As recently as twenty years ago, there was little recognition of the harm caused in families when children use violent and abusive behaviours towards their parents and carers and it is only in the last ten years that there has been significant research around the world to help us understand and respond the issue. In this time, Al Coates MBE and Hele Bonnick (author of the book, Child to Parent Violence and Abuse: A Practitioner’s Guide to Working with Families published by Pavilion) have been at the forefront of raising awareness and promoting policy in the UK as well as in other countries.
In this webinar, Al and Helen walked us through the issue of challenging, violent and aggressive behaviour in children and adolescents. They considered the underlying causes and risks for the behaviour, its prevalence, how it manifests in the home and outside of the home and what this behaviour is telling us. The webinar explored the reasons this has emerged as an issue of concern, and how we can best respond when families ask for help or seem to be having difficulties. The training also examined the impact on parents and carers as well as considering how we can support those families and children.
The Webinar is open to anyone with a role in Safeguarding. This was a brief introduction, but also offered signposting to further resources and made suggestions for further training and there were also Top Tips and time for questions.
Helen Bonnick bio
Helen Bonnick is a social worker with over 30 years of experience in the field of family work, at both practitioner and supervisory levels, based first within local authority social services teams, and then within schools for around 16 years. She also worked for a number of universities, supporting and assessing social work students on placement.
In 2004, Helen started researching the difficulties experienced by parents in finding help when their children were violent or abusive towards them, and since 2016 her work has been exclusively within this field, writing, training and consulting. She has a website, www.holesinthewall.co.uk , which acts as an international discussion and resource hub, has been a member of a number of working groups and has regularly spoken on the radio and at training events and conferences. Her book, ‘Child to Parent Violence and Abuse: a practitioner’s guide to working with families’, was published in May 2019 by Pavilion, and offers advice and guidance to all those engaged in work in this developing field. Helen is proud to be a patron of Capa First Response, an organisation offering support and training for all those living or working with child to parent violence and abuse.
Al Coates Bio
Al and his wife Paula adopted three children in 1999 and went on to be Foster Carers for a local authority for two children. They went on to adopt them in 2008 and their sibling in 2013. Their children are now 27, 25, 24, 16, 15 and 9. Al left his career in construction in 2008 to be a stay-at-home parent and subsequently trained to be a social worker qualifying in 2013. Since then Al has worked within Fostering and moved to be an Independent Social Worker in 2015 specialising in fostering, supporting adoptive parents and managing challenging and aggressive behaviour. Al has also campaigned to raise issues in relation to adoption and continuously worked with the Department of Education (DfE) since 2015 in various voluntary roles. Al also trains across the sector including police, youth justice, education, social care and families in a broad range of associated issues and is an NVR advanced practitioner. Since qualifying, Al has also been an active blogger and is the founder and co-host of “The Adoption & Fostering Podcast”.
This webinar was held on 9 October 2023
Resources
Helen Bonnick's book is available on Amazon:
Additional Resources from the webinar.
CPVA Additional Resources Word
Child and Adolescent to Parent Violence and Abuse - Training session, October 9th 2023
Additional Resources
Holes in the Wall website for reading, podcasts, videos, events and training, research links and a regular blog, as well as leaflets for parents and practitioners.
Helen Bonnick, Child to Parent Violence and Abuse: A practitioner’s guide to working with families, Pavilion Publishing, 2019
Briefing Papers: https://holesinthewall.co.uk/2022/10/10/capva-briefing-papers-free-to-download/
Adoption and Fostering podcast
Weekly discussions about topical issues
https://adoptionandfostering.podbean.com
National Directory of Services
National Child/Adolescent to Parent Violence and Abuse (CAPVA) Service Directory: originally developed by Helen Bonnick and available on the Holes in the Wall website
https://www.respectyps.org.uk/directory
National support services – phone / online
Family Lives: https://www.familylives.org.uk
Capa First Response: https://capafirstresponse.org
PEGS: https://www.pegsupport.co.uk
Specialist organisations offering practical guidance and support for families
Adult children
Adfam: https://adfam.org.uk
AVA: https://avaproject.org.uk/resources/
Dewis Choice: https://dewischoice.org.uk
Disability
'Are you worried about a child's difficult and dangerous behaviour? Does your child sometimes become violent towards others? Do the rest of the family sometimes get hurt? Newbold Hope is entirely run by parents who have been through this with their own child and our whole approach is based on what we know has already worked successfully in our own families and in thousands of others.'
Newbold Hope: https://www.newboldhope.com
Adoption / Fostering / Special Guardianship / Kinship
Adoption UK: https://www.adoptionuk.org
PAC-UK: https://www.pac-uk.org
Special Guardianship Support Service: https://www.specialguardiansupport.org.uk
'Kinship is the leading kinship care charity in England and Wales. We’re here for all kinship carers – the grandparents and siblings, the aunts, uncles, and family friends who step up to raise children when their parents can’t.'
Kinship: https://kinship.org.uk
The Potato Group: Parents of Traumatised Adopted Teens Organisation
https://www.thepotatogroup.org.uk
Neurodiversity
Autism and ADHD: https://www.autismandadhd.org