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Social work consultant, Natalie Wyatt, shares some of the lessons she’s learnt from young people with lived experience of domestic abuse.
I was just settling into my seat at the start of a long train journey when I was contacted via a colleague, about returning to deliver a second Creative Life Story Work Live Classroom on the theme of domestic abuse. As I typed out my enthusiastic reply, a set of siblings came to mind who I had worked with many years before. I thought about how much I had learned from working with them and what a privilege it is to get to share that learning with others.
Remembering this sparky, courageous set of brothers and sisters, it then triggered other thoughts and memories about young people I have worked with over the years. Here are some of the most important lessons that they have taught me about their lived experience of domestic abuse:
Domestic abuse happens in all kinds of relationships and can be perpetrated by both men and women. Where the abuse is male on female, services can be quick to focus on the “mother’s failure to protect”, as opposed to holding the abusing parent accountable (Wild 2022). This allows (or causes) fathers to become invisible within the child protection system – a situation which fails families and ignores the reality that, for many children, their fathers remain important figures in their lives even after they have caused harm.
We must get better at engaging with fathers; making them integral to our assessments so that we can be confident that, where there is an ongoing relationship with the child, this is being managed safely.
When I worked in the family court system I would often hear children ask why a parent they were otherwise estranged from was forcing them through a court case. Many a time I heard professionals say that it was because their parent loved them and missed spending time with them. In some instances this was of course true but we know that in some cases, where the applicant is a perpetrator of domestic abuse, their motivation can be more about continuing a pattern of coercive control.
This was brought to life for me when a brave young person agreed to record a short video as part of a training programme that I was designing; she recalled several professionals telling her that her father loved her, but her message to our audience was clear: “possession is not the same as love”.
When working with children who have experienced domestic abuse it is often assumed that they will reject or present as overtly fearful of the abusing parent. However in a small number of cases the opposite can be true; the child will identify strongly with the abusing parent and may even go on to use violence against the target-parent themselves (a dynamic known as ‘child and adolescent to parent violence and abuse’ – CAPVA).
There are many theories for why this is; from social learning theory (the idea that children learn to use violence via observation and imitation of others) through to theories of trauma (which certainly resonate with my practice wisdom – I’ve seen first hand how trauma causes people to act in unexpected ways).
However I am most sympathetic to the theories that: i) CAPVA is a functional response intended to keep the child ‘safe’ from the abusing parent’s aggression, and ii) that it is associated with the subjugation of the non-abusing parent, placing them ‘beneath’ the child in a distorted family power structure – this is particularly associated with increased abuse towards mothers (Baker & Bonnick 2021). Whatever the reason, it is vital that we do not lose sight of these children as victims in their own right.
Thank you Natalie for sharing what you’ve learnt from the children and young people you’ve worked with.
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Natalie Wyatt is a social worker with 16 years’ post-qualifying experience across a number of national, local government and third sector organisations. She is a skilled trainer, consultant and senior leader.
Natalie is passionate about poverty-aware practice, domestic abuse and court-based social work. She brings with her lived experience of social work services in her own childhood.
She is a training practitioner from Trauma Informed Consultancy Services, which offers an extensive range of training sessions related to all aspects of how we can apply a trauma informed framework to settings, services and systems. Trauma Informed Consultancy Services works with education settings, children’s services, criminal justice and adult services.
