Weekend round-up

Over the last weeks a number of things have caught my attention and I thought it worth while bringing them all together here before they get lost.

A new journal article from Mounir H Fawzi, Mohab M Fawzi & Amira A Fouad, Parent abuse by adolescents with first-episode psychosis in Egypt, Journal of Adolescent Health, published online 16.08.13 (abstract here). The purpose of the research was to determine rates of parent abuse among this group of adolescents presenting at outpatients, and to identify the association between parent abuse and a number of socioeconomic and clinical factors. I found the article interesting for a number of reasons. It does not seem so long a time since people were asking whether parent abuse was a phenomenon confined to western societies with particularly lax forms of parenting, yet time and time again there are news items and articles emerging from societies right across the world. The findings show clear bias towards sons as abusers and mothers as victims, (apologies for the terminology which I know is uncomfortable for some people). Once again parent abuse is described as a taboo, a hidden problem, and there is a call for greater awareness raising, education and support.

More about the Troubled Families initiative: a new post from A Kind of Trouble  examining what it means when the government talks about having “turned around” 14,000 households in just 15 months. Worth following for those interested in this work.

Asking for help. The approaches from the media may have slowed down at the moment, but I would suggest that there are a growing number of parents using the internet to look for help. Lou Purplefairy publishes one such hub, but there are also parents turning to twitter and blogs, such as this from A Bad Mum. The common thread is one of difficulty in accessing help, either finding it or being accepted as a referral. Clearly there is more that needs to be done in advertising the growing number of services which are now available.

Training opportunities in various different programmes gave been taking place around the UK over the last months. I hope to give some feedback from some of these in the coming weeks. Keep an eye on the Events and Training pages here for updates on conferences and training, including some rolling programmes. Starting to hear now about dates for 2014!

Research: The big news in the UK is the conference on Monday 23rd September to hear about the findings from the work done at Oxford University by Rachel Condry and Caroline Miles. Hopefully more on this next week.