1. Corporal violence and emotional
neglect in Finnish families –
from changing attitudes to developing good practices
Satu Keisala, Project manager
Johanna Matikka, Advisor
The Federation of Mother and Child
Homes and Shelters
3. What is corporal punishment?
• Definition: An action where an adult exercising
superior physical strength aims to cause a child pain
or discomfort, though not physical injury, in order to
punish the child or otherwise control his/her
behavior”.
4. Change in attitudes towards corporal violence in past 30
years in Finland
Women Men All
Central union for child welfare (2014)
6. Violence and neglect in parening is a
frequent occurence in Finland
• Corporal punishment has been banned for 31 years; parenting
practises at homes change slowly
Emotional violence and neglect are hard to recognize and to
intervene
Police University College 2012; almost every secong child
between 0 and 12 has been subjected to disciplinary
violence at home
• Look at all this from the child´s point of view – does he/she feel safe
or is he/she scared?
7. Violence (doing) Neglect (omitting to do)
Physical violence
* Hitting * Slapping/smacking
* Kicking * Pushing
* Shaking * Harsh grabbing
* Burning * Pulling from hair
* Drugging
Physical neglect
* Care * Protection
* Age-related stimulation * Clothing
* Sheltering * Nutrition and
hygiene
* Education * Residential
* Health and healthcare circumstances
* Age-related supervision and guidance
Violence and neglect in parenting
Emotional
Emotional abuse / violence
Descriptions of incidents / events between a
child and a parent
* Threatening with violence
* Making invisible
* Verbal insulting
* Humiliating and contempt
* Intimidating
* Isolation
* Corruption
Emotional neglect
Descriptions of child-parent interaction and relationship
* Parent is not emotionally available
* Negative attitude to a child
* Developmentally inappropriate interactions with the child
* Failure to recognize or acknowledge the child´s individuality
or psychological boundary
* Failing to promote the child´s social adaptation
Physical
8. What we need is…
• Awareness and knowledge
• Professionals skills to
• recognize
• intervene
• Work on different levels - child,
parent, family
• Means and methods
• preventive and remedial (healing)
• Support of the work community
• Networking
9. Towards sensitive parenting
• Prohibitioin of corporal punishment or emotional
neglect is not enough, parents need new ways to
raise their children
• Families shoult be treated with respect
• Concrete instructions to ”here and now” –situations
• Know you own childhood history
• Strenghtens the child-parent relationhip
10. Towards sensitive parenting
• Prohibitioin of corporal punishment or emotional
neglect is not enough, parents need new ways to
raise their children
• Families shoult be treated with respect
• Concrete instructions to ”here and now” –situations
• Know you own childhood history
• Strenghtens the child-parent relationhip
Editor's Notes
Encourage me to grow strong!
Our presentation focuses on the situation of corporal violence and neglect in finnish families today
We will also tell you about the development of attitudes towards (using) violence and neglect in parenting, and what our situation is today in 2015 and at the end we will share some thoughts and ideas about what our furure challenges in this field might be.
The Federation of Mother and Child Homes and Shelters is a national child welfare organisation founded in 1945 to help single mothers and their children. This year we are celebrating our 70th anniversary. We are a non-governmental and non-profit organisazion that was established by Miina Sillanpää, who was the first female minister in Finland and especially active in campaining for the rights of working and lonely women.
In the days when single mothers needed support and shelter, a way out from disgrace, we founded homes for them. When domestic violence came out from homes and turned from private problem into a social one, we created networks to help both victims and offenders.
As society has changed, the Federation has concentrated more on providing support for the family as a whole.
The aim of the Federation is
to safeguard the child’s right to favorable growing conditions and safe development,
to provide support for parenthood and families and
to prevent violence in the family.
A Total of 30 member associations across Finland provide professional help and voluntary support for families in need.
The member associations across Finland maintain 10 mother and child homes (blue mark on the map), six homes focusing on treatment of drug and alcohol-related problems (pink mark) and 11 shelters (green mark).
Some of the associations focus on community care services (yellow mark).
More than 10 000 people, approximately 4000 of whom are children use the associations services every year.
Our slogan from 70 years back is valid still today; every child has to be saved for life.
The Ministry of Social Affairs and Health defines corporal punishment as “an action where an adult exercising superior physical strength aims to cause a child pain or discomfort, though not physical injury, in order to punish the child or otherwise control his/her behavior”. The term corporal punishment does not incorporate the word violence and therefore gives an impression that it is a normal procedure in bringing up children.
Therefore In Finland the term corporal violence was introduced in year 2000 to highlight the difference between discipline and violence.
In the Act on Child Custody and Right of Access it is stated that “A child must be brought up with understanding, security and affection. A child must not be subdued, corporally punished or treated offensively in any other way. The growth of a child towards independence, responsibility and adulthood must be supported and encouraged”.
In Finland we have a strong history of corporal violence. But also we were a second nation – right after Sweden to ban corporal violence at the home by law. That happened in 1984. Since those years we have seen a huge progress in change of attitudes towards using violence and neglect in parenting as you can see in this slide.
The central Union for child welfare has made a longitude survey during these past decades on the attitudes towards corporal violence among the people in Finland. In this chart is shown the % of the answerers saying “I strongly agree” or “I agree” in Question: “Disciplining children is acceptable at least in exceptional cases.” The follow up years in this longitude survey are shown below (1981, 1985, 2004, 2006, 2007, 2012 and 2014.)
As you can see, there´s been a dramatic change especially in the attitudes on of women and especially since mid 2000.
Before the awareness of corporal violence we had increasing public discussion about domestic violance between adults, the spouses, and at little after that the public discussion followed by the recognition that domestic violence is also violence and neglect towards the child.
And what caused this change in attitudes has been of course the legistlation itself (which was at the time aggrigated by the Finnish child welfare NGO-leaders who had also strong political incluence), but also the raising awareness of the adverse affects of violence and neglect for the child. Reseach, both domestic and international brought us new and undisputed information.
The status of child welfare NGO´s in Finland is guite strong also among Finnish parents, and when campainig, informing and educating our citizens we feel that we have a good change to get our message through. Also The Ministry of Social Affairs and Health set up in 2009 a working group to draw up a proposal for a national plan of action to prevent and reduce corporal punishment of children.
One kind of a ”key to success”, if you like, has been that we´ve had many operatives, many organizations, governmental and NGO´s behind this joint message.
Another lay in our welfare system; we have maternaty and child health clinics that reach over 99% of all preagnant mothers and after birth the babis and children as they grow – and increasinly also fathers, the service is for both parents and the whole family. We have a highly professional daycare-system that reaches over 60% of all under school-aged chihldren.
In this slide we have some glimses of our brocures and media-campaigns supporting non-violent parenting
And now to the key point of our presentation today: the attitudes have changed but still violence and neglect is present in the everyday life of the Finnish children. Only forms and ways of violence have changed. In a while, let´s look at the next slide where we have a kind of consensus – picture of what are the present forms of violence and neglect today. During our work in the past years we have had a change to discuss with lots of different professionals working with children and families like doctors, nurses, social-workes, family-workers, teachers and created joined understanting.
We pretty much agree on what are the physical forms of violence and neglect but when it comes to emotional forms of violence and neglect, the professionals start to disagree.
The difference between violence and corporal punishment is only theoretical. The adults can continue their deabate about what is violence and what is not, but we always need to look at the situations from the child´s point of view
If the child is scared of his / her parent, we consider it to be violence.
At this moment we could also compare this situation with our understanding on domestic violence between adults. Are you scared at home? If yes, it´s violence. Why would it be any different between a child and an adult?
In this slide we have current structure that aims to make visible both physical and emotional dimensions as well as the dimensions of violence and neglect.
The emotional side of violence and neglect in parenting is still insufficiently recognized to be harmful and lead to variety of difficulties in the child´s future life. It´s also still a challenge to recognize and intervene for the professionals working with children and their parents. Research has indicated that for example emotional unavailability and unresponsiveness of the parent can be even more damaging to the child than occasional physical violence.
Also, it´s important to notice that emotional abuse is always present in the situations of physical violence and neglect.
The professionals working with children and families in different services like daycare, school, maternity and child welfare clinics and social services, they all see a bit different aspect of violent and neglecting parenting, depending on their position and basic tasks in our service system. In order to effectively prevent and reduce violent and neglecting parenting we see it´s important to develop the professional work among all professionals who meet and work with children and their parents.
In practice this means that first we need to increase the professionals’ awareness and knowledge about violent and neglecting parenting. Secondly we need to improve their skills to recognize different forms of violent and neglecting parenting, to bring up the subject as a routine in their client work. And eventually work in different levels; with children, parents and the whole family.
The working methods need to both prevent and remedy. No-one should work with these phenomenons alone, as it´s well known how emotionally stressful it is facing them. In our public service system children and families are very often clients in many services and organizations at the same time, so it´s important that all professionals working with the same family network, are aware of each other and have joined objectives, goals. At this field and area we still have lot of improving to do.
It isn´t enought to ban corporal violence and to say to parents don´t hit your child, we need to support parents in positive parenting methods.
Congrete ”here and now” instructions are needed
How to decrease your own anxiety and level of stress
How to help regulate child’s actions and difficult emotions
How to set limits in a safe way
Knowing yours own history of attachment is essential
Work through your own traumas
To find the positive experiences that you can build on in our own parenting
The parents, who have a history of corporal violence in their own childhood, especially need guidance and encouragement and the professionals to support their everyday parenting
We shloud always hepl the parents see their own behaviour from the childs point of view, though the eyes of the child
We need new ways to support parents in positive parenting
WE THANK YOU FOR LISTENING TO US AND WISH YOU PRODUCTIVE CONFERENCE!
