both mother and father experienced huge difficulties with the young girls who would often exhibit challenging behaviour such as screaming, swearing and abusive language, destruction of personal items and violent behaviour in the form of physical attacks from the children. It was during one of these alleged attacks that the children were removed from the care of the parents when bruising was identified on one of the children by a Social Worker. Both parents maintain that the bruising on the child’s arms was the result of the parent restraining the child when the child was demonstrating violent behaviour.
The Hull Families’ Project has now completed work with the family and has developed positive parenting strategies. The project helps adults through a process of self regulation parenting strategies that include the setting of clear, firm and fair family rules, encouraging desirable behaviour, providing a safe engaging environment for the children to develop and the use of positive discipline such as “quiet time “or “time out” along with appropriate sanctions when needed.
The parents struggled at first with the implementation of this new style of parenting, and were encouraged to continue through a series of follow-up visits to the family’s home and telephone conversations. This reduced the opportunity for the process to fail and the parents felt supported through the process and not abandoned or isolated. The family are now much happier and settled, the children appear much happier now and both parents feel more empowered as carers of the two children. Both report that the children still have their “moments” but they are the exception as opposed to the rule that had once existed within the family home