When helping the parent means protecting the child : counselling interventions for parents who risk abusing their children

Abstract

This study is concerned with identifying counselling interventions in counselling and non-counselling settings that contributed to improved progress or outcomes when working with parents who were assessed as having abusive behaviour towards their children. Particular focus was placed on: Individual experiences and processes of change that contribute to improved case outcomes and how these can inform counselling professionals to respond to the needs of this client group. Data was gathered from individual, in-depth, semi-structured interviews of 3 parents as well as through a focus group discussion between 5 professionals experienced in counselling this client group. Participants were selected by availability sampling within the limitations of access to them and availability of services. The data was anlaysed through Interpretative Phenomenological Analysis and Triangulation methodologies (Smith, Flowers and Larkin, 2009; Briller, Meert, Myers, Thurston, & Kabel, 2008). The results are presented in three super-ordinate themes. The first super-ordinate theme emerges from the individual interviews. This theme describes the parents’ experience and the process of change as an overall lonely ordeal towards their own personhood, drawn out over a number of difficult years. Their experiences surface as individuals, clients of the social services and parents relinquishing and reclaiming of their children. The second super-ordinate theme emerges from both the individual interviews as well as from the focus group discussion. This theme portrays an overall need for safe, person-centred help in relation to achieving good outcomes. The non-access to formal counselling services for this client group in Malta also emerges strongly from both data sets. The Third super ordinate theme occurred predominantly in the focus group discussion. This theme suggests that the counsellors’ capacity to reconcile therapeutic and protective/social-control is related to the competency to respond to the particulr complexities and ethical dilemmas created by the parents’ and the children’s competing needs and splitting (Freud, S., 1894) reflected in the system. A number of interventions described as helpful when counselling parents are also discussed. Finally the importance of focusing on parent-child relations and planned reunification (within a context where the best interests of the child must be prioritised) was also revealed and discussed.