Are we always looking in the right place when it comes to identifying who is at risk? asks Michelle John.
We’re safeguarding the children, but who’s safeguarding their parents? The core safeguarding focus in SEN schools is quite rightly around ensuring all children on the register are safe, both during their time at school and when they’re at home too. Staff are regularly trained, equipping them with the skills and knowledge needed to give them the best chance of recognising signs of abuse. But what happens when it’s not the child at risk? What if it’s actually their parent or carer who is experiencing or vulnerable to abuse?
In reality, anyone can be impacted by abuse, and Child to Parent Abuse (CPA) is now recognised by the Government as a type of domestic abuse when it pertains to a child aged 16 or above, although we know that in many cases it begins years earlier. Behaviours can range from physical abuse such as kicking, slapping and biting, to verbal or psychological abuse, financial, digital and even sexual.
In families where the child displaying these behaviours has additional needs, there may be questions around how capable they are of understanding the impact of their actions, or whether they are deliberately causing harm to their parent, carer or guardian. But to get to a stage where risk factors and intent can be understood, and solutions sought, the problem itself must first be identified.
Many professionals may be involved in the life of a young person, especially one who attends an SEN school—from health specialists to social workers—but their teachers and support staff are among those who spend the most time with them outside of the home. Teachers have plenty of options: obtaining permission to share this information with other professionals such as a social worker, signposting the parent towards resources like support groups or their GP and, where feasible, keeping their own log of what has been reported to them in addition to any information the parent is noting down at home. Where schools haven’t been approached directly by a parent or carer about CPA, the school can still identify potential signs, just as they would if they were worried about a safeguarding risk relating to the child. One of the most common outward signs is the parent reducing their work hours or quitting their job altogether. Other signs include mention of property damage, calls to police, siblings or pets being affected by behaviours, or altering routines and lifestyles to avoid incidents.
Of course, many of these signs may result from the complexities experienced as a family with a child who has disabilities or additional needs. It can be difficult to decipher from an outside perspective whether there is a potential safeguarding risk. But this is where the knowledge built up by each educational professional is vital: they know what is typical for each child, they understand diagnoses and how these may impact behaviours and wider family life. And two-way communication engendering a mutual trust is equally important.
For some parents, having someone listen to them and believe them is absolutely pivotal. They may have approached other professionals and been dismissed or felt unheard, or they may have been too worried to talk to anyone before. But with a more open view on safeguarding, knowing that anybody can be at risk regardless of their age or position in a family, we can start to collectively turn that tide.
This all stems back to the need to approach safeguarding holistically. Anyone can be at risk, and so the signs must not be ignored if there is a potential that a family member is being impacted by CPA. While the pupils a teacher has direct responsibility for will always be that person’s priority, in an ideal world anyone who is at risk should be supported by those with a duty to safeguard. Because if we’re not safeguarding parents too, then we’ll never be able to help families take positive steps towards accessing support for CPA. And by doing so, we ignore the huge impact this issue has on the child displaying these behaviours, their family, and society as a whole.