One of the most striking aspects of the findings is the ‘ordinariness’ of the children’s experiences, which on the surface disguises their detrimental impact. For example, it is developmentally normal for children to show distress when parents are arguing, for teenagers to feel self-conscious about their families, to argue with parents and to present challenging behaviour in school. What is different here is that children who live with domestic violence are likely to experience these maturational processes in an acute and sometimes pathological manner. While some of the children’s reactions had already attracted professional attention and concern, many of the others’ went unnoticed, probably because they were mistaken for typical, exasperating, juvenile behaviours. (Buckley, Holt & Whelan, 2007 p308).

From its early days, children who called Childline about physical abuse or their mother being beaten by their father often told us that it happened when the parent was drunk. Children rarely said explicitly that they were ringing because their parent had a drink problem. It usually emerged as a context to the problem they were calling about: physical or sexual or emotional abuse, neglect, domestic violence, running away or being thrown out of home, or severe family relationship problems. (Childline 1997, p4 [Foreword])

It can be incredibly difficult to know which children are affected as a result of living with parental problems such as parental problem drinking and parental domestic abuse. In some cases, it will be obvious (because a child is clearly showing physical signs of abuse or because you have seen a child’s parent drunk at the school gates, or because you are working directly with a parent because of problem drinking or domestic abuse).

However, some children and families will go out of their way to keep the problems at home a secret. The parent who often bears the brunt of the behaviour associated with the drinking and the domestic abuse may very much want to seek help but will be afraid that the children will be removed from the family or will fear the consequences when the drinker / perpetrator finds out. Moreover, many of the signs and symptoms that children might display are those that are indicative of a whole range of problems, or are the types of things that we associate with children growing up.

This section will give some ideas of the types of things you could look out for, or the types of questions that you could ask. Many professionals will also not be as familiar with the key things to look out for and will therefore miss opportunities to identify children living in these environments. It will also consider what kind of things you could ask about or look out for when you first talk to a child about their problems at home and you are trying to work out with them the best way to help them.

What to look for?

Despite the challenges inherent in identifying children who are at risk and deeply affected because they live with parental alcohol misuse or parental domestic abuse, these children can come to the attention of a range of professionals and services in a range of ways. For example:

• Some will present to generic services (such as a doctor or health visitor) with a range of physical and psychological problems linked to their problems at home.
• Some will come to the attention of social services because of the severity of complexity of the problems at home, and where issues of neglect or safety have prompted or necessitated such involvement.
• Some will be struggling with school (attendance, appearance, completion of and quality of work, bullying etc.)
• Some may even come to the attention of the police, youth offending or mental health services because of health or behavioural problems as a result of the environments in which they are living.
• Some children can be identified because a parent (either a drinker or perpetrator of violence or aggression; or a victim who attends health or social care services, or who is also drinking and hence comes to the attention of an alcohol service) comes into contact with an appropriate service.
• Sometimes it can be non-presence to services that should set alarm bells ringing for some professionals. For example, non attendance at school or to primary general health services. A Welsh study of 148 children under 16 years old who lived with their mothers in refuges (Webb et al., 2001) found that many children had a high level of need yet were unknown to general health service and so were missing out on routine and necessary health care like immunisation and developmental checks.
• For many families, identification can take place through the mother seeking help or by her attendance at services (e.g. at an accident and emergency department). Particularly when a mother is seeking help, there is a real window of opportunity for support.