NEW ZEALAND
Violence at home creates lasting scars in children
Almost three-quarters of children who see family
violence have behavioural and physical problems, a study on domestic
violence in Auckland shows. More than half have sleep-related difficulties such as
nightmares and bed-wetting and more than a third have problems at
school. The findings come from the evaluation of a one-year
pilot programme run by the Auckland Domestic Violence Centre.
They were released to the Herald just days after a
Takanini 10-year-old called the police to say her mother was being badly
beaten at home. The child's mother was last week taken to Middlemore
Hospital with a broken jaw after an argument with her former partner and
was unable to speak for three days.
Researchers from the Auckland University Injury
Prevention Research Centre said two-child families made up most of the
sample of 89 families in the 54-page evaluation. Most of the children were aged under 7 and a quarter
of the cases were from Mt Roskill, Ellerslie, Glen Innes or Panmure.
The executive director of the Auckland Domestic
Violence Centre, Jane Drumm, said advocates found that many of the
children were withdrawn, cried a lot, felt guilty they were not doing
more to help their mother and suffered from post-traumatic stress
disorder. Some were distracted from their schoolwork and were truants,
hyperactive or bullies.
“What it is doing is stealing their childhood from
them,” said Jane Drumm. “They are getting involved in issues they have no
understanding of and have no way of controlling. They are just swept
along.”
She said the programme had been successful, but was
only a pilot and would need more money to continue. Most of the children had had violence happening in the
home for more than a year and it was usually caused by the children's
biological father. Although in more than half of the families there was
no evidence of the children being hit, more than half of the children
experienced emotional or psychological abuse. The evaluation also showed that in over half of the
families, children feared to leave their mothers alone.
When violence occurred in the home, nearly half the
children spontaneously stayed with their mother, four in 10 children
left the room and one third asked their parents to stop fighting. Three in 10 children left the house, the room or
locked themselves away.
A child advocate at the Commissioner for Children's
office, Trish Grant, said the small sample was in line with other
research on domestic violence and children. Most research showed that children and babies exposed
to family violence suffered ill-effects on their ability to learn, and
their emotional, psychological and cognitive well-being.
“There is no question that children being exposed to
family violence does affect them and it does affect them in a variety of
ways, which can be both immediate and long term.”
Child abuse often occurred with family violence, she
said, and early intervention was critical. “The earlier professionals
can respond to those concerns, the better.”
How the project works:
- The Government and charity-funded programme involves
a child crisis intervention team of 18 supervised advocates.
- They go into homes to help children who have
recently seen family violence.
- In many cases, families are referred to the team by
police.
- Advocates speak to the families and make sure there
is somewhere safe for the children to go, like the neighbours, if there
is more violence at home.
By Bridget Carter
25 March 2004
http://www.nzherald.co.nz/storydisplay.cfm?storyID=3556494&thesection=news&thesubsection=general
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