Hidden Harm

Hidden harm is abuse or harm that generally occurs away from public view, or often goes unrecognised and unreported.

I must confess that the phrase 'hidden harm' is a term I have only quite recently become familiar with, although I have worked with many children and adults who have been exposed to it in various forms over numerous years.

Physical harm is a concept that is generally understood and I think it's because it is visible or at least recognisable to your senses.

If a child or an adult is physically assaulted, deprived of food, sleep or adequate hygiene and care, or physically abused in some way, it shows and is for the most part detectable.

But it is much less easy to recognise harm which negatively impacts your emotional and psychological wellbeing, and for this reason such harm is much less recognisable and understood.

For emotional harm to be identified and recognised for what it is people have to have a way of being able to detect it. But this type of harm is often not immediately visible or easily detectable, and it may take a period of many months and often many years before it is.

For this reason a child or young person may be may be being harmed for many years without their knowledge, without showing signs of it, and without the awareness of those caring for them.

Professionals however, are generally more aware of the type of behaviour which causes harm and because parents may not be, this results in conflict and major disagreements between parents and professionals.

And because parental actions may be cultural and may have become habitual, they are inclined to vehemently protest, when asked to abstain from any behaviour which professionals believe causes harm.

Unfortunately there are so many ways in which people can experience hidden harm.

Exposure to parents abusing alcohol or substances, domestic abuse, mental ill health, female genital mutilation, forced marriage, modern slavery and child sexual exploitation, are all forms of hidden harm.

I recall working with a mother whose parents both abused alcohol during her childhood and also exposed her to frequent incidents of domestic abuse.

It was of interest to me when working with her and discussing her childhood that although she recognised that her parents abused alcohol, she did not see that she had been harmed in any way by this. In addition, whilst she accepted that her parents used to argue and fight, she maintained that she was at no time either frightened or harmed by these incidents.

As an adult, she chose to become involved with a male partner who had both a history of mental ill health and substance misuse, and failed to see how it could be considered that her actions or choices could be thought to pose any risk of harm to her child.

The interesting thing was that the concern from professionals, at least initially, focused primarily on the potential harm posed by her partner, as the issues around his care were obvious.

But it only later became clear, when having had the opportunity to fully review the chronology and the rest of the court bundle that in fact the mother was, instead of being a safety factor in respect of her child, was either the instigator of incidents of harm, or at the very least was instrumental in creating the harm her child was exposed to.

The mother had in fact been exposed to hidden harm throughout most, if not all of her childhood and had no sense of either the harm she had been exposed to, or the harm she was exposing her child to.

Although she saw herself as (and sought to promote herself as) a safety factor, the reality was that her childhood exposure to hidden harm meant that instead of being able to protect her child she posed a substantial risk of harm to her, but had no understanding of why this was the case.