PEGS Founder reflects on attitudes to CPA

Harriet Ernstsons-Evans • Jun 11, 2021

PEGS first began offering support to parents and professionals in 2020 – now more than a year on, Founding Director Michelle John has taken some time to share her thoughts and reflections on what she’s learned and the responses she’s received along the way:

I started PEGS not knowing what it was going to be, I just knew that something had to be done and a voice given to those parents, carers and guardians who were trying to survive another day in a situation where they alone and scared. Scared for themselves, scared for their family and scared for the unknown.

Living with a child who displaying abusive, violent or out of control behaviours is not easy, it is not a happy time, and it is not safe, yet all too often judgements and comments are made that blame the parents. Could you imagine the uproar if society blamed an intimate partner victim of domestic abuse for their situation? Yet the majority still find it acceptable to make judgments and/or blame a parent for their child’s behaviour towards them.

There is no worse critic for a parent than a parent themselves, they do not need to be criticised when they reach out for help and support, they need to be listened too, believed and empowered.

Day after day, I am privileged to hear parents’ experiences across the country, different families yet often similar situations. One thing that is constant across the UK is the lack of understanding, missed opportunities to keep families safe, and a failure of having policies and frameworks to assist professionals in upskilling their knowledge and providing effective care and support.

I spend a lot of my day talking to individuals and organisations about Child to Parent Abuse, I try to offer these professionals the support they need to navigate the complexity of working with families where a child is abusing their parent or carer. I will suggest other services such as Forensic CAMHS, an excellent service within England (FACTS is the Welsh equivalent) who are able to offer support for professionals and families where a child or young person with or without a diagnosis is displaying extremely violent, harmful or out of control behaviours. If you are not aware of Forensic CAMHS please ask at your health boards for details of your local service. I try to encourage multi agency working and share what tools we have here at PEGS to help those professionals understand and empower them in helping their families.

I am also challenged by some professionals on Child to Parent Abuse and that the behaviours must have been learned from somewhere, that there is no such thing, or even that the parent just needs to ‘be a parent’. I hear excuses being made for the sometimes extremely violent and aggressive incidents; I hear how parents are told they need parenting classes – do we send intimate partner victims on programmes on how to be a better partner? No, we do not, and we never would, yet for the majority of the time the response for parent and carers victims seems to be that a parenting programme is the answer.

I see professionals telling parents that they will be prosecuted for neglect or abandonment if they try to seek support for the child to live outside of the family home. Again, could you imagine anyone telling an intimate partner of abuse ‘if you ask them to leave you will be prosecuted’?! The suggestion itself seems ludicrous yet time after time the parents I work with are being told this is the case. Currently almost 20% of the parents PEGS supports have been threatened with this action by local authorities – appalling, heart-breaking and causing further distress, worry and fear.

And what happens when the ‘child ‘is 18 or over? Sadly, there is not much difference, the suggestion that it is somewhat easier as the parent can choose to ask their child to leave, to stop all communication and to make better choices are often the first comments made. Yet the reality is this is no easier when your child is over 18 than when they are under 18. Parents with adult children are seeing and hearing similar comments, they are almost left even more alone (if this is possible) than the parents with younger children.

Some of the parents we support have been experiencing decades of abusive behaviours, they are being missed by services, professionals, family, friends, and the community. The assumption that as the child is an adult so therefore its easier to find a solution is rife, the onus is still placed on the parents, especially if their child has an additional need. Again, we are seeing older parents being told that if they ask for their adult child who may have additional needs to leave, they would be placing a vulnerable adult homeless and at risk and that would potentially see them as being in the wrong. So, they are left trying to survive day after day with behaviours that they can not manage and quite frankly should not have to put up with. We all have the right to live fear free and safe in our homes, yet this does not appear to apply to parents.

We have also sadly heard of cases where a child has killed their parents, take DHR Sarah for example, her son was 16 when he killed his mum, yet she had been asking for help and support for a decade. Again, we have seen cases of where adult children have killed their parent. I am often met with shock, disgust, confusion and comments especially when the child Is under 18 of ‘well I can’t believe that, what did the parent do for their child to react that way?’ Even when a life has been lost, in cases of child to parent domestic abuse the parent is still blamed and judgments made.

I know this is a difficult and uncomfortable topic to talk about, especially for those us who have children, and it can be difficult to understand for those who haven’t experienced it themselves. Yet not experiencing something directly does not mean it is not someone else’s reality. Support put in place when parents ask for help is the way forward, and change is needed. The parents I support echo my views: many have asked for help at the start yet were ignored, blamed or sent on a programme yet when things have then escalated and the parent or even a sibling has come to harm, the parents were then blamed for not asking for help sooner and some have had their children removed for failure to protect – can anyone else see the problem here?

Image going to the doctor repeatedly to be told take over the counter mediation for you to then require urgent hospital treatment to be told you should have come to us sooner. Blame is not helpful for anyone - listening, supporting, and empowering is. You can choose how you respond when someone tells you they are experiencing these behaviours from their child, it is a privilege to be told something so painful, upsetting and deeply personal, you may be the only person they have told so you response matters in more ways than one.

For domestic abuse victims I must stress here how difficult and at times unsafe it is for them to reach out for help, they do so when they feel they are strong enough and able enough to ask for help and support, to then be told you did not ask for help soon enough is soul-destroying. Victims are already feeling punished they don’t need to feel punished by those who should be helping.

Do I know what the answer is? No, I do not, but I am sure trying to make change and to get these parents’ voices heard. I ask that you stand alongside me, PEGS, and parent victims to become part of the solution and not part of the problem.

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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