28 am

Trouble in the Troubled Families Department

I have a sort of Love-Hate relationship with the Trouble Families Programme and so I like to keep abreast of developments and opinion as it unfolds, for instance the announcement last week on September 10th that 14,000 families have now been ‘turned around’.

I am torn between the belief that intensive family support can be extremely productive – and that this is in fact what brought many folk into social work in the first place – and the concern about the turn such a model of intervention has taken on the current government’s watch. Intensive Family Support Programmes have a proud heritage and it is from them, significantly, that we have learnt much about children’s violence to parents in the UK. Continue reading →

Elder Abuse: Is this the same thing as parent abuse?

In June 2006 an article in the Times newspaper reported on a parliamentary Health Committee inquiry, set up in 2003 and prompted by estimates that up to 50,000 of Britain’s elderly were subject to abuse from relatives and carers. The inquiry declared the abuse of the elderly to be Britain’s “last hidden abuse scandal.” This weekend the Observer has reported on former health minister, Paul Burstow’s concern that figures show as many as 370,000 older people were abused in their home last year – a “hidden national scandal” – and that the number is likely to increase to nearly half a million by the end of the decade. These figures are based on data extrapolated from a survey of 2000 people in 2007. Nevertheless, they suggest that this is a story that has captured the imagination of those in power. Continue reading →

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Filed under Discussion, news reports

Tagged as Child to parent violence, children's abuse of parents, elder abuse, Parent abuse

by helenbonnick | August 30, 2013 · 2:19 pm

Silent Cries: a child’s account of living with violence

Amongst the many factors that have been identified with regard to children’s violence to parents, the experience of living with domestic violence has been found to have significant prominence. Yet the way this influences children’s behaviour is itself multi-layered and will vary from family to family.

The normalising of violence, anger and disdain for the parent who failed to protect themself or the children, “stepping up to the plate” once the abusive adult is no longer in the household – these are the links commonly cited, but we hear less of the child who fights back at the time in attempts to protect one parent from the other. A book, which I was sent this week, opens up this aspect of parent abuse, in what the Yorkshire Post described as “an intensely moving account” of domestic violence through the eyes of a child. Continue reading →

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Tagged as children's violence to parents, domestic violence, Parent abuse, R Ryrie, Rosalie Ryrie Foundation, Silent Cries

by helenbonnick | August 5, 2013 · 8:57 am

A Police Response to Parent Abuse

When I undertook my Masters study in 2004 – 6, one of the people I interviewed was a police officer, who described his sense of frustration at the difficulties in responding to incidents where parent abuse could be clearly identified. Pretty much everything I had read online or in the literature had suggested that the police hadn’t a clue, sided with the young person, maybe arrested the parent and certainly had nothing useful to offer; so it was interesting to sit down with someone and hear the other side. He identified a system of adhoc responses depending on the awareness of the individual officer, and then nothing concrete to offer, nowhere to refer on to as there was no agency taking responsibility for meeting the needs of families where children’s violence to parents was an issue. Continue reading →

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Tagged as Amanda Holt, DASH, domestic abuse, domestic violence, Greater Manchester Police, MARAC, Parent abuse, Simon Retford, troubled families

by helenbonnick | July 29, 2013 · 4:45 pm

You can’t afford to dabble

Can anyone respond to a referral of parent abuse? Since we are encouraging practitioners to recognise when child to parent violence is a feature of family function or dysfunction, what are people supposed to do next? How should they intervene? Do you need to follow an approved programme, or can you use practice that works in other settings?

A discussion with Sandra Ashley, Director of Hertfordshire Practical Parenting Programme, touched on these questions as we looked at the range of support programmes on offer and the training offered to facilitators. (You can learn more about some of these programmes on the Resources pages of this blog) Some of these programmes have commonalities. Others feel quite different in emphasis and style and in philosophical background. Meanwhile, bespoke parent abuse projects increasingly find that they are taking referrals from mainstream agencies that feel their own staff lack the necessary expertise (or time perhaps?), while initiatives such as that falling within the Troubled Families remit may be using practitioners from a range of backgrounds to tackle this among many other issues. Continue reading →

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Tagged as Child to parent violence, Hertfordshire Practical Parenting Programme, Parent abuse, Sandra Ashley, troubled families

Tag Archives: Parent abuse

A growing problem in Ireland

Addressing parent abuse through Juvenile Family Courts in USA

Everybody Hurts: Parent abuse on Radio Sheffield

Parent abuse: Do the math. The cost of not intervening

Weekend round-up

Trouble in the Troubled Families Department

Elder Abuse: Is this the same thing as parent abuse?

Silent Cries: a child’s account of living with violence

A Police Response to Parent Abuse

You can’t afford to dabble

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DOCUMENTING PARENT ABUSE

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