You are in an archived section of the Child Family Community Australia (CFCA) site. Publications in this section were produced by the former National Child Protection Clearinghouse which is now part of CFCA. Please visit Child Family and Community Australia Publications by topic for a full list of our publications.
NCPC Issues No. 33, 2010
Issues for the safety and wellbeing of children in families with multiple and complex problems: The co-occurrence of domestic violence, parental substance misuse, and mental health problems
By Leah Bromfield, Alister Lamont, Robyn Parker and Briony Horsfall
Published by the Australian Institute of Family Studies, December 2010, 24 pp. ISBN 978-1-921414-62-6, ISSN 1446-9995 (Print), ISSN 1447-0004 (Online)
Download NCPC Issues No. 33 (PDF 815 KB)Families with multiple and complex problems are no longer a marginal group in service delivery. In fact, they have become the primary client group of modern child protection services. The challenge for child protection services is to respond holistically to address inter-related problems, in order to better support families to make and sustain changes to better meet the needs of children.
Introduction
The factors most commonly associated with the occurrence of child abuse and neglect, and identified in families involved with child protection services, are domestic violence, parental substance abuse and parental mental health problems (Cleaver, Nicholson, Tarr, & Cleaver, 2007; Cleaver, Unell, & Aldgate, 1999; Scott, 2009). The significance of parental substance misuse, mental health problems and domestic violence is made clear in the National Framework for Protecting Australia's Children, which states "A particular focus is sustained on key risk factors of mental health, domestic violence and drug and alcohol abuse" (Council of Australian Governments, 2009, p. 21). Families in which parents present with these problems are often situated within a wider context of exclusion and disadvantage (e.g., housing instability, poverty, low education, social isolation and neighbourhood disadvantage). Parents may also be struggling to come to terms with their own experiences of trauma and victimisation. These types of problems are complex, often inter-related, and chronic in nature and rarely occur in isolation. Where these problems occur within families, the families are described as "families with multiple and complex problems".
This paper investigates the separate impacts of parental substance misuse, domestic violence and parental mental health problems. It presents evidence regarding the extent to which these problems co-occur and a discussion of the wider context of exclusion and disadvantage, its causes and its consequences. Finally, it provides an overview of research and theory for working with families with multiple and complex problems.
Families with multiple and complex problems are families with multiple, chronic and inter-related problems, the constellation of which can result in children's needs being unmet, and children being at heightened risk of abuse and neglect (Cleaver et al., 2007; Cleaver et al., 1999).
Authors
Dr Leah Bromfield is an Associate Professor and Deputy Director of the Australian Centre for Child Protection at the University of South Australia.
Alister Lamont is a Research Officer for the National Child Protection Clearinghouse at the Australian Institute of Family Studies.
Robyn Parker is a Senior Research Officer for the Australian Family Relationships Clearinghouse at the Australian Institute of Family Studies.
Briony Horsfall is a Research Officer at the Australian Institute of Family Studies.
Acknowledgements
The authors gratefully acknowledge the feedback and advice provided by Dr Robyn Mildon, Robyn Miller, Elly Robinson and Daryl Higgins who reviewed this paper. The authors also acknowledge the Parenting Research Centre who gave the authors permission to include their “Effective strategies for responding to trauma in adults” developed by the Parenting Research Centre in association with the Australian Centre for Post-traumatic Mental Health.