Police are increasingly being called to homes where parents are unable to discipline their own children, a watchdog’s report has revealed.
Parents are demanding that officers come to their houses to deal with disruptive behaviour rather than chastise the youngsters themselves.
In many cases parents have been unable to cope with bad behaviour, including incidents as apparently minor as a fight over a TV remote control.
Researchers said that the findings highlighted the pressure faced by many families and carers. The ability to discipline children had been eroded by the demise of extended families and the growth in single-parent households, experts suggested.
The report, published today by Her Majesty’s Inspectorate of Constabulary, said: “Police officers we spoke to told us that they were called frequently to deal with incidents where parents or children’s homes could not cope with a child’s disruptive behaviour and sought to use the police as a way to discipline children.”
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One of two sisters was arrested after a fight over a remote control, and in another case a 13-year-old boy who had been in care since he was six was arrested for common assault on his sister, who was aged 11. On one occasion a boy of 17 was arrested for pushing his stepfather and damaging a garden fence.
David Green, director of the Civitas think-tank, said: “One of the things people do not want to talk about is that family breakdown leads to a lot of parents being unable to cope. It is very often a lone parent who cannot cope with disciplining children.
“When kids get to 12, 13 and 14 and they mix with the wrong crowd they can become quite aggressive and mothers on their own can be scared of that.”
The decline of extended families in which grandparents and older members of families would help to discipline and guide children is also blamed for parents turning to the police for help when they reach breaking point.
“Very often you have lone parents who are isolated. They do not have the same kind of family support and networks that would have been common a generation ago,” Mr Green said.
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Samantha Callan, associate director for families at the Centre for Social Justice, said that parents needed greater support. She admitted, though, that changing family structures had made the task of child-rearing more difficult, particularly for lone women.
“If you have teenage children, and especially where there is not a father figure or another figure of authority in the home, very many parents find themselves unable to control their children and there is little help for them,” she said.
The inspectorate’s report also says that officers are being called to care homes and hospitals because staff cannot deal with disruptive patients. In one case police went to a care home and took a 90-year-old man with dementia into custody after be became violent towards staff and other residents.
Police said yesterday that they were often the service of last resort, which operated around the clock offering help. Paul Ford, secretary of the Police Federation National Detectives Forum, said: “Louise Casey, director-general of the troubled families programme, highlighted recently that the country has half a million problem families who need additional support — that support has to come from somewhere.”
Ian Hopkins, deputy chief constable of Greater Manchester, criticised a mother last year who called the force when her daughter, 13, “refused to go to school”. She had dialled the non- emergency 101 number. Police went to the house and escorted the teenager to school.
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Mr Hopkins said that parents should take responsibility for getting their children to school, or that other agencies, such as social services and local councils, should deal with the matter.
The report said that too often children, people who were mentally ill, and those with dementia were being locked in police cells, which are seen as substitute for social and health care.
A report by the Royal College of Psychiatrists yesterday said that young people were being put at risk by stretched mental health services. A survey of the college’s members found that children were becoming “stuck in the gap” between a lack of in-patient beds and overstretched community care. Three in five reported young people being held in inappropriate settings such as police cells, paediatric wards or A&E departments. Fourteen per cent reported cases of children and young people who had attempted suicide while waiting for a bed.
More than three quarters said that young people who posed a “high risk” to their own safety or that of others, and therefore needed a bed, instead had to be managed in communities. The report mentioned the case of a 17-year-old with paranoid delusions who hit their brother while waiting for a bed.