Understanding children's 'accommodation' of parental separation and divorce

Dr Sue Kay-Flowers is a Senior Lecturer in the School of Education at Liverpool John Moores University. Building on her earlier professional career in probation and the family courts, and longstanding interest in researching children and young people’s relationships, Sue’s recent book, 'Childhood Experiences of Separation and Divorce; Reflections from Young Adults' (Policy Press) gives ‘voice’ to children’s experiences of parental separation.

You can hear Sue talk about her book and new tool to support professionals at her forthcoming seminar, 'Understanding children's 'accommodation' of parental separation and divorce' on 5th November at 12 noon. Details, including sign up, is on eventbrite.  

The opportunity for young people to speak for themselves about their experiences of parental separation is often missing from the research literature. Their participation tends to be based on their parent(s) participation in previous studies, requires parental consent, or their accounts are seen through a professional lens.  

What I wanted to do through my research was to understand young people’s childhood experience of parental separation; what they thought, and felt, about the separation at the time, what they considered important then, and how they view their experiences as they looked back now. Analysis of their accounts led to:

• understanding of how they felt about the changes that took place as a result of the separation
• the opportunity to assess ‘accommodation’ of the separation over time.
• the opportunity to identify aspects of their experience that helped to support, or created challenges, in accommodating the separation.
• the knowledge being used to create a framework to support those working and living with children experiencing separation, in helping them to adjust to the changes it brings.

Working with young people, a 'bricolage' of innovative research methods were created to access the ‘voices’ of young people about their childhood experiences of parental separation. The challenge was to create a space where they felt able to talk openly and honestly about their personal experiences. The young people involved in the research felt that participants would most likely engage online, however, it was also agreed that an online survey would not be enough to engage their interest. The young people decided that a short video clip at the start would help as the ‘hook’ needed. 

Adopting this approach, I used my professional experience of working in the Family Courts to write a case study. This was then acted out by young people, filmed by a young film maker and uploaded onto YouTube. The result was 'Prompt Simulation Video' and it was viewed by all participants who completed the questionnaire. 

The accounts of young people were analysed to assess the extent to which they ‘accommodated’ their parents’ separation over time. First, we analysed accounts according to the level of satisfaction shown - did they feel their expectations or needs had been met? Second, we analysed accounts according to acceptance - did they see post-separation arrangements as adequate or suitable?

Our analysis allowed us to identify the things that helped support a child in accommodating parental separation and those that created challenges. This led to the creation of the 'Framework for understanding children's accommodation of parental separation', a tool designed to deepen understanding of how children experience parental separation over time. This can be used by practitioners and parents to support children and young people in adjusting to the changes parental separation brings. Subsequently it has been used to inform a short article on 'what young people say helped them get through their parents' divorce' in The Conversation.

The framework is now being tested by practitioners in different roles in schools (Deputy Headteachers, SENCos, Social Workers), in the Children and Family Court Advisory and Support Service (CAFCASS) and psychologists working in a Centre for Mental Health and Counselling in Nepal. Assessing its usefulness in practice is the next stage of the research process. It is also being used to inform a pack designed to promote children and young people’s resilience for use in schools.

Making Scotland an ACE informed nation: continuing the conversation - an event summary

CRFR co-director Dr Emma Davidson summarises the key themes emerging from our recent seminar reflecting on the emergent ACE (Adverse Childhood Experiences) and resilience agenda in Scotland.

We began a conversation on ACEs and resilience in December 2017 at the seminar, ‘The Troubling Concept of Resilience’, where Dr Eric Carlin and myself voiced our concerns that the dominant narrative on resilience could obscure inequalities; penalising individuals by making them responsible for their own wellbeing. Since then, we have witnessed the mounting influence of ACE and resilience-focused policy in Scotland. It is now even more important to provide a space in which popular rhetoric on ACEs and resilience can be constructively and respectfully critiqued.

Our event on 6^th November 2018 aimed to reignite that process. We welcomed three speakers: Dr Amy Chandler, Dr Cara Blaisdell and Laura Wright, each of whom talked from their perspective of their own field of research.

Amy’s presentation (which you can watch here) examined the potentially counter-productive ways ACEs are used in research on suicide and self-harm. Early experiences, Amy noted, are undeniably important in shaping later risks of, or experiences with, suicide and self-harm. However, there is a tendency to rely on a mechanical or ‘addictive’ analysis, with a correlation drawn between early adversity and later problems. The work of explaining what these correlations actually mean, or understanding the mechanisms behind them, are less well developed. Drawing on her own research, Amy highlighted that this focus can mean that interpretation and meaning is omitted – what do adverse experiences mean and feel like to different people, at different times? And how are social and political conditions implicated in this? Also absent, Amy suggested, is the role of agency. The popular narrative of resilience plays into the long standing stigmatisation of mental health problems as being associated with weakness. This way of thinking about resilience implies that those experiencing self-harm and suicide are not resilient.  The reverse can in fact be true, with the practice of self-harm being evidence of extreme resilience in extreme circumstances.

Dr Cara Blaisdell’s work picked up on this critique within an early years setting (read Cara’s new blog here). She highlighted the potential for the ACE agenda in Scotland to reinforce what Tuck (2009) refers to as a ‘damage narrative’. Rather than holding those in power to account, these narratives can reinforce particular ideas about children and society: where the ‘poor’ child is a site of damage to self and society; where professional labels children and seek to ‘fix’ them; and where structures of oppression remain unchallenged and unchanged. Cara’s made the acute observation ‘what you focus on is what grows’. This is not a denial that bad things happen, but rather an acknowledgement that deficit based models can label, provoke normative ideas (of family, of parenting, of childhood). Ultimately deficit models stigmatise, and they leave little room for the complex meaning making emphasised by Amy as being so crucial.

Our final speaker was Laura Wright who raised what is an under-acknowledged issue within ACEs – and that is the role and status of children’s rights. Scotland is, noted Laura, a country recognised as a global leader in children’s meaningful participation. This work is supported by multiple organisations, initiatives (we are now coming to the end of the Year of Youth People) and legislation (i.e. Children and Young People (Scotland_ Act 2014). A tension, nonetheless, remains between participation and protectionism – with the latter superseding the former. The implications of this, argues Laura, requires exploration. At present, children and young people have not been given the opportunity to meaningfully participate in discussions about what is included or excluded from the list of ‘adverse childhood experiences’. Indeed, at an individual level, adults are completing checklists for children and young people, and using this to make decisions about possible interventions. What, asked Laura, does such an approach look like, and how it is given meaning by children and young people? Critically, how can a plan designed to be child-centred, like Getting it Right for Every Child, better engage children and young people in active conversations about their own well-being?

There is – as Laura concluded – no magic bullet. However, the speakers agreed that the way forward is not simply to shift from asking ‘what’s wrong with you’, to ‘what happened to you’. Rather, what is required is a move towards a strengths approach which asks what is right with you, your family, your community and your society. On a practical and pragmatic note, more reflection and time needs to be spent on how complex ideas – such as meaning, context and interpretation – be meaningfully incorporated in institutional structures and practices already under incredible pressure.

We intend to continue these conversations and look forward to seeing you at our forthcoming events. There are four more seminars planned for 2019. Each will consider ACEs and resilience through a different conceptual lens. These are: 

·        ACEs and foetal & infant development

·        ACEs, resilience and gender

·        Resilience in the Majority World

·        ACEs and resilience in Scottish schools

We will be announcing dates for these seminars in the New Year. Please subscribe to the CRFR website for updates on this, and CRFR’s other events and research activities.

Further links

Drs Emma Davidson and Eric Carlin reflect on their CRFR Informal Seminar ‘The Troubling Concept of Resilience’.
Resilience – continuing the conversation

CRFR Associate PhD student Ariane Critchley provides her thoughts on resilience in response to the recent CRFR Seminar ‘The Troubling Concept of Resilience’ given by Eric Carlin and Emma Davidson.
How resilient do we want our children and young people to be?

Dr Caralyn Blaisdell from the University of Strathclyde continues our discussion on the theme of resilience and how this term is being used, with specific reference to early years.  
Resilience in early years – continuing the conversation

ACE Awareness,damage narratives and social justice in early years practice: personal andprofessional reflections

Laura Wright, University of Edinburgh talks about engaging children in the ACE agenda.

ACE Aware Nation: Engaging Children in the Conversation

ACE Awareness, damage narratives and social justice in early years practice: personal and professional reflections

Dr Caralyn Blaisdell from the University of Strathclyde continues our discussion on the theme of resilience and how this term is being used, with specific reference to early years. 

As an experienced practitioner, researcher and lecturer specializing in early childhood education, I have had a mixed reaction to the recent push for being ACE Aware. Discussions about love, kindness and empathy are very welcome and needed. At Strathclyde, our students discuss how their settings are moving away from punitive practices, toward a deeper culture of listening to children and young people and reflecting on relationships of power. There seems to be a real interest in recognising and remedying injustice and changing practices within systems. There has been increasing discussion of children’s rights within ACE Awareness, which is also very welcome and needed in early years.

At the same time, there is a danger that ACE Awareness is reinforcing damage narratives (Tuck 2009) and deficit thinking about young children and families:

•        The (poor) child and family as a site of damage to self and society

•        Labelling—professionals telling people what they are

•        Hero worship--the valiant professional who swoops in to fix the individual

•        Oppressive structures and behaviours remain unchanged 

(Quarrell and Davis 2018)

This vision of the heroic professional is not new or revolutionary in early years—it is just more of the same. Early years education is plagued by deterministic and simplistic views of human development—for example, the belief that the pattern for our lives is set by three years old. This belief easily leads to aggressive diagnosing of difference and labelling of young children. Alternative visions for early childhood education include celebration of difference as a source of strength, anti-bias work, political action, and walking alongside children and families to dream equitable worlds into reality (RECE, 2014).

In the CRFR seminar, we heard from audience members who felt curiosity, hesitance, inspiration and anger about ACE Awareness. Calls to dismiss or even condemn those who aren’t sure about ACE Awareness, or to accuse people of not caring about children or even doing more harm to children by questioning ACEs, are profoundly unhelpful and disheartening. In early years, ACE Awareness could potentially help challenge oppressive practices, recognise children and families’ own voices about their lives, disrupt power dynamics in institutional settings, and inform political education and action. However, ACE Awareness also has the potential to reinforce damage-based thinking, paternalistic practices and professional ego. If we choose to accept ACE Awareness, we must see it as only one facet of the intellectual and moral challenges of early childhood work. We must insist on continuing to ask uncomfortable questions about who benefits from this awareness.

To view her presentation from seminar on 6 November 2018, click the link below
http://www.crfr.ac.uk/assets/Ace-Aware_Cara-Blaisdell-1.pdf

Transferring ECEC to education: does it make a difference?

Two decades ago England, Scotland and Sweden moved responsibility for all early childhood education and care services (ECEC) and school-aged childcare(SACC) into education. These reforms and their consequences were examined in a cross-national study published in 2004: A New Deal for Children? Re-Forming Education and Care in England, Scotland and Sweden (Cohen, Moss, Petrie and Wallace, Policy Press, 2004). Our newly published article for the Routledge journal Early Years examines  developments since then and considers whether our conclusions  still stand.

In 2004, we found that the systems in the three countries were at very different stages when transferred into education.  Sweden already had  well-developed and well-resourced ECEC and SACC services all under the Ministry of Social Affairs, the former fully integrated with no childcare/education split and the latter usually part of whole day schools opening from around 7am  to 6pm. By contrast, in England and Scotland, ECEC and SACC services had long been neglected, poorly resourced and fragmented with responsibilities divided between health and education ministries/departments, although, as in Sweden, with some local authority experiences in developing more integrated ECEC.

Reasons for the reforms also differed markedly. In Sweden the move reflected the importance attached to seeing ECEC as the initial stage of lifelong learning as well as the nature of its social democratic welfare regime. Transferring these services to education brought a preschool curriculum framework and integrated education for preschool teachers, free-time pedagogues and school teachers. For the UK’s new Labour government, maternal employment and tackling child poverty were the drivers, and integration with education was only partial. But we noted that Scotland’s ‘New Community Schools’ pilot and a new school building programme, and  England’s extended schools, offered both countries the potential for reshaping the boundaries between education and care.  And we speculated that a devolved Scotland might move away from England’s liberal welfare orientation towards a more Nordic or ‘social democratic’ regime.

So what did we find in 2017?  We found continuing integration of ECEC and SACC into the education system in Sweden where access is now a universal entitlement for children over 12 months irrespective of parents’ employment and attendance is either free or very low cost. Concerns over protecting specific expertise and falling numbers of preschool teachers led to the integrated initial education system being dropped but substantial gains have been made in terms of improved child/ parental entitlement to early years provision, its affordability and access as well as enhanced status for the professions involved. Preschool heads now have the same status as school heads and whole-day schools have seen the evolution of multi-professional teams of preschool teachers, free time pedagogues and school teachers working together with mixed age groups of younger children.

In contrast, both England and Scotland have seen stalled integration and missed opportunities. Pre-existing structural and conceptual fault lines between ‘early education’ and ‘childcare’ continue. In Scotland, more radical visions and earlier prospects of New Community Schools delivering new relationships have not materialised. The Scottish Government has referred to not having ‘all the levers’: our study confirms the constraints on devolved administrations in developing substantially different policies when funding remains divided and decided at a national /federal level. In the UK, increased reliance on demand subsidies such as tax credits has reinforced the split between early education and childcare, weakened local authority leadership and made it more difficult to reshape the system.  But we conclude here that the continuing divide in Scotland – where local authorities and their schools continue to be the major providers of early education- also reflects the absence in Scotland of any clear strategy to extend schools’ remit to the provision of ECEC and SACC.  Sweden has shown the gains that can come from transferring responsibility for all ECEC into education whilst seeking to preserve its identity.  England and Scotland have so far, after two decades, failed to realise these potential benefits. For both, it has been a case of more of the same, rather than taking a ‘Nordic’ turn.

Further details on the study findings can be found in:

Bronwen Cohen, Peter Moss, Pat Petrie and Jennifer Wallace (2018) ’A New Deal for Children?’ – what happens next: a cross national study of transferring early education services into education. Early Years, To link to this article:

https://doi.org/10.1080/09575146.2018.1504753

Bronwen Cohen is an Honorary Professor of Social Policy and affiliated with the Centre for Research on Families and Relationships

Jennifer Wallace is Head of Policy at the Carnegie UK Trust

How does providing support for young families affect children’s well-being?

Dr Alison Parkes from the MRC/CSO Social and Public Health Sciences Unit at the University of Glasgow highlights findings from a recent study exploring the impact of support for parents on children’s well-being. 

Many parents with young children need extra help from time to time, in the form of financial aid, childcare or emotional support. Although it is well known that support can relieve parenting stress, it is less clear whether support for parents has a measurable impact on children’s well-being. Our study[i] of 2600 families living in Scotland found a link between the availability of support for mothers during the early years and children’s later mental wellbeing.

In order to be able to discount other possible explanations for the association found, the study controlled for a range of other factors related to both low levels of family support and poor child outcomes. Even after allowing for other factors such as family poverty and lone parenthood, we found lower levels of behavioural and emotional problems among school-age children whose mothers had been able to access support during their child’s early years.

The study examined mothers’ perceptions of the availability of support via two different channels: informal social support networks from friends and relatives, and support from health and social work professionals. There is universal provision of professional support for parents in the UK (for example, from health visitors and via GPs), as well as a range of support services targeted at vulnerable parents. Nonetheless, families often perceive barriers to service access and engagement. These only partly relate to low awareness or practical problems. Importantly, they also reflect parents’ perceptions that available support is inadequate to meet their needs, and fears about interference and stigma.

In exploring the ways in which support for mothers improved children’s wellbeing, the study found that professional support and social networks acted differently. Greater access to help from health and social work professionals was associated with more positive parenting, which in turn reduced the risk of children developing behavioural and emotional problems. Good social support from friends and relatives did not affect parenting so directly. However, the positive effects of social support on mothers’ greater economic security and mental wellbeing led in turn to more positive parenting, which then benefited children.

The study also looked at whether support helped to protect children’s wellbeing when families were under particular strain. Access to professional support channels had the strongest buffering effect. Among families with good access to professional support, the study found a weaker impact of less positive parenting on children’s emotional difficulties, when compared with families who found it difficult to access such help. A smaller buffering effect was found for social support. Here, the impact of family money problems on children’s emotional difficulties was weaker among families with strong social networks, compared with families who lacked this type of support. Collectively, our findings point to the value of professional services and social networks in strengthening children’s resilience to adversity. 

In conclusion, our study findings underline the importance of good social support networks for all families with young children, as well as the need to ensure good access to health and welfare services through building greater parental awareness and trust.

Further details can be found in the following open access publication (forthcoming): Alison Parkes and Helen Sweeting (2018) Indirect, and Buffering Effects of Support for Mothers on Children's Socioemotional Adjustment, Journal of Family Psychology


[i] This study used the Growing Up in Scotland first birth cohort, a nationally representative sample of families with children born between June 2004 and May 2005. For more information, see https://growingupinscotland.org.uk/

Resilience in early years—continuing the conversation

Dr Caralyn Blaisdell continues our discussion on the theme of resilience and how this term is being used.

“We like to think of childhood as a time of joy and innocence—for many of us it’s just not true.”

…so opens the trailer for the Resilience documentary, an American film currently touring through the children’s sector in Scotland. The film is a public service announcement dealing with the “biology of stress and the science of hope”. It explores the ways that exposure to trauma, particularly during childhood, affects a person’s whole being, and looks at associations with future health outcomes. Research suggests that prolonged stress is associated with poorer health outcomes in childhood and adulthood. The film specifically focuses on the Adverse Childhood Experiences Study but resonates with a wider body of research—for example, hypotheses about the ‘weathering’ effects on health of chronic stressors such as racism.

The tagline for the film is ‘the biology of stress and the science of hope’. It is perhaps the ‘hope’ elements of the documentary that are particularly important to interrogate. The film is from a US context and - perhaps unsurprisingly, given its origin - focuses largely on individualised remedies. These are important. But the documentary does not spend much time questioning how inequalities come about on a structural level. For example, the film looks at an intervention that involves drama therapists listening to children about their lived experiences. But why is this such a departure? Why do we not already create space for children’s voices and seek out their perspectives—and believe them? The film does not unpack children’s subordination and the institutional practices that silence them. It’s sad, but not surprising, that we need reminding that children are human beings with complex lives and relationships.

At Strathclyde University, the initial feedback from students who have seen the Resilience documentary suggests they see a role for themselves. From vowing to avoid making their classroom stressful for children, to understanding that ‘bad behaviour’ may not be about children being naughty, but instead stem from stress, to making a commitment to be brave and ask children about what worries them, the students are thinking about how their own practice might create a more just experience for children. For example, how do early years professionals deal with racist incidents in the playroom? Do we gloss them over in the name of being ‘nice’ and ‘all being friends’ (Konstantoni, 2013)? Are teachers aware of the structural causes of poverty and the ways poverty impacts on school life (Kustatscher, 2017; Treanor, 2017)? Do early years professionals have an understanding of how cultural, political and legal contexts shape the choices that are available to children and families, and their sense of belonging in country and community (Tillett and Wong, 2017)?

In previous CRFR blogs about resilience, the authors have asked us to consider who is responsible for resilience. Are we cheering when children and young people successfully ‘steel’ themselves against a deeply unfair society, or are we going to look at our own contributions to dealing them a better hand, as Ariane Critchley asks? Remedies for resilience, such as mindfulness, are increasingly popular in early years, but we need to ask ourselves WHY environments are stressful for children and how we can change our own ways of working.


Caralyn Blaisdell is a Lecturer in Early Years Education at the University of Strathclyde. She completed her PhD at CRFR on ‘Young children’s participation as a living right: an ethnographic study of an early learning and childcare setting’. 

References

Konstantoni, K. (2013) ‘Children’s rights-based approaches: the challenges of listening to taboo/discriminatory issues and moving beyond children’s participation’, International Journal of Early Years Education, 21(4), pp. 362–374. doi: 10.1080/09669760.2013.867169.

Kustatscher, M. (2017) ‘Young children’s social class identities in everyday life at primary school: The importance of naming and challenging complex inequalities’, Childhood, 24(3), pp. 381–395. doi: 10.1177/0907568216684540.

Tillett, V. and Wong, S. (2017) ‘An investigative case study into early childhood educators’ understanding about “belonging”’, European Early Childhood Education Research Journal, 0(0), pp. 1–13. doi: 10.1080/1350293X.2018.1412016.

Treanor, M. (2017) Can we put the ‘poverty of aspiration’ myth to bed now? CRFR briefing 91. Available at: https://www.era.lib.ed.ac.uk/bitstream/handle/1842/25787/CRFR%20briefing%2091%20-%20Treanor.pdf

How resilient do we want our children and young people to be?

In a follow-up post, CRFR Associate PhD student Ariane Critchley provides her thoughts on resilience in response to the recent CRFR Seminar ‘The Troubling Concept of Resilience’ given by Eric Carlin and Emma Davidson.


As a social worker I was fortunate to meet a number of children and young people who I would describe as ‘resilient’. The work of Gilligan (2001) was highly influential on my practice and I considered ways in which I might foster resilience in the children I worked with, particularly those children to whom we owed corporate parenting responsibilities, by virtue of their status as ‘looked after’. In my view, it makes sense to talk of ‘resilience’ in the context of frontline social work, where practitioners encounter young people who have suffered 'extraordinary vulnerability’ (Brownlie, 2014: 195) through their experiences of early trauma, their separation from family of origin, and experiences of an imperfect care system with multiple moves of home and school. Should young people flourish through such extremes of early adversity, aren’t we right to think of them as resilient?

I would argue that in this context, ‘resilient’ is exactly how we should describe the ongoing achievement that individual children make by not only surviving serious challenges, but somehow finding a way to grow and to thrive. And the ‘somehow’ here is crucial. Acknowledging Carlin & Davidson’s challenge, that resilience risks that we ‘prioritise external and normative judgements about individuals’ characteristics and behaviours and the adversities they are deemed to have overcome’ (Ungar, 2005), I wish to suggest that resilience as properly understood is an ecological and ‘relational’ quality (Bondi et al. 2007). We can only be resilient to the challenges we face through interaction with the internal and external factors that make up our life world. For example, our health, the people who surround us, the socio-economic context we live in, and the resources to which we have access. Resilience then, is not a ‘characteristic’ so much as a process.

Which is why, as social workers, we feel we can contribute to an individual child or young person’s overall ‘resilience’. However, this does not translate into a policy aspiration that all children and young people should be resilient. Listening to the seminar last week, what struck me was the way that the universal application of concepts such as ‘resilience’ can be dangerous. When youth policy suggests through GIRFEC that all Scottish children should be encouraged to be resilient we risk a backwards misapplication, which seems to demand that children and young people do their best with the cards they are dealt rather than our society finding them a better hand.

In their study of the operationalisation of resilience in practice, Daniel et al. cautioned that, ‘policy documents are increasingly referring to the promotion of resilience as an aim – it is important that such documents set out their operational definitions (Daniel et al., 2009)’. Viewing resilience ‘as an aim’ introduces the great danger that this seminar warned of; we might expect that children and young people encountering significant difficulty should simply become more resilient, flipping resilience on its head in a way that demands individual overcoming, not structural equalising. If resilience is understood as a dynamic process that occurs in conditions of adversity, the aim of public policy should surely be to challenge and reduce the social and material conditions in which children can truly be described as ‘resilient’, to decrease the very circumstances in which resilience can flourish.

Ariane Critchley is a qualified social worker and researcher with a range of interests across social work and public health. Ariane is based at the University of Edinburgh where she is writing up her ESRC funded PhD on pre-birth child protection, examining the complexities of applying child protection processes to unborn children and the experiences of practitioners and of expectant families. Ariane has contributed to Scottish Government publications on maternity care and is currently working with Social Work Scotland on finding evidence of good practice in the implementation of self-directed support in Scotland.


References


Bondi, L., Davidson, J. and Smith, M. (2007), ‘Geography’s ‘Emotional Turn’’, Chapter 1 in Davidson, J. Bondi, L. and Smith, M. (2007), Emotional Geographies, Aldershot, Hampshire: Ashgate.

Brownlie, J. (2014), Ordinary Relationships. A Sociological Study of Emotions, Reflexivity and Culture, Hampshire: Palgrave Macmillan.

 Daniel, B, Vincent, S, Farrell, E & Amey, F (2009), 'How is the concept of resilience operationalised in practice with vulnerable children?' International Journal of Child and Family Welfare, vol. 12 (1): 2-21.

Gilligan, R. (2001), Promoting resilience : a resource guide on working with children in the care system, London: British Agencies for Adoption & Fostering (BAAF).

Ungar, M. (2005) ‘Introduction: Resilience across cultures and contexts’, in Handbook for working with children and youth. London: Sage.

Measuring the impact of the book-gifting programme Bookbug

Ahead of the 2017 Bookbug conference research fellow Emma Davidson shares a few findings from CRFR's Bookbug research.

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Bookbug is the Scottish Book Trust’s Early Years programme, encouraging parents and children to share stories, songs and rhymes from birth. The Scottish Book Trust’s Early Years programme has gifted free bags of books and resources to children in Scotland for many years, and there are Bookbug Sessions taking place every day in Scotland’s libraries, nurseries, and early years centres.

Over the last two years CRFR has been investigating the impact of the Bookbug programme on parents, carers, children and early years professionals. Amongst other questions, we have been seeking to understand the impact Bookbug has had on attitudes to reading, and whether there is a link between the way Bookbug Bags are gifted and the impact it has on families.

One of the key principles of Bookbug is that is a universal programme. This means that Bookbug Bags are available for all families in Scotland, and that Bookbug Sessions are – without exception - free to attend.

The evidence from our study shows the importance of universal delivery. Bookbug, we found, can have a positive impact on all families: not just those who might be judged ‘in need’ should the programme be means tested. For many of the parents we spoke to – including those who already described themselves as placing a high value on reading – Bookbug played a key part in reminding them of the importance of reading and singing to their children, and prompting them to dedicate time to do this:

“I definitely do think that it’s made a difference, it’s made me make sure I set, you know, 10-15 minutes aside every day, to do that [reading] with him.” 

Moreover, parents described Bookbug as encouraging them to do this at an earlier age than they initially intended:

“I would have thought “oh, she’s too young”, so it prompted me to think “oh well if they’re giving it to me, she can’t be too young…These things are good to remind you to do it…like in theory I should know what I’m doing because this is number 2, but getting books does make you think ‘oh yeah, I should actually be reading to her and not just to her sister.” 

What is clear from the data is that we cannot make assumptions about who might benefit from Bookbug based on the number of children they have, their income, gender, ethnicity and so on. Regardless of these factors families spoke about the positive impact that book-sharing has had on bonding and attachment between themselves and their children and their child’s enthusiasm for books. At the same time, Bookbug Sessions enabled many families to form new social and support networks.

We look forward to sharing more findings from our Bookbug research with you over the forthcoming months - keep an eye on the Bookbug webpages for more information, or join the CRFR research network mailing list for updates about this and other ongoing projects.

Getting the (Law) Right for Every Child

This piece was originally posted on The University of Glasgow's School of Law blog on 29 July 2016 and is re-posted here with kind permission from the author CRFR associate researcher Professor Jane Mair, School of Law, University of Glasgow.

When the long awaited Supreme Court judgment was issued yesterday morning, the Scottish Government, behind the upbeat tweets and positive spin, must surely have groaned. The Named Person scheme, and the bigger project - the Children and Young People (Scotland) Act 2014 - of which it is only a part, has been a long time coming. From the consultation paper in 2012 to the planned implementation of the named person provisions in August 2016, and via a nationwide programme of training events and roadshows, this has been a major commitment and a lengthy process. To be halted – even temporarily and partially – at this late stage, must be frustrating to say the least.

It was not however yesterday’s judgement – a measured, insightful and wise opinion – which caused me to groan, but rather the draft Bill from which the now infamous named person provisions sprang. When I first heard about it, I wanted to like it. Who would not support an attempt to Get it Right for Every Child? Who does not want Scotland to be a good place (the best?) for children and young people to grow up? As the Supreme Court put it [para 91], “[t]he public interest in the flourishing of children is obvious”. As a family lawyer, any improvement in family law, particularly when it is child-focused, surely has to be a good thing. But nonetheless when I read the Bill, and the Act it became, I groaned – three times at least!

I groaned first as an old-style Scot; the product no doubt of that stereotypically dour Presbyterian upbringing. The motivational tone of management-speak, the self-belief in the power of individual intervention and the catchy GIRFEC strapline grate against my more measured, cautious, “let’s just do our best” brand of Scottishness. But that’s my problem and I am trying to adjust.

My second groan was as a lawyer. I care about the state of Scots law, family law in particular: not to derive some weird legalistic pleasure or for a narrow sense of academic satisfaction but because, if family law is to help and protect families, as it is intended to do, then it needs to be law that actually works. Statute should have structure. Like a well-constructed architectural model or a precisely planned electrical circuit, when lawyers look at legislation, they should be able to see how it will work. Who has the rights; what are the obligations; where are the thresholds? When is discretion triggered; what are the principles underpinning its exercise and where are the safeguards and remedies? The problems which law is designed to address are rarely simple, but simple and effective is what the law itself should strive to be. If we lawyers had not already noticed that the 2014 Act falls far short of these benchmarks, then the Supreme Court has surely left us in no doubt. While their decision was that the legislation is not competent, in the narrow sense of the legislative powers conferred on the Scottish Parliament by the Scotland Act 1998, in their observations they highlighted much wider concerns about the effectiveness of this as a legal framework. When the highly trained minds of the Supreme Court describe what has been created as a “logical puzzle” [para 37], there should be little doubt that this is law which will not work.

The problem may lie, at least in part, in the back story to the Act. The 2014 Act is an example of law which has grown out of practice. It is an attempt, well intentioned no doubt, to enshrine in law for all children the existing good practice already of benefit to some. From within the weighty portfolio of guidance, advice and training materials, which accompany this legislation, this comment offers some insight: “The text of a law rarely changes much on the ground; it’s how relevant organisations and individuals put that law into effect which determines its impact.” [CELCIS, Corporate Parenting Implementation Note 1] Of course, it’s the implementation that ultimately makes a difference, but the text of the law which underpins that implementation is vital. When this example of a Scottish statute is compared with models of good practice such as emanated from the Scottish Law Commission in the 1980s and 1990s, the deterioration in family law making is striking.

My third and final groan was as a parent and long standing reader of bedtime books. I groaned because I had read this particular story before and I feared it would not end well. I groaned at the Scottish legislation because it reminded me in so many ways of a wonderful series of books, by Lemony Snicket, which tell the sorry tale of children in need. Each time these children are exposed to danger, their corporate protectors wrap them more tightly in increasingly complex plans and burdensome processes, implemented by highly esteemed individuals with ever greater powers. How could those children not be safe? Sadly, of course, the common sense of the adults has been stripped away by over reliance on process and their innate ability to respond hampered by regulatory systems of compliance. And while the children repeatedly tell the adults where the danger lies, no one really listens. Before I incur the wrath of the wonderful Mr Snicket, who wrote those particular fictional tales, let me stress that his work has none of the structural or syntactical flaws of the Scottish legislation. Similarly, to the many real professionals who work with Scotland’s children, my concerns are not about your ability or commitment, but rather about the complexity and weight of process and procedure under which this legislation requires you to work.

So as the Scottish Ministers settle down to draft a response to the Supreme Court, I should like to suggest two pieces of weekend reading. First, the Children (Scotland) Act 1995 (in its original form), as a model of good legislation and secondly, Lemony Snicket’s A Series of Unfortunate Events, as a cautionary tale (2014, Egmont).

Involving children and young people in research and consultation: lessons learned from Scotland

Sara Lembrechts, of the Children’s Rights Knowledge Centre (KeKi) in Ghent, Belgium, attended our series of continuing professional development (CPD) courses exploring research with children and young people last year. In this post, Sara reflects on her time with us in Edinburgh and what she took away from the course and implemented in her day-to-day work back home.

In Spring 2015, my colleague and I attended the CPD “Involving children and young people in research and consultation” with the Centre for Research on Families and Relationships. In three times two days, dr. Susan Elsley and prof. Kay Tisdall guided us through the do’s and don’ts of meaningful and ethical participation of children and young people in research and policy making. The programme was a success – it stimulated our critical perspective on innovative creative and digital methods, made us become aware and question the assumptions that implicitly guide our work, and encouraged us to return to Belgium with a whole set of new ideas to implement.

The course conveners managed superbly well in creating a welcoming and comfortable environment in which interaction with the small group of participants was only natural. We have benefited greatly from the knowledge and experience of fellow researchers, practitioners, youth workers, artists, TED-speakers, poets, academic writers, resource persons and – last but not least – the children who joined us with their views and tips & tricks throughout the programme. The invitation to be creative and go digital ourselves was refreshing, as it opened our mind to new resources we were previously unfamiliar with. What is our own image of childhood, and how does it influence our work? How do you make sure participation is not tokenistic? How can we use the arts or digital media as a “way in” to get in touch with young people? How do you translate creative output into data?

The debate about such questions has indeed proven its great use in our day-to-day work at the Flemish Children’s Rights Knowledge Centre (in Dutch Kenniscentrum Kinderrechten vzw, abbreviated as KeKi). Operational since 2010, KeKi aims to gather, make available, disseminate, stimulate and increase knowledge on children’s rights. As such, KeKi operates as a bridge between (1) researchers from a wide range of academic disciplines, (2) policy makers in local, regional and federal government, and (3) practitioners working on matters concerning youth and children’s rights. In this role, KeKi develops tools, trainings and content that encourage critical reflection and can, at the same time, help in translating knowledge on children’s rights to these diverse domains (see www.keki.be/en).

One example in which we were able to implement what we had learned in Edinburgh, is a policy advice we recently wrote for the Flemish Government Administration on child participation in (local) policy making. We were asked to collect good practices, in particular on how to involve vulnerable youth (including children in poverty, children with disabilities and children in institutional care) in local and regional (i.e. Flemish) policymaking. Using the resources Susan and Kay had generously made available, we were able to show Flemish policy makers what they could learn from their colleagues abroad and hint at the tips and tricks we learned from everyone we met in Scotland.

Thanks to all who contributed in making our stay in Edinburgh so relevant and inspirational!

CRFR’s next CPD course Involving children and young people in research and consultation takes place in March and there are a limited number of spaces available. For further information and booking details, please visit: www.crfr.ac.uk/eventsandtraining/training/cpd-training/involving-children-young-people/

Harmonising the 2030 Agenda for Sustainable Development with children’s rights

By Patricio Cuevas-Parra, Senior Policy Adviser on Child Participation and Rights at World Vision International and CRFR PhD candidate.

For those working in international development, September 2015 marks a major milestone in the fight toward the eradication of poverty worldwide as the United Nations adopted the post-2015 development agenda. During its 69th session, the General Assembly agreed on the new global framework 2030 Agenda for Sustainable Development. This agenda included 17 Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) and 169 targets, which cover issues ranging from hunger and food security to climate change and sustainable ecosystems.

Over the past three years, a large number of children’s rights advocates and child-focused organisations engaged in intense consultations and negotiations with multiple parties, including governmental agencies, multilaterals, and civil society and private sector organisations. They sought to ensure SDGs were inclusive of children and their rights. Their efforts were successful. The adoption of the SDGs embodies, in the text, much human rights language, recognises children and young people as subjects of rights, and acknowledges the obligation to achieve progressively the full realisation of their rights.

As someone who has worked on children’s participation in different parts of the world, I was personally pleased to see a clear commitment to the realisation of children’s rights. I was also satisfied to read multiple mentions made of the right to participate in the declaration of the adoption of the 2030 Agenda. The SDGs underline the importance of the empowerment and engagement of children and young people as critical agents of change that should be able to participate fully in society.Nevertheless, many questions remain open. How will children’s rights be unpacked? How will the potential tension between child-wellbeing and child rights be addressed? How can we ensure that children and young people are able to participate in the implementation and monitoring of this global framework?

The SDGs have embraced a general human rights language, which is a major step forward; however, the core set of global issues affecting children have not completely been framed in relation to the United Nations Convention on the Rights of the Child (UNCRC). The discussion on favouring child well-being over children’s rights has also raise some concerns. For instance, there is a preoccupation that a focus on child well-being can undermine the obligations for States Parties have ratified the UNCRC.

For Tisdall (2015), children’s well-being and children’s rights are not equivalent concepts. The former underlines a preventive and asset-based approach, which is aspirational, but can be apolitical. On the other hand, children’s rights are a set of agreed upon minimum standards where the States Parties that have ratified the UNCRC, as the main duty bearers, can be held accountable to realise those rights. So, the harmonisation of the SDGs with children’s rights requires the States Parties develop a robust connection between the targets and the agreed upon set of non-negotiable UNCRC standards, especially in accordance with its core principles of non-discrimination, the best interest of children, the right to life, survival and development and the respect for the views of children.

The SDGs seek to realise the human rights of all and call to respect these rights. However, experiences from the field have shown that children and young people still face age-based discrimination and, as a result of that, they are excluded from decision-making processes. Moosa-Mitha (2005) argues that children will often be excluded if they are considered as ‘equality-as-same’ instead of being treated as ‘differently equal members of the public culture in which they are full participants.’ I believe that this difference-centre approach can help children and young people to exercise their citizen rights on the basis of their identity as children, and prevent them from being excluded solely on the basis of their age.

My final thoughts are around the promises made by SDGs to create spaces and opportunities for children and young people to participate in the global agenda. The member states at Rio + 20 also called to ensure the active participation of children and young people in decision-making processes and in monitoring and accountability. Writing from a UK context, Tisdall (2008) argues that one of the major tasks in ensuring children’s and young people’s participation is to change institutions to a position where they are able to include children and young people as stakeholders in decision-making. The SDGs have recognised children and young people as critical agents of change and asked them to actively engage in shaping their world. This is a very promising approach that has been widely applauded by children’s rights advocates, however, it is also brings several questions. How do the international community and other key actors incorporate children and young people’s participation in global strategies, policies and legislation and; more importantly, what do children and young people think about that?

If you would like to learn more about the SDGs, check out these sites: https://sustainabledevelopment.un.org/
http://www.un.org/sustainabledevelopment/wp-content/uploads/2015/03/SDGs-child-friendly.pdf
http://www.wvi.org/united-nations-and-global-engagement/article/world-visions-commentary-open-working-groups-proposed

References
- Moosa-Mitha, M. (2005) A Difference-Centred Alternative to Theorization of Children's Citizenship Rights, Citizenship Studies, 9 (4), pp. 369-388, DOI:10.1080/13621020500211354
- Tisdall, K. (2008) 'Is the honeymoon over? Children and young people’s participation in public decision-making' International Journal of Children’s Rights, 16 (3), pp. 343-354.
- Tisdall, K. (2015) Children’s rights and children’s wellbeing: Equivalent policy concepts? Journal of Social Policy, 44 (4), pp. 807-823, 10.1017/S0047279415000306.
- United Nations (2015) Transforming our world: the 2030 agenda for sustainable development, A/RES/70/1, retrieved 10 November 2015 from https://sustainabledevelopment.un.org/content/documents/21252030%20Agenda%20for%20Sustainable%20Development%20web.pdf

Patricio Cuevas-Parra's CRFR PhD project ‘All opinions matter: Children and young people leading their own research’ aims to critically explore how the process and outcomes of the participation of children and young people in their own research contribute, positively or negatively, to decision-making processes.

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Do you want to develop your skills in research and consultation with children and young people? Take a look at our Continuing Professional Development courses, delivered by Dr Susan Elsley and Professor Kay Tisdall:

10-11th March 2016: Involving children and young people in research and consultation
28-29th April 2016: Using creative methods in research with children and young people

What next for the early childhood research agenda?

What are the current trends, tensions and innovations in research with young children? What can we learn from early childhood research undertaken in different parts of the world? Where should early childhood research go next? In this blog CRFR Co-Director, Kay Tisdall introduces the recently published Sage Handbook of Early Childhood Research within which she and her co-editors set out to address these questions.

Policy-wise, early childhood used to be largely ignored. But in recent decades, early childhood has gained unprecedented attention, globally and nationally. Certain empirical evidence has helped garner this attention, from the tradition of child development, to the interest of economists, to the brain scans of babies. Qualitative and quantitative research has accumulated, across an even broader range of disciplines. As early intervention and early childhood become popularised policy concerns, it is timely to take stock.

Ann Farrell (Queensland University of Technology) reached out to Sharon Lynn Kagan (Columbia University) and myself, to ask if we wanted to put a book together. The result is the edited collection, just published as The Sage Handbook of Early Childhood Research. We set out to include a broad range of disciplines, both areas with rich and long-standing research investment and emerging ones, and learning from different contexts around the world.

Some of this was challenging to achieve. We were surprised by the number of childhood researchers who felt they ‘didn’t do’ early childhood. The magic age of 8 was a cut off for quite a few of our potential authors. This is a finding in itself: is there too artificial a divide between ‘early childhood’ research and ‘childhood’ research, reifying age and stage distinctions that may not be applicable to the research agendas and questions at hand? Is there more than could be learned across these literatures and research areas? We sought to encourage all authors to think widely, not to assume that their findings would address all diversity and all contexts. While this was well familiar to many of our authors working in the Global South (majority worlds), this was more challenging for some of our authors from the Global North (although generously receptive to our editing suggestions). Some authors came from a critical perspective on early childhood research in general and their own particular areas of work, while others were encouraged to introduce such a critique within their chapter, to stimulate us and future readers.

The book now has four parts: situating early childhood research; theorising early childhood research; conducting early childhood research; applying early childhood research; and considering the future. It covers a wealth of topics (from children in conflict situations to sustainability), a range of methods (from econometrics to narrative inquiry), and disciplines (from human geography to neuroscience). By the end, we identified three focal areas for the future early childhood research agenda. First, we need to address under-considered areas: responsiveness to cultural and ability variation; systematic structures and elements; and global comparison and trends; and the quality of ECE services, their equitable distribution and their sustainability. Second, we need to enhance research methodologies, tools and approaches, including new technologies and valuing both quantitative and qualitative approaches. Third, research results need to be applied more systematically and judiciously.

We conclude that implementing such an agenda is not a short-term or piecemeal undertaking. We aspire to the book contributing to critical reflection and provoking controversial thinking. By doing so, we think this will move early childhood research to its rightful place admist meaningful, sustainable and effective policy and practice.

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Do you want to develop your skills in research and consultation with children and young people? Take a look at our Continuing Professional Development courses, delivered by Dr Susan Elsley and Professor Kay Tisdall:

10-11th March 2016: Involving children and young people in research and consultation
28-29th April 2016: Using creative methods in research with children and young people

The affordances of digital technologies in children’s lives

This post is reposted with kind permission from its author Professor David McGillivray, Chair in Event and Digital Cultures, The University of the West of Scotland. The original post can be read on  David's blog.

[Last Thursday] I had the pleasure of attending a really interesting seminar titled, Children and Digital Technology, one of three events being hosted by the Centre for Research on Families and Relationships (CRFR) Digital Families across the Lifecourse. How technology mediates relationships within families and impacts on experiences of childhood (and what that now means) was the focus of the day’s discussions. We had presentations from Dr Joanne Westwood on the state of play for digital technologies and their social implications; from Prof Christine Stephen of University of Stirling on Digital Childhood and early years and from Dr Natalia Kucirkova of the Open University on Digital Childhood: Myths and Realities. There was also a healthy turnout from local authorities, government and third sector organisations impacted by the digital ‘turn’, including respectme, Parenting across Scotland and the Wheatley Group amongst others.

Some thoughts I took away from the event about the impact of digital technology on the experiences of young people, at home and in educational settings:

1. We don’t know as much as we ‘think’ we know. In other words, there are lots of myths and moral panics out there, especially around the ‘risks’ associated with children and young people being online for ‘excessive’ amounts of time.
2. Codes of conduct, regulatory frameworks and rules exist within and across online communities but they’re not always explicit. However, these more implicit codes are understood and followed by confident users of these platforms (and misunderstood by digital visitors!)
3. Yet, there remain a lot of young people who are not as digitally literate as we might presume, meaning that there is an even greater need for issues pertaining to privacy, ownership, rights, the provenance of knowledge online etc that needs to become more effectively part of the educational arena.
4. Crucially, for point 3, there needs to be a focus on the ‘affordances’ of digital technologies with an emphasis on , pedagogy, practice and literacies as opposed to ‘technology’ as and in itself. To emphasise the functionality of particular technologies is to miss their associated cultural practices.
5. We need to know more about what people are doing when they inhabit digital spaces and not just how long they’re spending there. Quantifying use is important (see the recent children’s media use stats from Ofcom) but only tells us part of the story. As researchers (and practitioners) we need to know more about what people are doing in digital space, who is doing it (and who is absent) and how these practices might impact on our understandings of whether participating in digital cultures is a ‘good’ or ‘bad’ thing.
6. Relatedly, we need to know more about whether participation and production in the ‘creation’ of digital artefacts is part of positive learning experiences, for children and young people and, if so, how are these more active digital making experiences being facilitated in the home, at school and beyond?

There were many other takeaways from the session and I’d recommend you try to get along to the follow up seminars in February and later in 2016. There’s so much to unpack in this digital space, as a parent, teacher or researcher. I’ll leave you with a provocation from Christine Stephen:

absence of a screen is now becoming a barrier to learning

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The Digital Families Across the Lifecourse project aims to bring together parenting organisations, practitioners and researchers to share what we have already learned about technology and family life, and to discuss the main issues facing families in Scotland today. The project is a collaboration between CRFR and Parenting Across Scotland and is funded by the Scottish Universities Insight Institute.

The project's second event will take place on 26 February 2016. Details will be available soon; please bookmark the project's page on the CRFR website or subscribe to receive notifications of events on our Facebook page.

Children's rights and wellbeing

Kay Tisdall, CRFR co-director

How do children’s rights and children’s wellbeing fit together? I became concerned about this in 2012. The Government proposed new legislation, in Scotland, promising ‘to make rights real’ for children. And the Government said it would legislate for ‘Getting it Right for Every Child’ (GIRFEC), so that the initiative was fully implemented across Scotland. GIRFEC seeks to improve how professionals and agencies work together, encouraging prevention and early intervention with children and their families. GIRFEC is outcomes-based, organised around 8 children’s wellbeing indicators. With both children’s rights and children’s wellbeing placed in the same legislation, an intellectual interest – how do the two concepts fit together? – became a practical policy concern.

Over the next 3 years, I have worked with colleagues, the Common Weal, and then colleagues in Europe and North America, to work out how the concepts are similar and different. If there are differences, do the differences matter? After all, children’s rights can fit into children’s wellbeing; children’s wellbeing can fit into children’s rights.

In the article just published in the Journal of Social Policy, I suggest that the time is past for casually pairing children’s rights and children’s wellbeing. Children’s rights and children’s wellbeing are distinct concepts, each with their own historical, philosophical and practical strengths and weaknesses. Children’s wellbeing benefits from being aspirational and maximising. It can easily incorporate children’s relationships and collective needs. Researchers have developed advanced quantitative methods of measurement, attractive for outcomes-based indicators. But children’s wellbeing risks being apolitical, utilitarian and professionally-led in both measurement and practice. Children’s rights, in contrast, emphasise minimum standards, do not easily include such important matters for children like love and friendship, and has had limited investment in quantitative measures to date. Children’s rights can be accused of over-emphasising individual autonomy and thus antithetical to more collective cultures around the world. Yet, children’s rights are powerful politically, backed by law and hold duty-bearers to account.

Melton claimed in 2014 that ‘the most fundament need in child policy is for due respect towards children as people’. Children’s rights require and underline such respect for children. It is possible for children’s wellbeing to include children’s rights. But this is not essential to how children’s wellbeing is conceptualised, measured or implemented. I thus favour children’s rights, at least for Scotland, where we still have so much to argue for: from children’s access to justice, to unacceptably high and increasing levels of child poverty, to urban estates replete with ‘no ball games’ signs on unused grass.

With children’s wellbeing on the national and international ascendance, a decision needs to be made about whether wellbeing or human rights best frame policy and practice. In Scotland – if only to rationalise dual planning tracks and other confusing policy requirements – we certainly need to do so.

Tisdall, E. K.M. (2015) 'Children’s Rights and Children’s Wellbeing: Equivalent Policy Concepts?' Journal of Social Policy, vol 44, no. 4, pp. 807-823., 10.1017/S0047279415000306

Melton, G. (2014) ‘ ‘Because it’s the right (or wrong) thing to do’: when children’s wellbeing is the wrong outcome’, in Ben-Arieh, A., Casas, F., Frones, I. and Korbin, J. (eds) Handbook of Child Well-Being, Dordrecht: Springer.

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Do you want to develop your skills in research and consultation with children and young people? Take a look at our Continuing Professional Development courses, delivered by Dr Susan Elsley and Professor Kay Tisdall:

10-11th March 2016: Involving children and young people in research and consultation
28-29th April 2016: Using creative methods in research with children and young people

All over now? Children's contact when there is domestic abuse

CRFR Research Fellow Fiona Morrison reflects on the findings of her recently published work examining children and mothers' perspectives of contact with fathers following parental separation in the context of domestic abuse.

People used to think domestic abuse was something that only affected adults. However a body of research[i] has shown that simply isn’t the case. Children overhear, witness, intervene and deal with the consequences of domestic abuse. A child may call the police following an assault. They may physically intervene to stop an attack. They may become homeless because of domestic abuse.  Through research, children have provided their own unique accounts of domestic abuse that have expanded our understanding of how domestic abuse affects children.

People often think that domestic abuse stops when couples separate. Unfortunately that’s not always the case either. Domestic abuse may continue following separation. Research[ii] has in fact found the presence of children to be a ‘risk factor’ for continued abuse following separation.

This raises difficult questions about post-separation contact between children and their fathers when there is domestic abuse. Post-separation relationships between children and parents are important. But what about the risks that contact may pose?

My PhD examined children and mothers’ perspectives of contact with fathers following parental separation in the context of domestic abuse. I interviewed children and their mothers about their experience of separation, making decisions about contact and children having or not having contact with their fathers. I have recently published some of the findings from my research. These confirm findings from other research – the ending of a relationship does not necessarily translate into the ending of abuse and contact often becomes a focus for the continued abuse of children and mothers.

My findings also elaborate on how parental relations continue to influence children’s contact with their fathers.  Far from being ‘all over now’, I found the relational consequences of domestic abuse to continue following separation through children’s contact. An absence of direct communication between parents created a vacuum that children often had to fill. This in turn rendered children exposed and vulnerable to continued abuse and parental conflict.  This was evident through fathers’ hostility towards mothers during contact, problems connected to parents’ re-partnering and conflict about legal proceedings and finances, all of which played out through children’s contact.

This raises further questions about how contact when there is domestic abuse should be considered. How can contact be safe? How can children be supported in this context? How do we ensure mothers are not undermined as a consequence of contact? How can fathers be supported in their relationships with their children while also accountable for their behaviour?

Contact is an important issue following separation and my research shows that in the context of domestic abuse we must be mindful of the risks that contact may pose as well as how parental relations affect the contact that children have.

You can read more about my research and other articles on Domestic Abuse and Safeguarding Children in a Special Issue of ChildAbuse Review.

If you have any concerns about domestic abuse or child contact you can get help from the following places:

ClanChildLaw provide free legal advice and representation to children across Scotland.

Childline provide confidential support to children.

ScottishWomen’s Aid provide information and support to women and children affected by domestic abuse across Scotland.

[i] Stanley N. 2011. Children Experiencing Domestic Violence: A Research Review. Research in Practice: Dartington.

[ii] Brownridge DA. 2006. Violence against women post-separation. Aggression and Violent Behavior 11(5): 514–530.

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Do you want to develop your skills in research and consultation with children and young people? Take a look at our Continuing Professional Development courses, delivered by Dr Susan Elsley and Professor Kay Tisdall:

10-11th March 2016: Involving children and young people in research and consultation
28-29th April 2016: Using creative methods in research with children and young people