public health and social care

Tackling child to parent violence at South Tyneside Council

Cllr Joan Atkinson, Lead Member of Area Management and Community Safety at South Tyneside Council talks about the council’s approach to violence within families.

Today (Nov 25) sees violence against women in the spotlight marked by the global White Ribbon campaign.

However, while most people know about domestic abuse and its effects, less attention is given to child or adolescent violence against parents/carers. This is a serious issue for many families, which can be misunderstood or overlooked.

New figures suggest that reported incidents have doubled in the past three years. Child to parent violence can occur in any family anywhere and is not associated with economic class, ethnic background or sexual orientation. Families can have difficulty admitting even to themselves that they are in these difficult circumstances. Families can feel ashamed, disappointed and humiliated and blame themselves for the situation.

Following the case of a woman in a neighbouring authority area who was murdered by her son, we decided to take action. As a starting point, we talked to families who had experience of this type of behaviour. We asked them why they were reluctant to ask for help earlier. Their answers were startling. They felt their views were not taken seriously and claimed they were often “judged” and made to feel humiliated by the professionals who should have been there to support them.

While recognising that this issue is by no means unique to South Tyneside or, indeed, the North East, we felt this was something we had to change. Taking a whole system approach, our Community Safety Team applied for funding from the Police Crime Commissioner to deliver awareness-raising training of the issue across the Northumbria Police area. This was rolled out to police officers, health practitioners and Children’s Services at all levels across six Local Authority areas.

To date, more than 500 police officers and 700 professionals have been trained across the region. The project continues to evolve with police officers and safeguarding staff now routinely looking for evidence of Child to Parent Violence when called to incidents.

Here in South Tyneside the scheme has proven so successful that we are extending the training.  We now have 18 accredited staff trained to deliver the Respect Young Peoples Programme and a further 25 staff attended the one day ‘Ask and Act’ early intervention session last month.  

Furthermore, leading national domestic abuse organisation, Respect, recently approached us in relation to a new project that will “road test” a range of specialist programmes to help parents cope with violence from children with more complex needs such as autism and ADHD.

The £50,000 funding for this region-wide project has been provided by the Crime Commissioner. This is money well spent helping families living with this difficult issue. Additionally, considering that it costs around £40,000 to put someone through the criminal justice system, this project makes good economic sense. But projects like those are also good for society.