Children's Needs – Parenting Capacity - Digital Education Resource ...

Which children are most at risk of significant harm? 95 A significant proportion of children show no long-term behavioural oremotional disorders when exposed to parental mental illness, learningdisability, problem drinking or drug use, or domestic violence. However,a considerable number of children do exhibit symptoms of disturbanceduring their childhood and would benefit from services to prevent theirhealth or development being impaired.Moving on to explore the impact on childrenat different stages of developmentAlthough there are, in general, factors that make children more or less vulnerableto the behaviours which result from their parents’ problems, the impact on childrenwill vary depending on their age and stage of development. Therefore, it seemsappropriate to look in more detail at the different stages of development.This review has been deliberately confined to the findings from research, whichmay mean that factors which are more readily identified from clinical and professionalpractice have been omitted. These are no less important as a source of evidence butare beyond the scope of this book.In exploring the research findings, six stages of childhood are discussed in PartII. Chapter 4 looks at children under 5 years and includes pre-birth to 12 months,children aged 1 to 2 years and those aged 3 to 4 years. Chapter 5 focuses on middlechildhood and explores the impact of parental problems on children aged 5 to 10years. Chapter 6 looks at the adolescent years and includes teenagers aged 11 to 15years and young people aged 16 and older.To provide a context for the difficulties that children may experience as a resultof their parents’ problems, each chapter is prefaced with a discussion of expecteddevelopment.