Who kills children? With Professor Colin Pritchard (EP. 8)

In this episode I interview Professor Colin Pritchard, a distinguished academic and in my experience, a lovely, generous, wise individual. Professor Colin Pritchard is an Emeritus Professor, School of Medicine, University of Southampton and Visiting Professor at Dept Psychiatry and Research Professor in Psychiatric Social Work, Bournemouth University.

I watched a youtube series of him being interviewed by Richard Williams - I watched all of them over two days, and found them captivating: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7aB5mjaSnaY&list=PLojsAdAKgOvoP2n317wFqQyRL3QwxTWPq

His research can be found here, and the article discussed in this episode' who kills children' can be found here.

Any questions please contact me on richdevinesocialwork@gmail.com

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Transcript

0:03

Welcome to Rich Devine's Social Work Practice podcast. I am Rich and I am a social worker. This podcast is about practice related issues, self-development and transformation. It'll give you the knowledge, ideas, and practical tools for being an effective social worker, supporting you with assessment skills, direct work, dealing with conflict, and importantly helping you make a positive difference in the lives of children and families. Today I'm really pleased to welcome Professor Colin Pritchard. After 15 years in practice ending as a principal psychiatric social worker. Professor Pritchard became a lecturer in 1970. Since then, he has had various positions and a distinguished career in academia. He is a EUS professor, school of Medicine at the University of Southampton and a research professor in psychiatric social work form of university. Professor Colin Pritchard's researchers straddled the complex interface of psychiatry, medicine and social work, creating a unique inter interdisciplinary blend. He's an international figure in suicide studies and concerning the deaths of children in social work, psychiatric settings, his work concern in morbidity and mortality across the world using World Health Organization statistics continues to challenge established thinking. So welcome Colin. I'm delighted to have you on the podcast. Thank you. I would love to hear from you is a little bit about how you got into social work and what some of your first roles were. Yes. It started in the 1960s, of course. Pardon the 1950s. I left school at 15 and then joined the Royal Air. which in those days you had to have national service. And that gave me intermittently was known as a, a nursing attendant job. And of course, it's all about military and more or less paramedic in, in emergencies. And I, I source a little war in in Egypt, 9 56. I came outta the Royal Air Force and went into. And that was fine for a time in the psychiatric side, but it was very rigid very organic. And we, you know, we're talking about in, in the fifties and the sixties, so the difference between God and the consultant God did not think he was a consultant. There was the arrogance there. I was getting myself. In a sort of way, but mainly through literature. And I applied for a trainee job in the west riding of Yorkshire. And I, my supervisor then in 2 0 3, sorry, 1963, Maria Farrow, she said something extremely important. The second meeting of our super. They're gonna be supervised weekly. And what, what have you done for your client today? What have you done for your client today? It's a very simple question. Mm-hmm. as a social worker, as a psychiatric social worker, what do I do for my client, my, my service user? And if I'm not doing anything, I remember James Baldwin, the American journalist, said, are you part of this solution? Are you part of the problem? And we as social workers have incredibly powerful influence on people's lives. So yes, colleagues, we can sometimes make things worse for, for our clients. On the other hand, we can make a. And the key, the key, no matter how long you want to wrap it up with psychology or some research, et cetera, is, is the relationship between your client. and your patient. Mm-hmm. And I, I could spend hours talking about that, what doctors talk about, the placebo effect, what I call the self repetitive process. So I, I qualified into child psychiatry which was really, really very good. But again, in the sixties, you see it's still all this non Freud and I nearly use a. Nonsense Freud. You see what matters is can you measure a change? Mm. You see, it's all giving a treat. Treatment. We know sorts of, all sorts of of frankly fiddling forms of treatments with people in, in, in trouble. Unless you measure. have you made a change? Have I, what have I done for my client? And very often in you, some in the sixties and, and in the seventies, the Freudians were more in talking, more interested in talking about their theories rather than bringing change. Now I was very fortunate. I had a wonderful two, two colleagues actually. One was my professor Max Hamilton, who was British first empirical psychiatrist. So he wanted to know output, outcome, outcome, how we made a difference, and, and then there was Michael Rocha who was the first empirical research. in Charles psychiatrist, Charles psychology. Mm-hmm. Now, I did a paper in the British Journal of Social Work in 1964. Most haven't read it. It's the only multivariate analysis in British social work and nobody read it. But what I was looking at was chase of 68 families very disturb, very disturbed, damaged families. And these were scoob. And when we looked at the analysis, the, the, the family dynamics, the interaction in the family, we found a pattern. And we found that the sons were getting closer to the daughter, the mother, and therefore having Ralph's father and the daughters were getting close to the fathers and having conflict with the mothers. I, well, I said, is this the, the pattern of eb. Because he's all in there now. Mike Rotter, late, Mike Rotter, he was a wonderful fellow. I'm not the guy, I'm not in his league. He rang me up and says, Colin, I read your paper. I'm really interested. He said, but why? Why Edith? I said, well, why not it, you know, Freud, but when does it start? I said, well, how do you mean? Well, let's talk it Practic. Argued that EDUs the three-year-old boy, as he started re re refr erections, he starts having sexual feelings toward his father. Do you really think that's true in practical terms? Well, frankly, Richard, once he told me, I mean, that was the end of Freud. because then what Mike said, look, look what you got there, Colin. And of course we're now talking about the seventies when there was no no D divorce. So families were crammed together in hateful marriage and they were just warring each other. And kids in the, the adults, the pens were trying to get some form of alliance. And this is exactly what Mike said. Look, this is what you've got. You've got families in domestic. Strife and one of the parents seeking an alliance against the other parent, and actually Mike Rudder's interpretation of our research, which was objective in terms of patents we could throw away. Freud had probably upset a lot of people already, but unless you've measured Freudian outcome, you'll find there's very little outcome. Mm. When I, I'd become a principal, psychiatric social worker which I loved, but I, by that time with the Royal Air Force, I'd had 15 years, and I'll be honest I was tired. I was, we call in our bo bo burnout and I, I got this lectureship in leads university. I said to Max Hamilton, I'm glad to leave patients behind. And he said immediately, Colin, if you're teaching a, a, a practice, you practice. He said, if your teaching practice that you need to practice. So we did two days a week nhs. Mm. I'm talking about your university now. When I left Bath as a, sorry, leads, as a senior lecturer and director of Social work studies in, in Barth it was a non applied faculty. So I didn't have any patience. And I'll tell you a story because it, it's worth thinking. The students would ask me questions and I would, my style was more semi seminal rather than you know, talk and talk. And there was on this particular case with some schizophrenia and question and answer question, answer, and that was fine. And and that was fine. And one of the says, and Colleen, what about x? And I thought, And suddenly I started thinking, so I said to the group, put your down. Put your tables down. Yes. Hold on, I've got them attention. You note, tear them up and talking like a textbook. It's never like that. Your client has said something to you. You've only half understood it. By the time we are moving the next path, you still half lost what you're just saying. And oh my goodness, you're not sure this, he's wanting to go, you want to go that way. He's wanting to go that way and it is never like the text textbook and I. That I needed to get myself a caseload. So I organized a local authority for six weeks morning, and I went in and got myself bit abolished, and I was proud to say I maintained a small caseload, a mental health caseload, actually up to about seven years ago. Oh, wow. and I still maintain a client link on the Department of Psychiatry where I do one a week. I join them as trainees at the caseload where I keep feeling practice. Mm-hmm. this way reminds me just how tough it is and also I You go on to learn from your clients. Yeah. I was saying before we come on that I'd watched this lecture series that you'd done with Richard Williams on YouTube, which I'd highly recommend to anybody. And I was just captivated by your, your stories that you were sharing and your ability to integrate that with research. And I, and I think part of why now is you're talking, I'm realizing what I found pot potentially so interesting and, and engaging. Was because you were able to integrate both the academia with ongoing practice related issues and experiences and and so there wasn't a disconnect that you can often encounter when you're listening to somebody in academia? Well, no, I, what I've got at the moment, of course, I've got one enormous advantage. I'm old, but I've never stopped. So you can see the. The biggest, biggest picture. For example, you and I, before we started, started talking about neurological disease and that came out from a, a, a client of mine. Mm. And thought, what's going on? I, cause this is not in urine disease officially it's really quite rare and all the rest of it, et cetera. There was a question. And then I went into the nu, into the numbers of World Bank, sorry, world Health Organization number, to suddenly realize that there's been a mini, almost hidden epidemic of neurological disease. And then you, then you ask this question, well, wh why? Because after all there's a genetic factor. But G Gene Zone take very, very, To start changing. So what's been happening in the last, quite literally the century, in this 21st century you can then you looked at, for example COVID five years ago, the World Health Organization told was gonna have epidemic. We wasn't sure where or, or when, but definit. Dunno, without worrying cause we're digressing too much. But there's another warning, warning from the W H O about multi-drug resistant bacterium. And we've already done a paper by accident. A woman professor of sorry, chemistry. Found her child who got got an illness with a viral in infect infection and then a neurological condition, which at that time we knew nothing about it, but she picked our research on changing patterns of neurological disease. She then asked the question, we start looking and suddenly find across the world there's an emerging of. Acute flustered myelitis. Most of you won't have learned to it, but it came outta a practice question, and that's the important thing to keep your mind open. But when it keeps the children, ah, I, I must emphasize I'm a bit of a fraud. You see, I was never working in the child in, in the, in the field of child. Mm. I'm a psychiatric social worker. But the long story when we discovered, and you may not believe we're talking about, discovered until the eighties, frankly, child sex abuse wasn't an issue. Mm. It just wasn't on the issue. We just didn't know. We never thought about it. I, I mean, I did discover in the seventies, a former colleague of mine who'd been actually a abused children, When, when this event happened, I just simply didn't believe it. Mm-hmm. Yes. You know, we just didn't think that, you know, we didn't think like that. It's almost hard for us to imagine if you've become a social worker in the last kind of decade or two, that the idea that that sexual abuse or even other issues around domestic violence or severe mental health issues would impact on children's health and wellbeing and development. And it's probably a sign of, of the progression of our society and perhaps social workers been a, a critical element of bringing to absolutely confront some of these issues that have been know, you do. Let, let me, let me congratulate our field. Mm. In the 1970s, I was the very first person to examine changes pattern of neurological, sorry, of child abuse related disease. Mm. Cause in the 1970s, Britain was the fourth highest child killer. After the 21 Western countries, it's no good. You know, you, you need to look at comparisons countries of comparisons. And and who could you measure less the same. It's no looking to say in Africa or Stan and so on. The culture the economics, et cetera. So you've gotta be examining comparable Western countries, and we were the fourth. Pleased to know the Dans and ourselves are joint lowest. The, the violent deaths of child abuse related deaths have never been lower since we've had records. Oh, wow. However, however, this country is now the second most unequal country in the western. And we've got the fifth highest child, normal deaths. I'm ashamed of this. This country is the second most unequal western country in the world, and we've got the fifth childish, highest child, ordinary child mortality. So lemme understand that. So previously we had one of the highest rates. Like children being murdered by their parents within fourth highest in in 21 countries. And that was in, in the 1970s. And now in, in our current modern day, we have the lowest rates of children being killed by parents. And you'd almost be inclined to think that the, there's a reverse trend, but part of that, I suppose, is because there's much more awareness around. When children die, and usually the, the circumstances are so shocking that they, they're publicized and they elicit a particular kind reaction, but they're aware, and in this we must health visitors, the, the gps much more. And therefore preventing our kids. But here's a, here's a difficult one, really difficult one, and some of my field in the field of psychiatry are a little uneasy. We looked at a decade of child murder in Hampshire, endorsers. This was an accident from, well, piece of research. I didn't know this was in the in the late. And the poli and we started talking about child abuse and the local police said, we're having a bloody clue. We've got all these cases, can you make some sense of it? So I went along and went to all this thing and sure enough, you could see a pattern within this domestic violence. There were patterns within that. And what you found was it definitely too complic? Don't say too, too long. The dangerous ones are the mentally ill parent or psychotic or the psychopathic. Now, people don't like me use the word psychopathic, severe personality disorder, and very often these are the stepfather or sometimes the stepmother. And what we. If you look at personality disorder, and you also look at the other cases, what we found in in doit, 85% of the people who were killed were family members, and two thirds of them were mentally ill. So, for example, the mother is depressed. She wants to die. She doesn't want to take her, leave the child behind, so she takes the child in love. Yes, believe sometimes these children can be killed in love because this. Disturbed and psychotic parents. We had a case of a man who had these delusions religious delusions. And finally he was so ho horrified because in his religion the the devil was going to give his children hiv. So he's delusions. He kills his five children, his wife, and then himself. And of all the fathers, blood fathers who killed in this decade all kill themselves after killing the children. And this is what happens very often when you look at the child abuse case. You don't look at what's going happening to the parents. And now some of my psychiatrist colleagues fear that I overemphasize that psychiatric di dimension. But then it gets back to this is where it's really exciting. Where does the mental illness problem come from? Hmm. One of the great things the Germans and the Norwegians are now saying. Children with mental health, parents must have a statutory support and monetary. You see, mental illness is invented, is re, is inherited. Not in necessary genetic but psychosocial. So, so you must remember, we human beings are bio psychosocial and it's always this interactive. Yeah. Way. I'm rather skeptical about genetics, but I say to social workers, we must recognize this is a genetic element. There's always a genetic element, but how does that and genetic element shaped by the social and the intensive psychological factors and it's a, a trio all the time, all the time. It's taken me a long time to be able. Develop an integrated understanding in my thinking and understanding of kind of complex social problems, because I would often get, I would often feel like I would have to be pulled and to, and adopt one position over another. So it, I, it would feel like, ah, either you, you look at like the social determinants of ill health and wellbeing, and I'd be pulled in that direction and then I'd get pulled back into. Psychology and early relationships and family dynamics. And then I feel like that was, and as you were just kind of pointing to actually what we need is a, is an integrative model of understanding that the, your genetic kind of blueprint and how that interacts with your early relationships and the broader social environment is, is what contributes and develops to people's you know, wellbeing. I, I suppose, bro brand is model essentially. but he, interestingly, he, he started off. The individual, the, the Microsystem Maso system Exosystem. But he moved it towards the end of his career as far as I can remember, more into understanding the, the relationship between the genes and the environment at that early critical period of development. And we know that genes are actually affected by environment. It's good what is beginning to happen in, in adult psychiatry. And that is they're looking at adverse childhood. They look at that and suddenly realize, hang on, they've got some depressive mother some psychotic father, some abusive father some violent father, et cetera, et cetera. In this sense, we, which we recognize that this is almost the life chain, and it starts with children on the hand. The children's parents, it started with their childhood as well. It's just intergenerational. And it's not just one. And then of course, the sheer accident. I don't normally talk about this. I, I was born illegitimate in the 1936, and I wa, I wa until I was 15. I, my mother had died and I didn't know I was illegitimate. And of course in those days it was still a, a shock, et cetera. One of the pressures on my. In 1936 was to give up the child because the idea was she's a 20 year old girl, she can't give the, the the boy a life, et cetera, et cetera. And I've often wondered, no, not often, but what would ask the question? What would ask the question? You change that genetic and you move things, et cetera, and, and, and change. So what is fascinating, it was quite clear cause I did one of these an an, an anesthetic, what is called ancestors. Mm-hmm. So I discovered my roots, which she is suggested something about intelligence. But I was a single parent. I left school at 15, but somewhere along the line, and then crucially in this rather disturbed de disturbed adolescent, I met relationships of two people who, as it were, adopted me as as, and uncle mm-hmm. and gave me a different perspective. and they were encouraging me behind the scenes, carry on your education, do better, do better or do better. So it was almost as I got a, a special education, you know, we've all valued a teacher and when it comes to, in my practice I still revere Professor Max Hamilton and Professor Mike, Mike. Any of these extra special teachers who could think outside the box. So just going back to the, the, the, the work that you did with Dorse, it where you, they, if, did I understand it correctly that you said that they, there was a decade worth of information they had in relation to child deaths that had occurred within that. and you were brought in to ha to kind of analyze and look at this decade's worth of data and these child deaths to try and understand what was going on in these families and what led to the, the deaths of these children. And what you found essentially was that 85% of people, 85% of the children were killed by their family members. So if children are gonna be killed, the, the probably is that it will happen within the family. And then the, the, the people that committed the, the murders were generally parents who were mentally ill, you know, particularly those with delusions or, or experiencing psychosis. And sometimes that meant that they were kind of yeah, they were killing their children out of love in a, in a kind of perverse way. And then there was a second group of individuals. Had a personality or functioned in a way that was indicative of them having psychopathology or some source in, in particular like a severe personality disorder. And yeah, so that, have I summarized that correctly? Yes, I do. About 15% of the extra. We, based on the, the, the police records, They were multi crimes. They were child sex abusers and they often sex abuse and violence against women. But crucially the violence, and this was the, the violence side. And because we then examined an epidemiological numbers, cause thank God there's not many of these people around. they were 80 times more dangerous killing than were the mentally ill parent mothers. Now, a mother killed at 100 per million, which of course is very small. But in clinical terms, a hundred million death rate of a child is, is clinical, clinically notable. But these men killed 800, rate a rate of 800 per. Now, of course, that's still less than 1%. It's very, very rare. And that's the other side of it. And this is why when you come, I think we, we are not quite sure why we've improved. But paradoxically, within the psychiatry we've improved actually generally women's depress. it's not as bad as it used to be. Mm-hmm. And so in one sense, they've been treating our, our children, but we didn't realize that. And what I say to psychiatrists when you've got a pa a patient, ask the question, what's happening to the child? And I say to my social work colleague, if you've got a ch a child, ask the question, what's happening to the mother? Depend. and this is the mental health and this is where and what we're not yet good enough. The Department of Psychiatry here in Southhampton, we, I like to say we've made a contribution. We recognize there's a need together to come together. Mm-hmm. Not just for psychiatrist to give them the diagnosis but really to understand the, the process. and it's the family. And what is very interesting in Amer, in in, in Germany and in Norway, they now have been legislation children of mentally parents are now being supported and therefore it stop. It helps'em to block them, become disturbed adolescents themselves. And then so you did that research back in the sixties or seventies and then, but more recently, you, you wrote a paper called Who, who Kills Children, reexamining the Evidence. Sure. And that was a more kind of systematic review o o of the literature. What, what did you learn from doing that paper? Just, they just really neat it up. That killers, you see what is, what is interesting, you know, we're both patterns and, and, and, and hills and so on. It's impossible for a child to be killed. Mm. I mean, you, you, you can't hurt a child. Therefore, what, what boundaries as these human beings have passed, what damage, what's, what's missing in these people? Thank God they're relatively rare, but when you look at their background, they've been kicked from pillar to post. I must be very careful what I. When I was a student, I had a I saw the record, A man called Ian Dime, Ian Ian come on the Moores murderer. When you saw, I mean, what he, this man did with Myra Hinley and literally taught to children it, it was, it was unthink. When you look at their background, they too would be knocked from pillar to post, dare we say it, a man called John, Peter Sutcliffe, so-called when you looked at his background. Then you added a schizophrenia. You could see why they crossed that boundary. And this is where violence to me. I'm supposed to be a lefty. And indeed the two Southern universities think I, I've sometimes been accused of being a communist, which is a bit fun cause I've never been a communist course. But with violence, you stop it straight away and separate. No messing. Mm, no messing. And sometimes we have to. We, we have to break this, this inter intergenerational damage. I think sometimes when, when we do serious case reviews into children who've been murdered or killed or severely neglected, which has resulted in the death of a child, we tend to look at the processes and what we could have done or what we couldn't have done. And and sometimes I think we kind of missed the point about what, what you were just saying in respect of what were the experiences of these individuals that meant that. Developed a kind of psychology that allowed them to commit the kind of violent offenses that they've committed against people that they love and that they care about what, what's happened to them in their experiences, because that then might give us a better clue or an indication about what kind of what, what we need to do further down the line in terms of helping people and, and preventing them from having the kind of experie. To having such severe problems with their emotions and psychology. I'd be tough and tough and gentle. I'd separate early, but continued to, to provide a counseling for these people who very often since have loss. Mm, they loss of their child and this is this, they're in this dreadful double bind situ. but can we say one of the most important studies we've ever done and few people have done it know of it, and it's the only longitudinal control study of social work. Does it work? And this was took in two the worst schools endorse it compared with the second worst. Two schools endorse it for three years. With a school-based social work service with Richard Williams. We had a three year longitudinal study. It's not been done again in Britain, unfortunately. There's a lot of numbers. And that turned off for people in the first year. There was a marginal improvement. The second. We got measurable changes, reducing truancy, tri sorry, truancy delinquency theft drugs and naturally family problems as well. By the time we came to the third year we, this is actually saving money for the whole project because we'd. Delinquency. So these kids weren't going to to court, which in fact, what is most, most costly is not their delinquency, but actually going to court actually cost more money than the, the minor things. One of the, the times in the third year voted our, our secondary. Index the best improved secondary school in the country. Mm-hmm. What was really wonderful as we begin to change things, the attitude, the, the teachers in our schools actually felt better about themselves. So you had to begin to. So at the end of the three years that's when the home office stopped paying the money. The headmaster said to his colleagues we hire it for money. Are we keeping Richard Williams as our social worker? Are we, does he become a full-time? They voted for him a hundred percent, and it changed. Now, we didn't win all the. but we reduced school refusal. We, we, we, in fact, the, the primary school was the worst in the county in the last year. We'd have the number of child referrals, but more importantly, the parents are going to social services themselves looking for help. And this was social work. It was a school based social work. It see only longitudinal measured study of social work, and it worked enormously. Mm-hmm. and we actually saved more than a quarter of a million pounds. Yeah. Unfortunately, very few people have read it. and do you know what it was about having school social workers that enabled such a, a dramatic improvement in those outcomes? Yes, because what is really interesting, potentially even in when, when we went to those two schools, all the four schools there, they were. under stress, all the, cuz we measured their, their stress level. Mm-hmm. And so that just started improving. But also parents who would be having the conflict with the school were conflict cuz they didn't understand how, but they want their kids to be improved. And that was the thing. But the, the key was the school was a normal and acceptable place of reaching out to pens. So Richard would do home visits when he first went there. He was, he would be there when the, the parents came in, in the morning. So he became known and by then he was there. Their school and their social work. Yeah. So you were, you were talking about that study in the context of how do we. People from not having the kind of experiences that then lead them to develop the type of problems that result in them harming themselves and, and the people that they love and their nearest and dearest. Okay. One of the things I was intrigued about in the paper was the relationship between children who die in their, who are killed in their families and the role of stepparents. And it's quite a difficult subject. Talk about because there, there seems to be quite a strong relationship between step PA or, or the probability of stepparents more likely to abuse their children. Now, obviously you don't wanna conflate that with all stepparents abuse their Yeah. What we found was these men, of course, you must remember these, the mothers were women of already. Baggy had been damaged, and it's very easy for this, this such kind of woman. She's looking for a different kind of man, and she's easily taken taken advantage of. Mm, about these blokes. And what, what, what baggage did these men bring And the key with these men, many of them were violent. it was the violence. Now this is really you, you may not believe this. The evidence is overwhelming. When women have, when we fathers, when our children have babies you know, this happens to me and you may not know if it may happen to you when we have babies. And our natural babies present with our wives, with their children. Our testosterone is reduced for about a year. Mm. It's one of those very interesting, we've known for about 20 years. Cause of course testosterone is a stress is a sex driver obviously, but it's also an element of violence. Mm-hmm. And we men, when we are at. Our testosterone is reduced, but of course these stepfathers wouldn't have that mechanism. Ah, that's really interesting. So if you are a father to a child, then there's a kind of a physiological dampening down of the, of your testosterone, which results in a reduced sex drive, and then reduced proclivity towards anger and dig aggress. Whereas if you are a stepparent and you take on the care of a pregnant woman or the care of a another man's child, you don't have that that that biological driving down of your own testosterone. Is there any other factors in relation to being a, being a stepparent? I, because one of the ideas that I read about, and it's not often talked about in social work is this, genetic relatedness and and how we're more likely to be altruistic to people that we are genetically related to. And well, there's, there's some complex research that I don't understand very well by guy called Hamilton who applied mathematics to evolutionary psychology. They, they looked at you are more likely to be the level, the degree to which you're willing to be altruistic and helpful to another person is related to the degree to which you are genetically related. So, for example, your siblings, your 50% genetically related to, so there's a an element there. Your children is another element. But then the, the counter-argument is, does that not undermine our own, our shared humanity for people outside of our family? It all depends what you inherit in gene genetic. Do you think, Richard, you and I were born social work or doctors or teachers? There is some interesting research from America we talk about because of their politics, red and blue. Namely, some people are more likely to be rigid and quote conservative. Yeah. And other people are more progressive. Yeah. So I think it's not only you, you if it's a interrelationship, genetic, I think it's what we, what we bring. And so what it's worth There's an old joke. It's rather ndic it's a wise child who knows his own father. Mm-hmm. there's far more. One of the things that's in these programs, these a ancestry we've got far more variation in, in, in, in families. I mean, I remember one family, I, I, I worked with it in, in New Yorkshire years and years ago. There were four, four boys. Three of them were young rums. We, I was running around after them and getting nowhere and so on and so forth and so on. But one, let's call him John actually had something about him in Cliff and I met is the mother some years later. And when I was living my hometown, I said, oh, Mr. Pritchard, how are you? You know? I said, oh, Mr. Jones, et cetera, and how you, well, John's doing so well, and Fred's not doing so well, et cetera, but I have Jay's doing extremely well. He's sending me money now, et cetera, and he's working in Australia, in America, and so on. I said, well, one, Mrs. Mrs. Smith, I must ask you why was it, it was always different, wasn't it? Well, she said, don't tell anybody. Had a weekend at Blackpool and it was, that child was not a husband's father. He was an American, an American serviceman in Blackpool. And, and he was a bride, genetically was a bride. So the variation, so genetic, you see, one is, for me, there's always an element. And you get people easily over stressing. You know, some people want to push the the social side of things. For example, one of the research we're doing at the moment when I tell you that in the northern regions in England in 2020, right, there was an excess of 57,000 deaths because they did not. The death rates of the southern regions. Mm-hmm. you know, and that is pure deprivation and poverty. Mm-hmm. it's not just that factor. So when you start looking inside poverty, you then start looking at poverty about psychology. You know, if you're living in difficult world situation, it's not just physical, it's also psychological. Yeah. I remember one family I worked with where there was three children and they were subject to quite pervasive and severe neglect by their mom who would she was actually vulnerable to developing relationships with quite violent and dangerous men. and she didn't, she just didn't seem to be able to develop relationships that were either safe for her or, or her children. And one of the children had a mild learning difficulty and the other child was just exceptionally bright. And then how about then? So they clearly started off from a very different place, although they were brought up in the same family, but then how their respective I suppose ways of functioning played out of school influenced their kind of outcomes and their trajectories because one had learning difficulties and required lots of additional input and support, and the other was academically very bright. And then she was just incredibly well supported within the school and was given extra support to facilitate that. And so the education, her education and her brightness and intelligence served, served as a protective factor. There just wasn't available. for the, for, for her sibling. And so it just kind of reveals the complexity, I suppose, of the, the role of genes and the, the, the, the relationships within the home environment and then the broader kind of social issues that kind of impinge upon or, or enhance people's development and outcomes. So in terms of your research on those that kill their children, What, what, what the conclusion is, is those that are severely mentally unwell those that might be psychopathic in, in other words, they have a, and what that might look like is a proclivity towards aggression and violence as a means of dealing with their interpersonal problems. Well, the mental ill, they would be killing love. Right. The, I'm going to shorthand now because it's getting long and et cetera. The drug abuser, those with violence violence is a thing that scares me. Mm-hmm. The violence is, is this scares me. And those, that's where the dimension is. You meet these men act, but mainly men, but not always women, not, not excluding women, they have, it's simply their inability to relate to another's person. Mm-hmm. And they've got limitations, easy violence that sort thing. So for example, I had a case very bad. In Hampton the mother was, was mentally ill with but she was also religious and she went to her church and they had a prayer meeting cuz she was worried that the, the, the devil was in her head and telling her all these terrible things, including sexual things, et cetera, et c. And the, the whole prayed, et cetera, and she came out ecstatic. She knew she'd been clear, killed, she'd been clean on hallelujah, et cetera. And she went home and the nine year old boy gave her a bad mouth and she nearly straight away. The devil had gone into him. So to protect. she toys his tongue out. Months later when she recovered, she went into severe depression cause she knew what she'd done. But at that moment in time, that psychotic side mm-hmm. others, I remember with, with where women will get depressed. and want to die. We don't want to leave their, that boy, their girl. Mm-hmm. So you then get this horrible business. The kids will agree, I don't lose you, mommy, we'll just take some tablets together. That kind of situation. Mm-hmm. and it's tragedy. And this is where we as social workers, we should be much more bigger. Pardon? Looking at the mental health. Yeah. And ensuring that for parents who are experiencing severe and enjoy during mental health issues, that they, that we act as a kind of conjure between them and accessing mental health services. I could just do one thing before we end, I would say this, start social workers in the school playground. Mm-hmm. every, every school should they have their, Social worker. Mm-hmm. or work with both generations, the kids and the parents. Yeah. It's definitely my experience that when, cause I'm a children's social worker, but what's become, what, what became a parent is that in order to help the children within the family system, you need to be able to help the parents and, and a lot of that is helping. Over. What often I find is that they've developed ways of coping with their childhood, which have, which has been fraught by adversity and difficulty. They develop these coping mechanisms that get carried forward into adulthood and often unconsciously, and then the same strategy that help them in childhood gets misapplied in adulthood and is now causing them difficulties with their relationship, with their, with their partner, or with their children. So just before we kind of wrap up, I wondered if you could share some thoughts and reflections on what you think makes a good social work career. I mean, cuz obviously you've been doing this for 40, 50 years now and you're still going and, which is incredibly impressive. And I just wondered what sustains you and what do you think makes a good, makes for a good career or even a good life? It's just been fascinating. What I go back to Maria Farrow and what have you done for your client today? Mm-hmm. That's what I'm here. I'm here to do something for my. From my society for, for our community. And it's very, has been a wonderful, I'm still having a great life at age six and a half and all the you know, there's a, there's a, and of course, but having said that, I, it's been a privilege. From day one. Okay. There's times of frustration and disappointment and things have gone wrong, and I've may, may made a mess of it. And yes, looking back in my career, I, I've lost four patients in, in, in my lifetimes as Sac Social worker, which I've never forgotten. But looking at, it's just a wonderful job because, you know, when you really very often get close to people. That rapport. Rapport you suddenly realize this can be almost a, a, a mutual reciprocity. And it's just been a wonderful privilege. Mm-hmm. On that note, thank you so much, Colin, for your time today. I've probably enjoyed speaking to you and hearing your hearing about your research and your practice wisdom experience. So yeah, thank you very much. Okay, bye. That's the end of today's podcast. If you've enjoyed listening to this, then please do consider subscribing or following. And for now, I'll see you later.