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

88 Children’s Needs – Parenting CapacityChildren of parents with learning disabilities are more likely to have a disabilityor to have a sibling with a disability. The challenge of caring for a disabled child isstressful for even very capable parents and can result in the needs of other childrenwithin the family being neglected (Butcher et al. 2008; Epstein et al. 2008).Mental illnessIn relation to mental illness, the risk of suffering significant harm increases whenchildren become targets of their parents’ delusions. A specific child within the familymay become a scapegoat and be the focus of parental hostility and rejection (Stroud1997; Reupert and Maybery 2007). Children of mentally ill parents may be forcedto participate in parental rituals and compulsions; or parental illness can result inmarked restrictions to the child’s social activities (Rutter 1966). Although rare, achild may also come to share the same delusions as the parent as part of a folie àdeux (madness shared by two). This can occur when the delusional beliefs formed bya parent during a psychotic episode are imposed on the child (Arnone et al. 2006;Erol et al. 2008).Domestic violenceSimply witnessing parental distress can have adverse effects on children. Children arewitnesses, to a greater or lesser extent, of every aspect of domestic violence againsttheir mothers. The incidence of children actually witnessing or hearing the violenceranges from all children in a study based on children in refuges, to 45% of childrenbased on anonymous interviews with mothers (Humphreys and Houghton 2008).Research that seeks the experiences of children reveals their distress at seeing theirmother’s physical and emotional suffering.He would come in and rip my mother’s clothes off. He tried to strangle her, justbeat her up like ... We were always watching it...(Child, quoted in the NCH Action for Children 1994, p.31)Children living with domestic violence are also at risk of physical injury duringan incident, either by accident or because they attempt to intervene (Humphreysand Stanley 2006). In attempts to halt the violence and protect their mother fromassault children may call the police, or urge their mother to separate (Hamner 1989).However, separation should not be viewed as a simple solution which will protectmothers and children. The British Crime Survey showed that although separationwas the best way to escape domestic violence (Walby and Allen 2004), domesticviolence murder reviews showed separation can increase the likelihood of extremeviolence being perpetrated. Three-quarters of multi-agency domestic violence murderreviews involved separation (Richards and Baker 2003, quoted in Humphreys 2006)and at least 29 children were killed in the last decade by their fathers post-separation(Saunders 2004). Self-reports included in the British Crime Survey (Walby andAllen 2004) showed child contact arrangements place a significant proportion of