Keeping it in the family
999: WHAT’S YOUR EMERGENCY? C4, 9pm THIS gritty documentary series goes on the front line with police in south Yorkshire, revealing the shocking emergencies that they deal with on a daily basis.
This instalment is no less impactful, delving into the complex challenges of policing relationships when parents live in fear of their own children. And it’s much more common than you might think.
Statistics from across the UK reveal that incidents of child-onparent abuse have doubled in recent years.
Community calls to the police reporting teenagers causing trouble are routine but, increasingly, these calls are coming from closer to home.
In Sheffield, on a Saturday night, officers attend an incident where a mother is asking for her 15-year-old son to be taken into custody after he starts causing damage at home.
Then, for the second time in three days, the same officers are despatched after a report of a son attacking his father. They arrest him under suspicion of threats to kill.
But not all conflicts are to do with children or adolescents. Even parents with grown-up children can find themselves living in fear. Officers support a distraught mother who’s under siege from her violent and aggressive 23-year-old son, and discover a complex relationship between parent and child.
And elsewhere, an elderly and seriously-ill father calls for urgent help in the aftermath of the distressing damage caused by his middle-aged son who is struggling with an alcohol issue.