16 Days of Activism - Day 11

16 Days of Activism - Day 11 - Family Lives

PEGS Admin • Dec 05, 2023

Family Lives was formed over 45 years ago by volunteers, with the aim of ensuring that all parents had somewhere to turn before they reached crisis point by providing a dedicated organisation to support parents.

We know that the right support at the right time makes all the difference. Family Lives provides targeted early intervention and crisis support to families who are struggling. We support families with a wide range of issues including children’s early development, challenging relationships and behaviour, and emotional and mental wellbeing.

We are a volunteer-led organisation with around 200 volunteers across our different services. We simply could not do what we do without them, alongside our dedicated team of staff. Many of our volunteers began their relationship with us as service users but have stayed to support others on their journey. This is a testament to the support they themselves received. We have many different volunteering opportunities available based both at home and in local communities.

Our crisis support, provided through our helpline, chat and email services, has always been at the heart of what we do. We also have long-standing programmes in the areas we work in across England, providing support to thousands of families through our befriending, outreach and home-visiting services.

Since our beginnings, Family Lives has supported families from the very first days of becoming a parent through to the teenage years and beyond. We are proud to offer support across the age range so that families can turn to us whenever they need us.

Over the last few years, we have seen an escalation in calls from family members relating to concerns about the levels of violence that children and young people are using against them. This has resulted in our call-handlers raising concerns about the significant risk to parents/carers and other family members, as well as to the children themselves. To explore this issue in more detail, we undertook a data review to examine the ways in which child aggression and violence manifests itself in the family home, and to identify some of the

underlying contexts that callers shared with us in our report Feeling Under Siege. You can read this report on our website.

We are committed to supporting families experiencing child to parent aggression and violence, and are proud to be working with amazing organisations such as PEGS to raise awareness of the increase of child to parent aggression and violence, and the support available.

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Grandparents can be abused too.

By Amanda Warburton-Wynn • 03 May, 2024

'Oh, we love having the grandchildren, especially because we can give them back!' How many times have you heard that? But have you heard 'We dread our grandchild coming to visit, we never feel safe until they've gone home'? Child to Parent Abuse is increasingly a topic of research but there is currently no formal definition and, if the consultation carried out by the Home Office in 2023 results in one, it's likely that grandparents won't get a mention in the main title. Of course, the age of grandparents can vary hugely but for those in the older age groups abuse from a child can be hard to understand and even harder to speak about. Whilst in many cases abusive behaviours are not linked to a health or mental health issue, some of the diagnoses involved in some cases of child to parent abuse weren't known until fairly recent times – ADHD was first recognised when mentioned in a National Institution of Clinical Excellence (NICE) report in 2000! Children who we now categorise as being victims of abuse and trauma were often just seen as 'naughty' back in the day and their behaviour needed to be dealt with by punishment. It's essential that we now recognise when children are asking for help – even if that is demonstrated by negative behaviours – but the impact of these behaviours on the whole family needs to be considered. Information Now say that In the past two generations, the number of children being cared for by their grandparents has increased substantially from 33% to 82% - almost two-thirds of all grandparents regularly look after their grandchildren. The UK Government add that 41% of mothers are working full time so it's clear that grandparents are spending more time with their grandchildren than ever before. There are myriad reasons for this including the changing demographics of an ageing population where many grandparents are now more physically active so spending time with grandparents can be more fulfilling than in the past (anyone else remember sitting in silence listening to the adults talk and drink team and hoping it would be time to go home soon?) But for all those positives, abuse of older people is a negative that's featuring more and more in research and in the news. Whilst several studies on both domestic abuse and elder abuse victimisation have reported that adult sons or grandsons, and a smaller proportion of adult daughters or granddaughters, are perpetrators in around half of all abuse against older adults (see Bows et al . 2022), there is little research into abuse by grandchildren who are aged under 18. One reason for this is likely to be the reluctance, by family members, professionals and society as a whole, to label children as 'perpetrators' or 'abusers Parents experiencing abuse from children have told PEGS that the abuse most commonly starts before the age of six and often continues post the child turning 18. It is probable that some children who display abusive behaviours towards parents will also abuse their grandparents but it's possible that some children abuse grandparents only. What is pretty much definite is that grandparents will feel the same emotions as parents if a child is abusing them – shame, guilt, worry about consequences of speaking out and concerned about causing problems within the family, especially if they appear to be the only targets of the abuse. It's also common to look for a reason for the abuse, something that has happened to the child perhaps or something that the grandparent has/hasn't done and to try to rationalise the abuse. As well as more research, there needs to be more recognition from organisations working with older people – statutory and voluntary – that Child to Parent Abuse can and does include children abusing grandparents and those grandparents need support. Abuse from a child is often no less dangerous than abuse from an adult so it shouldn't be laughed off or seen as grandparents not having enough 'control' over their grandchildren. More awareness of the issue, more open discussions and acknowledgement of the impact of this type of abuse will hopefully lead to appropriate support for grandparents who come forward to ask for help, and more of them doing so. Amanda Warburton-Wynn is an independent researcher and consultant specialising in support for domestic abuse and sexual violence survivors with disabilities and older people. You can find out more about Amanda and her work on her website www.awdaconsultancy.com