Parenting capacity

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Editorial 1

Editorial

Child Abuse Review Vol. 13: 1–4 (2004)

Published online in Wiley InterScience (www.interscience.wiley.com). DOI: 10.1002/car.836

Parenting Capacity

P

arents are clearly central to child protection. They are the main carers of children in society and a main focus of efforts to prevent harm arising from abuse perpetrated by parents or from parental neglect. Parents are also a primary source of protection for children from abuse by others and from a wide range of other forms of adversity including poverty, illness, disability and corruption. As mothers continue to be the main carers of children, child-care, childcare work and child protection are feminist issues (O’Hagan and Dillenburger, 1995). Some groups of mothers such as single mothers (Gough, 1993; Parton et al._,

1997) and mothers with mental health problems (Stanley

et al._{, 2003) or learning disabilities are particularly}

vulner-able to losing their children to the care system even if the main concern is abuse by others. If childcare was seen as a wider societal responsibility then maltreatment might be easier to identify in the broad public sphere, but it is difficult to predict whether the pressure on mothers to carry the full burden of responsibility for their children would diminish accordingly.

In the first paper in this issue of Child Abuse Review_,

Donald and Jureidini argue that the central importance of parenting and parents’ capacity to parent should be given greater emphasis in child protection assessments. They argue against assessing risk through non-hierarchical lists of characteristics of the parents or the child. Instead, they pro-pose that the parents’ ability to empathically understand and give priority to their child’s needs should be the cen-tral issue. This approach focuses on whether a parent is able and willing to care appropriately for their child, but is this fundamentally different from the Framework for the Assessment of Children and their Families, which assesses parenting within the context of the assessment of the child and the wider social and economic context of the family (Jones, 2001)? Donald and Jureidini consider the Frame-work helpful but limited in not giving differential weights to factors and not specifying the central importance of the adequacy of the emotional relationship between parent and child. The potential for such emotional relationships might, for example, be better assessed though the parents’ other intimate relationships rather than assessing child or contextual factors.

David Gough and

Nicky Stanley

‘Parents’ capacity

to parent should

be given greater

emphasis in child

protection

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In addition, the Framework might have the disadvantage of encouraging agencies to provide services to improve child or contextual factors without tackling the basic problems within the family which might make these investments unlikely to achieve necessary change. Many practitioners will question the proposal to privilege the assessment of parenting over the other sides of the assessment triangle and will argue that such an approach would increase pressure on parents who are often already experiencing a range of pressures. However, the Assessment Framework has been criticized for the lack of guidance as to how the different dimensions of assessment should interact. Cleaver and Walker’s (2003) study of the implementation of the Framework found that many social workers were uncertain as to how they should analyse the information they had gathered. Such questions are partly ideological and conceptual but it is also largely an empirical issue as to which aspects of a child’s life and circumstances predict abuse and other non-ideal outcomes. The Framework was created on the basis of known research, but empirical research into how assessments in practice are linked to child outcomes is also required.

The second paper in the issue examines parenting capacity in relation to substance misuse. Hayden undertook a survey of child care social work in one English city and found that alcohol and other substance misuse were central concerns in a large proportion of child care cases. The substance misuse compromised the care of the children and indicated, in line with the approach of Donald and Jureidini, that the care of the child was not the parents’ main priority. The social work-ers felt that supporting the parents was difficult when they did not have specialist substance abuse work skills and the parents seemed resistant to change or acknowledging their problems. The need to ensure that the child was protected was perceived to be a different task from meeting parents’ needs for the support which might strengthen their ability to care for and protect their children. Similarly, the parents re-ported a need for support but a concern that any admission of problems would risk child protection investigations. A com-plication, as ever, is that some substance abusers themselves had difficult childhoods including abuse (Cohen et al._{, 2003).}

The third paper examines parenting in another special group, parents with learning disabilities. James reports that most child protection concerns in this group relate to neglect and an absence of protection rather than active abuse. The parents may therefore have good parenting capacity in terms of healthy intimate relationships but not the skills to care for or protect the child adequately. James suggests that the care

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Editorial 3

of the child is often less problematic when the child also has intellectual disabilities but can be more problematic if the child is more able and challenging to care for. However, James’ paper also stresses the importance of ‘the third side’ of the assessment triangle—family and environmental factors—and she notes the significance of ongoing support from other family members which is consistent with that offered by professional agencies.

The remaining papers in the issue are more child-focused. McCarron, Ridgway and Williams describe the develop-ment by psychologists and police in North East England of a procedure to assess the credibility of child witnesses’ under-standing of truth and falsehood. It has long been known that children’s understanding of these concepts precedes their ability to describe them abstractly in words, so this test uses the easier to understand format of a Truth and Lie Story. Three versions of the formats developed are provided and practitioners may wish to compare them with their own local approaches and tools.

The final paper provides an introduction to the research literature on the psychological treatment of child sexual abuse victims. Ross and O’Carroll describe some of the weaknesses of the research and the heavy reliance on clinical reports, but believe there is sufficient evidence to argue for the efficacy of cognitive behavioural interventions. A key factor of such ap-proaches is the confrontation of the experiences and cognitions associated with the abuse. Like Cohen et al._{(2003), they}

con-sider that a PTSD conceptualization of the effects of sexual abuse helps define treatment needs; in addition, they argue that it is crucial in determining whether a child would benefit from such abuse-confronting treatments. It is an area where we know a lot but need to know much more: which indi-viduals in what circumstances, having had what previous experiences, benefit from different degrees of different types of services offered in different ways? Just as importantly, we need to evaluate all that we do to ensure that, however positive our intentions, we do more good than harm (Chalmers, 2003).

This issue of Child Abuse Review ends with a short report on the role of dental practitioners in child protection. As so many cases of abuse involve the face and mouth of children, dental practitioners have a central role and responsibility in the identification, assessment and treatment of cases of abuse.

References

Chalmers I. 2003. Trying to do more good than harm in policy and practice: the role of rigorous, transparent, up to date, replicable

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evaluation. Annals of the American Academy of Political and Social Science589: 22–40.

Cleaver H, Walker S. 2003. From policy to practice: the implementa-tion of a new framework for social work assessments of children and families. Child and Family Social Work9_{: 81–90.}

Cohen JA, Mannarino AP, Zhitova AC, Caone ME. 2003. Treating child abuse-related posttraumatic stress and comorbid substance abuse in adolescents. Child Abuse and Neglect27: 1345–1365.

Gough DA. 1993. Child Abuse Interventions: A Review of the Research Literature. HMSO: London.

Jones D. 2001. The assessment of parenting capacity. In Horwath J (ed.), The Child’s World. Jessica Kingsley: London.

O’Hagan K, Dillenburger K. 1995. The Abuse of Women Within Childcare Work. Open University Press: Buckingham.

Parton N, Thorpe D, Wattam C. 1997. Child Protection, Risk and the Moral Order. Macmillan: Basingstoke.