Child to Parent Violence and Abuse
Who’s in Charge?
A 9-week programme for parents whose children are using abusive or violent behaviour toward them or who appear out of parental control.
The Basics
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Who’s in Charge? is a nine-week programme aimed at parents whose children are using abusive or violent behaviour toward them or who appear out of parental control. The programme focuses on parents with children aged 8-18 years old.
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This training is aimed primarily at those intending to facilitate the Who’s in Charge? group programme with parents, although many practitioners run the programme with parents in a 1:1 capacity.
Practitioners come from a broad range of agencies including youth offending, children and young people’s services, domestic abuse agencies, school SENCO’s and safeguarding leads, mental health services, CAMHs, parenting teams, early help teams, service managers, family carers, adoption & fostering agencies and counselling agencies.
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Reduce parents’ feelings of isolation
Challenge parents’ feelings of guilt
Loosen deterministic thinking about causes
Create a belief in the possibility of change
Clarify boundaries of what is acceptable and unacceptable behaviour
Examine strategies for creating meaningful and practical consequences for unacceptable behaviour
Reinforce progress and provide emotional support while they attempt to become more assertive parents
Explore anger, both child and parents’
Encourage assertiveness, self-reflection and self-care
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The structure of the programme consists of eight 2.5 hour sessions with a two-month follow up. Weeks 1-4 of the programme have a strong therapeutic element and in weeks 5-9 we establish a more knowledge-based approach.
Week 1 - Introductions, questionnaires and genograms
Week 2 - Cause and influences of abusive behaviour
Week 3 - What is abuse?
Week 4 - What can I control in my child’s life? Introduction to consequences
Week 5 - Consequences
Week 6 - Anger and breaking the myths of anger
Week 7 - Assertiveness
Week 8 - Self-care, future goal setting and evaluation
Week 9 - Two month follow up on goal achievements, evaluation, and further goals
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Understanding the context and dynamic of CPVA and why/how it manifests
The main aims and philosophy of the Who’s in Charge? programme
Exploration of the part-therapeutic/part-knowledge based approach
Interactive and experiential journey through the main themes of the programme
Facilitation skills and practical application of programme delivery
Meeting the needs of parents within a trauma informed and therapeutic framework
Three Day Facilitator Training
Over the three-day facilitator training, practitioners will gain an understanding of the multi-casual nature of child to parent violence and abuse. The main themes of each week of the programme are explored in depth, enabling practitioners to feel supported and confident to deliver the programme at the end of the training.
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Introduction and Weeks 1-2, including: An insight into understanding the context of child to parent violence and abuse, data and trends relating to CPVA and WIC?; discussing and exploring topics such as uncovering family patterns; encouraging parents to identify goals for change; the causes or influences of child to parent violence and abuse; the difference between entitlement versus responsibility; and exploring what influence parents have over their children.
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Weeks 3-6, on topics including: ideas about abuse; parental influence and control and power over their children; how children have influence, power, and control over their parents; exploring consequences; applying consequences to children who are uncooperative (sometimes in the extreme) and may appear uncaring towards everything; anger held by all family members involved, and myths of anger.
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Weeks 7-9, on topics including: supporting parents to be assertive in the face of CPVA; making changes; how to restore a positive relationship with their children; and goal setting. Delegates are then assessed on the ethos, philosophy and rationale of the WIC? programme via a multiple-choice questionnaire and a short group presentation, supporting practitioners to experience facilitation of the Who’s in Charge? programme.
Our aim is to build the confidence of practitioners to deliver the programme and materials in their own settings and encouraging facilitators to continue parents’ journey through future goal setting, programme evaluation and data collection.
On successful completion of the three-day facilitator training, participants will be eligible to run the Who’s in Charge? programme and will have access to a private area on the Who’s in Charge? website. Here they can download all the materials needed to run the nine-week programme. There are no further license fees, enabling practitioners to run programmes immediately. It is expected that where possible newly trained facilitators take the opportunity to co-facilitate with an experienced WIC? facilitator prior to leading their own group.
Upcoming Training
29th April, 1st, 2nd May 2025
Delivered online via Zoom
Cost for the online training will be £800 (plus V.A.T.) per person, including the course handouts and access to all the programme materials needed to run the Who’s in Charge? programme.
Programme Rationale
There are three parts to the programme. The first 3-4 sessions aim to change parental attitude and reduce blame, guilt, and shame. A variety of exercises are used to deconstruct some of the unhelpful myths that parents have absorbed about their child’s behaviour. The aim is to help them understand that children’s bad behaviour is multi-causal, and we explore the nature of abuse, entitlement and power and social changes that make CPVA more likely.
The second half of the programme explores the use of consequences to change unwanted behaviour and styles of parenting. Most parenting advice assumes that children are co-operative. However, most parents who attend the Who’s in Charge? programme typically have children who have stopped co-operating, who often appear to care about very little, who may deliberately sabotage parents attempts to apply consequences, and who may escalate their violence when parents implement behavioural control strategies.
In the group we explore the difficulty of identifying consequences that the parent can implement, is willing to control, and that the child will care about (at least a little). We do not see the consequences in terms of behaviour modification, but in terms of empowerment of the parent, increasing the child’s respect for the parent, enabling the parent to be more assertive and altering the balance of positives and negatives that the young person experiences from their violent and controlling behaviour.
The third part of the group supports parents to make changes within the home while working on a few advanced topics such as anger, assertiveness and self-care. The order of these topics is important. Until parents have made progress in changing their attitude to CPV and feel more empowered, they are not usually ready to work on these topics.
So, the structure aims to first support and empower, second to encourage practical changes (usually in terms of rules and consequences), and third to reinforce these changes and cover some advanced topics. There is a steady reduction in content during the group – the idea being that the group becomes more positive and helpful to each other, and thus discussion increases and facilitator directed exercises reduce.