Dave Liddell: director, Scottish Drugs Forum
Dave Liddell describes how policy and practice need to
combine to respond effectively to the 150,000 children affected by
their parents' drug and alcohol use.
Scotland has an estimated 60,000 problem drug users and high
rates of alcohol problems, putting it among the top countries in
Europe for alcohol and drug problems per head of population. Drug
problems expanded massively in Scotland in the early eighties and
have become more entrenched since that time. We are now seeing
problems in second and third generations of families with services
finding it difficult to intervene.
The issue of parental drug and alcohol problems is undoubtedly
one of the most challenging facing Scotland. The Scottish
Government's drug strategy, The Road to Recovery, published in
2008, has an entire chapter devoted to the subject of 'getting it
right for children in substance misusing families'. It highlights
the need to do more at a local level to improve services for
children, on prevention, early intervention and protection.
The Scottish Government, in its 2011 manifesto, stated its
ambition for a parenting strategy:
'....the development of a national
parenting strategy that encourages agencies to work together to
support new parents and allows them to develop their parenting
skills. Parents will have access to a guaranteed level of support
across the country.'
Bringing these two policy areas to together is vitally important
if we are to effectively address this huge problem.
The effects on parenting capacity and on children
There are an estimated 50,000 children of problem drug users and
perhaps 100,000 children whose parents have alcohol problems, so
there are potentially 150,000 children affected. Some parents with
drug or alcohol problems may be isolated and lack support but still
manage to ensure that their children are well nurtured.
Some people with drug problems can function well as parents but
there are those who are failing badly, with their children being
harmed significantly. This does not just depend on the abilities of
individual parents but also on the support around them. Parenting
abilities among drug users vary over time due to a range of
factors. Personal difficulties, such as family problems, health and
drug/alcohol use along with wider issues, such as welfare benefits
and housing have a massive impact on vulnerable parents, and
therefore, on their parenting capacity.
Children may be affected in many ways. The Aberlour report of
2006 Have we got our priorities right? describes:
- Chaotic parental lifestyles, leading to neglect of their basic
physical and emotional needs
- Poor or inconsistent parenting - lack of affection, nurturing,
consistent boundaries or routines
- Unsafe home environments where children are left alone or
unsupervised for long periods or left with unsuitable carers; are
exposed to drugs, drug use and the effects of intoxicated
behaviour, along with domestic abuse and criminal activity
- Children assuming caring roles for siblings and sometimes for
their own parents
- Nursery or school attendance and attainment suffering
- Stigma which can lead to isolation from peer networks and
susceptibility to bullying
The challenge for policymakers and practitioners, therefore, is
immense.
The public discourse about this has been polarised, with the
extreme view expressed by some politicians and academics that all
parents with alcohol and, in particular, drug problems should have
their children removed into care. This is clearly a completely
impractical suggestion, given the scale of problems, the limited
availability of foster carers, places within children's homes and
prospective adoptive parents.
What parents want
There has been little work on finding out what type of support
parents with drug or alcohol problems would like. Since parental
activity is at the heart of the issue, it seems remiss, even
unwise, to miss the opportunity of getting their perspective on the
key issues underpinning their attitudes and behaviours. So what are
they looking for?
From our own work, particularly speaking with our volunteers who
are parents and have a history of problem drug use, the following
themes and issues emerge:
- Parents with drug problems are often very frightened of social
work, particularly as they have often directly witnessed people
they know losing custody of their children
- Parents often say that support is only available at the point
of crisis, accompanied by a serious threat of losing their
children. Parents want help but remain fearful of revealing too
much about their problems as this may be used against them as
evidence of their unfitness to care for their children
- Parents would like support to be available as early as
possible, particularly from voluntary sector organisations (often
the statutory powers available to mainstream social workers create
a barrier to honest dialogue between them and the drug-using
parents they work with). Even so, for some parents there would
still be concerns about the potential sharing of information and
social work involvement
- Parents who have had children removed into care often say that
'it feels like a mountain to climb to get them back'
- Powerlessness is a key feature - many parents want to see an
independent supporter/advocate/mentor to enable them to deal with
the 'system' so they do not feel they are alone
Parents with extensive experience of social work often say that
there is no clarity about what being a good or good enough parent
is and that custody decisions are not sufficiently objective. Their
perceptions are that, too often, the management of their case is
based on whether 'a social worker likes me', with a feeling that
'parents who are worse than us still have their children' and that
the 'goalposts are always changing'.
While these views are from a relatively small sample, they
highlight the issues that practitioners face in responding to
parental drug and alcohol drug problems. The themes also highlight
the potential value of systematically collecting the views of
parents to inform how best to provide services.
Adult and children's services working together
What also comes through from our work with parents, reflected in
a recurring theme from services, is that child welfare services and
adult addiction services do not work closely enough with each
other. Often, there is also a lack of awareness and understanding
between the adult addiction workers and the children and families
workers about the impact of parental drug problems from each
other's perspectives. This can get in the way of finding effective
solutions.
Adult services can sometimes address the needs of the adult
client only, with the perspective of the children either not
recognised or ignored. This is likely to happen particularly when a
service does not identify the additional needs of a parent with
children - for example, when an adult service sets up an
arrangement for dispensing methadone which requires a mother with
small children to walk a considerable distance or a service that
has a busy and chaotic waiting room and makes no specific provision
for parents attending with children.
Although we have known for years about this shortfall in
recognising of the dual 'personas' of parents with drug problems,
most areas, despite some pockets of good practice, have not yet
bridged this.
However, on a more positive note, we know that:
- Workers in adult addiction services want to change their
practice towards parental clients and their children (SDF survey of
services 2009)
- Children's services are keen to develop their knowledge and
understanding of drug use/drug problems and how to work more
effectively with parents
- There is understanding within adult addiction services and
children's services about the need for improved joint working
- Several years ago, we made a suggestion to the Scottish
Government about funding secondments of workers from children's
charities into adult drug services, aiming to bridge the gap
between the two sectors and ensure more effective early support and
intervention.
- More recently, we developed a proposal for joint training and
better networking of the two sectors. The gap is still evident and
despite some excellent practice, good practice needs to become
standard across the country if we are to make a meaningful impact
on the current generation of children living with parental drug and
alcohol problems and on future generations.
The Scottish Government stated recently in the context of the
proposed Children's Services Bill: 'Simply framing legislation that
places a duty on planning partners to work together, where
appropriate, to get it right for every child is unlikely to have
much impact and may actually add more bureaucracy and barriers.'
This is exactly right. The challenge is to encourage and work with
frontline services to deliver improvements to joint working and
effective practice.
Failing to do this and to intervene effectively will cost our
society and individual families dear in both the short and
long-term.