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How can workers be best equipped to identify and address parental
alcohol misuse? DDN reports from Alcohol Concern’s recent conference
News focus |
Analysis
KEEPING IT IN
THE FAMILY
6 |
drinkanddrugsnews
| May 2013
www.drinkanddrugsnews.com
Up to 1.3m children were affected by parental
alcohol misuse, Adfam chief executive Vivienne
Evans told Alcohol Concern’s
Happy families?
Equipping practitioners to tackle alcohol
issues in families
event
. ‘And those are just the
ones we know about, who come to the attention of
social services. There are a hell of a lot more that we
don’t know about.’
When her organisation had run training on
parental substance misuse in partnership with
Alcohol Concern and Addaction it had been struck
by ‘how many different people from different
professional backgrounds and services wanted to
access it – proof that it’s everybody’s business’, she
said. One of the greatest challenges, however, was
identifying parental alcohol misuse, she stressed.
‘Many families are dealing with alcohol use that the
user doesn’t think is a problem.’
HIDDEN HARM
While parental substance use was often linked with
mental health issues, poverty and domestic violence,
and was a key factor in children being taken into
care, the message of
Hidden harm
– that services
could protect and improve the health and wellbeing
of affected children by working together – was still
key, she said.
‘Practitioners, if supported and managed and
trained, can intervene to help children. But we still
hear of people working in children’s services saying
“I don’t want to get involved with drugs and alcohol
– it’s too tricky, too complicated”, and at the same
time you have people in drug and alcohol services
who just want to focus on the service user and not
the family.’
One of the main lessons to emerge from the
practitioner training was the importance of working
with managers, she told delegates, as practitioners
needed support in the workplace. However, at a time
when workforce development was critical, services
were finding it harder and harder to access money
for training, while another funding challenge was the
loss of focus on universal services, she added. ‘This
is an issue for teachers, youth workers, all of us.’
Although the prevalence of alcohol misuse was
‘particularly pronounced in deprived families’, there
were also significant issues with, for example, middle-
aged, middle-class women, chair of the All-Party
Parliamentary Group on Alcohol Misuse, and
Conservative MP, Tracey Crouch, told the conference.
‘They don’t fit the bill of the “troubled family” so
perhaps they’re less likely to receive support.’
REFORMS
It would take time for the government’s health
service reforms to properly bed in, but the shift of
responsibility to local level presented considerable
opportunities for dealing with parental substance
use, she said. ‘If you have GPs who recognise the
need for services they will be feeding that up to the
commissioners’, although GPs still had problems
identifying people when the problem was not
immediately obvious. The government’s alcohol
strategy, however – which had been ‘broadly well
received by public health groups’ – had made a
clear commitment to identifying people at risk.
NEGLECT
Alcohol was both a ‘contributor and symptom’ of
neglect, director of public policy at Action for
Children, Helen Donohoe, told the conference. ‘But
we’re absolutely passionate that it doesn’t have to
be that way.’
Child neglect was ‘notoriously difficult to define’,
she said. ‘A child deserves a safe home, healthcare
when it’s needed, emotional engagement and love, as
well as stimulation, guidance and boundaries. As a
society we have a very stiff attitude towards talking
about things like emotional warmth.’ Neglect was
serious, however, she stated. ‘It can kill, it can destroy
a childhood and go on to destroy an adulthood as
well. In the UK, it’s the most common form of child
abuse, but services often feel powerless to intervene
if there’s no physical abuse going on.’
Her organisation estimated that up to one in ten
British children experienced neglect, she said. ‘You
can’t simplify the causes, because it’s incredibly
complex, but you can identify some
circumstances.’ These included deprivation –
‘although that doesn’t mean that if you’re poor,
you’re neglecting your children’ – poor housing,
inter-generational neglect of the parents
themselves, disability, mental health, domestic
abuse and substance misuse. ‘ChildLine tell us
they get around 100 calls a week from children
worried about their parents’ drinking,’ she added.
Action for Children was campaigning vigorously
to change the law around neglect, she stressed,
while better inter-agency working and early
intervention were crucial. ‘We also want all social
care professionals to be thinking about the child at
home when dealing with adults.’
Of all the disadvantages affecting families,
alcohol was the most common across all classes,
said senior research fellow at the University of
Oxford’s education and social policy departments,
Naomi Eisenstadt.
‘In better-off families it’s easier to hide – the
house is bigger and the kids have got somewhere to
do their homework. If you’re living in poverty you’re
likely to be in contact with services – for your
housing, your benefits – so any problems you have
will be more visible.’
UNDERSTANDING
One of the things the government could do to help
was reduce pressure on parents, she said, through
things like paid maternity leave, encouraging flexible
working and provision of universal benefits ‘with no
stigma or massive bureaucracy’ attached. ‘One
problem with policy making is an absolute lack of
understanding of the problems that poverty brings,’
she stated. ‘The government wants to enhance the
capabilities of families, but you have a much better
chance of doing that if you reduce the pressure on
them. The problem with the current government is