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

How mental illness, learning disability, substance misuse anddomestic violence affect parenting capacity 81Impact on parenting To safeguard and promote the welfare of children, parents must providebasic care, safety, emotional warmth, appropriate stimulation, guidance andboundaries and stability. Mental illness, learning disability, substance misuseand domestic violence can affect parents’ capacity to address adequatelythese issues. Parental problems can result in parents having difficulty organising theirlives. This may result in inconsistent and ineffective parenting, and ritualsand routines which cement family relationships not being sustained. Adisorganised lifestyle will have a differential impact on children dependingon their age, development and personality; but a lack of supervision leaveschildren, regardless of their age, vulnerable to abuse and neglect. Whenparents lose consciousness, children may be in unsafe physical situations.When mental illness results in parents losing contact with reality, childrenmay be drawn into their parents’ delusional world, which can have longtermconsequences for the child’s own mental health. Parental problems may mean parents have difficulty controlling theiremotions. Violent, irrational or withdrawn behaviour can frighten children.Mental illness, learning disability, substance misuse and domestic violencecan lead to feelings of apathy and disengagement, which result in parentsnot providing children with adequate emotional warmth. When parents experience feelings of depression or despair, when drink ordrugs divorce them from reality, or when a learning disability hampers theacquisition of new skills, parents may neglect their own and their children’sphysical needs. Neglect can affect all children and young people and not justbabies and toddlers. Children may be insecurely attached because mental illness, learningdisability, excessive drinking, drug misuse or domestic violence has meantparents are insensitive, unresponsive, angry and critical of their children.Insecure patterns of attachment may mean that children develop unstableinternal working models which affect later relationships.