Community Power Podcast Series 2 Episode 6: Transforming family relationships in Southampton

Episode 6: Transforming family relationships in Southampton

Chris Allen

Hello and welcome to this week’s Community Power Podcast, a series brought to you in partnership with Local Trust. My name’s Chris Allen, and in this series, we’re showcasing some incredible projects, focusing in particular on what happens when you give local people the resources, the power and the assets to make a difference to their neighbourhoods. With me, as ever is series producer Beth Lazenby. Beth tell us about this week’s episode.

Beth Lazenby

So today we have a very special episode featuring Kim and Michelle, who both work in Southampton. So Kim is the chair of SO18 Big Local. And she brought in Michelle to run a project which has not only had real personal resonance for both of them, but help many parents in the local area transform their family relationships.

Chris Allen

Thanks, Beth. And yes. First of all, I asked Kim to explain to us why the Big Local area is called SO18?

Kim

SO18 is the first half of our postcode.

Chris Allen

So we’re talking about a relatively small community. How many houses within there would you say?

Kim

We have a population about 6000. Mainly families, obviously.

Chris Allen

And what sort of housing, you know? What sort of housing? How would you describe the area?

Kim

Yeah, the old council houses, old council estates. Our area is made up of two big council estates, Townhill Park and Harefield, and a little bit of another smaller district, Middenbury. And they nearly exclusively were all built as social housing back in the day.

Chris Allen

And how long have you been involved with supporting the community?

Kim

With Big Local about since about in 2014 ish, yeah. And I got involved simply because I went to a residents meeting about the regeneration of Townhill Park. And I got sucked into it from there. And I had never done anything like that before. So, yeah, I’m a newbie to community work or being involved with a community

Chris Allen

Great. Michelle, how did you get sucked into this?

Michelle

Well, well, funnily enough, in the SO18 area, I did work in a school, in a local primary school. So I kind of knew the knew the area, knew some of the families and knew some of the children. And we’d heard of Big Local and we approached them. I think we went to a meeting, and we approached them, and we said that that we were running NVR, which I’ll explain, I’ll explain in a minute. And luckily, Kim had had experience of an NVR course, which she had had taken.

Chris Allen

So tell us what NVR stands for?

Michelle

So, so NVR stands for Non Violent Resistance. If you think about Martin Luther King, Gandhi, Rosa Parks and the Montgomery bus boycott. So it’s based on people that got things done by being very peaceful and maybe a little bit disobedient as well. Very much about peaceful protest. It was the background of it, it was, it was written by Haim Omer, who came from Israel, who had to think of a way of helping families and carers whose children were exhibiting very controlling, very sometimes violent behaviour. But we’ve kind of, over the years, we’ve adapted it as well to anxiety, because anxiety can be very controlling.

So although it stands for non violent resistance, we also refer to it as a New Vision on Relationships. And that’s mainly because sometimes non violent resistance can put parents off coming through the door, because the first thing they’re going to think is, ​“well, I’m not violent towards my child”. But actually, it’s more about any controlling behaviour, and sometimes it’s about the violence that the children actually.

Chris Allen

There’s a massive leap if you don’t mind me saying from Martin Luther King, Gandhi and Rosa Parks to working with families locally around these issues. But the principle you’re saying is still there. And obviously the people we mentioned the brave, life giving, as well. How do you make, how do you take that incredible principle and you apply it to families and to individuals?

Michelle

So the main concepts that of NVR are to resist. So we ask parents, and we help parents to not react to the violence or the controlling behaviour, but to resist it. To resist it as much as they can in a really peaceful way. We then say, then we want you to persist. We want you to keep resisting that behaviour. Keep using strategies that we’re going to give you, to de escalate things, to keep doing it, even if you come back next week and say, ​“Well, that didn’t work”. We say, ​“well go and try it again tomorrow”. So we really do put that encouragement around them. And then also to repair. Because we often find and myself, I was a parent that my child at 14 was very controlling, very violent. School refused, and I’d had two other children who I didn’t have a problem with. But then my third child, nothing I did worked. And I taught in a local school as well as, as I say, and my own child wasn’t going to school. So it was, it was kind of…

Chris Allen

How does that make feel because, because, obviously you had two children, you hadn’t had any problems. But then you must have thought, ​“well, it’s not me?”

Michelle

Well, the trouble is, you, you, yes, you you think it’s you say to yourself, ​“I’m doing all the same things that I did with my other children”. But unfortunately, society around you will start looking and my own, my own parents would say, ​“well, just make, just make them go to school. You know, you wouldn’t have got away with that. Just just pull them out of the door”. My my daughter at that point was six feet tall. There was no way I was pulling a 14 year old anywhere.

Kim

I had the school ringing me on a daily basis saying, ​“Eleanor must come to school”, my daughter must come to school. And I said, ​“well, good luck. You know, you go in and pull her out of bed because I can’t do that.” You can’t and and you don’t want to do that. It’s not the way you absolutely trying to get your child to go to school.

Michelle

And one thing I’ve learned with working with all of these amazing parents that you know, especially from the SO18 area, because we’ve got to know the community really, really well. It’s not that these children don’t want to go, don’t want to learn. It’s not about that. It’s just they can’t manage the setting that they’re going into for whatever reason, anxiety, sensory, etc.

Chris Allen

Let’s come back to that in a minute, because that’s really, really important. But tell us, tell us your story Kim. Because that would that obviously that’s chiming with it, isn’t it?

Kim

Oh, absolutely. My, my story, well, my mine and my daughter’s story started at kind of like 2013, 2014. We had a perfect storm of a year that, you know, we lost a very dear friend, very suddenly; my mother was diagnosed with Alzheimer’s, and then only six months later, had a catastrophic stroke and died. Eleanor was being bullied at school, and the pressures of school was mounting on her shoulders as well. And her mental health took a decline. And then we got involved with CAMS for her anxiety and for her but then by the time we got to her being 15, we were in a very, very dark, very dark place. She was not going to school. She was not coming home. She went missing for eight days.

Chris Allen

And did you worry about losing her?

Kim

Oh, of course, absolutely. Yeah, I knew where she was. It wasn’t that she was totally missing. I knew she was close by staying with other friends, but she wouldn’t engage, and she would only come back home when she knew I wasn’t going to be there. And then she had seen somebody at school and said that she was having the most disturbing nightmares. Suicidal nightmares. And things escalated from there. And then I found myself talking to social services and them offering this NVR course. And obviously, by then I was, and I’m a single mum. I just lost my mum in within the last 18 months. It was, yeah, we were, we were very sad people. But erm…

Chris Allen

I admire your bravery. You know, you talk both of you talking about your personal experience that runs very deep and to a lot of pain. Thank you. Let’s not let that slip by without saying thank you for doing that. It will help other people. Thank you.

Kim

So I found myself on this NVR course. And and you know, it’s not just a couple of hours. You have to make a commitment. It’s a couple of hours every week for 10 weeks. It’s not just a quick fix. But for me, it was absolutely empowering and gave me confidence, and it was life changing. No other words for it really.

Michelle

I can totally understand that Kim, because again, when when I was going through it with my child, I would sit in school meetings. I would sit in meetings with CAMS that my child wouldn’t come to. My child wouldn’t engage because she couldn’t. She was on the floor. And I would sit round and I would cry in all of those meetings. I would just cry because I didn’t know what to do. You know, I had my ex, my ex husband, who would sit and say, ​“well, it must be something you’re doing. It’s got to be something you’re doing”. And it was just this feeling of complete hopelessness.

But what NVR starts to do is it starts to give you a voice. It starts to give you a little bit of encouragement, a bit of confidence. It starts to empower you to actually sit in those meetings and say, ​“Okay, I’ve tried this. It isn’t working, but I’m now, I’m trying this through NVR, and that seems to be having an effect”. And once professionals around you see that the parent is actually managing this, the blaming and the shaming isn’t as much, is it? I mean.

Chris Allen

And if you’re blaming and shaming yourself without anybody else. I know I’ve got five children. We have our ups and downs in life. I think being a parent is one of the greatest privileges in life.

Michelle

And one of the hardest jobs.

Chris Allen

But when something goes to the nature that you’re dealing with, and now I’ve not had to walk your journey, but can’t imagine, and you don’t need anybody outside pointing the finger at you.

Michelle

It doesn’t help. And one of the things in our NVR groups, we if we can get these parents through the door, is to reassure them ​“that actually you’re in a place where we are going to support you, we’re going to unite around you, and we’re going to help you, and we’re here. And whatever you say to us, it stays in this room. You’re in a safe place, and we are going to start helping you”.

Chris Allen

And it’s a place you can cry without judgement.

Kim

Oh yeah, yes, yes. And you can, you can laugh as well. Oh yeah, for sure, absolutely.

Chris Allen

Even if it’s ​“okay, I’ve heard of NVR. I’ll Google it. I’ll get involved.” That’s still a very difficult thing to step forward, isn’t it? How do people, perhaps make that first step to get the support if they’re in the kind of position you’ve both been in?

Michelle

I think, from SO18’s involvement, they put posters up, they talk to schools. They say, ​“we’ve got this amazing course, you know, we, we’ve, we’ve got, we’ve got people that have done the course, and we can give you testimonials from them”. And, you know, I even think about like the posters are very, very colourful, very inviting and very, very safe, and even that, even that kind of helps. But we get them through the door, we make them a cup of tea, a couple of biscuits. You know, sometimes people haven’t had that kindness for a while, and I think, as well, I think that’s going to be so important, going forward with the cost of living, they probably can’t afford a packet of biscuits. It’s gonna, it’s gonna be that tight for some of these parents.

Kim

Us helping all the ways that we can.

Chris Allen

If I’m listening in Southampton, I’m going, ​“Wow, I know where to go to”, but I’m listening in, you know, Northumberland or whatever. And well, how can people be in touch with NVR? Presumably, you know, it’s known around the country. There’s different, different places where people get support?

Michelle

It’s interesting. There’s lots of places that haven’t heard of it. Funnily enough, we’re in phase two of a research programme that Southampton University are doing on a on a parent-led NVR group, and the impact of that on families. And it’s something that even though, over the years, especially with SO18 we have, we have a lot of really good feedback, we have excellent feedback. What society want, what the government wants, is that quantity of that qualitative research, those figures, that’s what they want. We’re now doing that. It’s all gone through the Ethics Committee. We’re in phase two. We’re doing that with our wonderful SO18 parents. Once this research project is published, it’s going to put NVR a little bit more on the map.

There are pockets of NVR that go that are going on nationwide. I’m a member of NVR UK as well, which we had a conference in Southampton two or three years ago. I was just going to sort of mention, from what you were saying just now, Kim about, just about the families. And it just made me think about the cost of living. So when, when our when our parents come into our groups, they’re there because they want to help their child. But relationships have broken down, and I don’t mind admitting that when I went to an NVR, course, I’d stopped even liking my 14 year old child because I’d had to give up work. I was on tablets because I was so depressed. My family weren’t speaking to me. We were we were close to being evicted because of the shouting, the screaming, the swearing that went on in the house, and you know. So all I was doing for my child was providing those basic needs, that survival. Making sure she had something to eat. Making sure she had a shower (when she would take one after six months). Making sure she had clean bed clothes, clean clothes. Making sure I could keep a roof over her head and keep us together and pay the bills. When our parents walk through that door, sometimes that’s where they are, just at that survival. And what I’m worried about with the cost of living, that even that is going to be stripped away. Those those pure things that keep us alive, that roof over your head, that food, that job, money coming in, however you get your money coming in. What’s going to happen when they come in, even without that basic need? And that that does worry me. It really does.

Chris Allen

And what you said, there very profound again, that sometimes you don’t like your child, but you wouldn’t be trying if you didn’t love them.

Kim

Exactly. I used to say that to my daughter, and I said, ​“You know what? I love the absolute bones out of you, but right now, I don’t like you at all”. And I don’t like the girl that you are becoming.

Michelle

Yeah, it’s the behaviour. It’s the behaviour. It’s not, yeah, it’s not the child. And that’s what NVR does. We go back and we look for the child that we lost in amongst all of this behaviour.

Chris Allen

The important thing again, another guilt thing. Let’s not, let’s not say, Don’t feel guilty about not liking your child at times. You know you’re still loving them.

Kim

Oh, absolutely.

Michelle

And you still want to make sure they’ve got all their basic needs met. How’s that going to happen with all of this going on? That really, really worries me. It’s another layer of hardship, another barrier towards helping your child’s mental health and your own.

Chris Allen

And if you don’t mind me asking, can you tell us about where your respective children are now through all of this?

Kim

Yes, my darling daughter. She left secondary school with absolutely no GCSEs because she didn’t go to school, she wouldn’t. She went on up to Sixth Form College. Did an extra year at Sixth Form College, came out with A levels, merit GCSEs. Because she got the right teaching and the right support from the educators up at sixth form. She was accepted at Solent University, which is one of the universities in Southampton, to do mental health nursing, funny enough. But COVID hit, and that didn’t come off. And she tried, she tried to do it for the first year, but her mental health took another dip, so she dropped out of university, sadly. But she’s working now. She’s loving working. She’s met a lovely young man. They seem very happy together. She’s still living at home with me, of course, but we’re fine. Thank you very much.

Chris Allen

Good. Good. And Michelle?

Michelle

So when I started my NVR journey, I had a 14 year old son called Billy. And having gone to the NVR courses as a parent, about halfway into the course, Billy was able to tell me he was, in fact, Lily and I’d made a mistake when she was born. And she was able to tell me that. So she’s now a 22 year old, amazing young lady. She has extreme anxiety. She’s she does get get very low. She has gender dysphoria. She is transitioning. She has Asperger’s. She’s not that keen on people. And this world to her is very complicated, but she’s happy, she’s healthy. She is the most amazing person I know. And oh, sorry, I always get tearful.

Chris Allen

It would be very strange if you didn’t to be honest, Michelle.

Michelle

Because she’s amazing and NVR saved us.

Chris Allen

You know, I can’t thank you enough for sharing your stories really, which will give hope to people who perhaps are without hope. So thank you both.

Michelle

Thank you very much.

Kim

Thank you.

Chris Allen

That was Michelle McCarthy, and before that, Kim Ayling. And my thanks again to them for sharing their stories in such an incredibly open and powerful way, giving hope to people, perhaps who are without hope. What were your thoughts, Beth?

Beth Lazenby

That was definitely the most emotional episode that we’ve recorded I think Chris. And I think it’s because both Michelle and Kim were so open about their personal experience. And it was so moving to see the way that they have really worked to remove the stigma for other local parents who are struggling with the same issues. And I just think it is such a moving and inspirational story, and I really hope that other parents are able to find similar support, or at least know where to look if they need to get some kind of help with their own family relationships.

Chris Allen

And so Beth, if people do want to know more, where can they go?

Beth Lazenby

So in the show notes, we’ll include links to NVR South’s website page, as well as SO18 Big Local’s website you can keep up to date with their projects. And we’ll also include a link to the NVR Practitioners Consortium, where you can find your own training opportunities if you’d like to take part in NVR training.

Chris Allen

Brilliant. Beth, thank you. And what about next week?

Beth Lazenby

Next week, we’re going to be chatting to Peter Scollard. He used to be on the Partnership for Northfleet Big Local and then turned local councillor, and is now the mayor of Gravesham in Kent. And he has some very interesting perspectives on how local councils and resident led partnerships can work together.

Chris Allen

Great. Beth, thank you very much indeed. Yes, and we do look forward to you joining us next time on the community power podcast, brought to you by Local Trust, discovering what happens when you give local people the power, the money and the assets to make a difference to their own neighbourhoods.