The following case summary on the Dudley/Harris family was written by their social worker, Tracey Green (Case Study J), in preparation for a meeting with concerned professionals, including schoolteachers who have worries in particular about Chloe and Caitlin:

Notes on the Dudley/Harris family

Members of this family have attracted the attention of welfare agencies, on and off, for many years. Before living with Lee, Lisa was in relationships with several violent men, including Mark Harris and Dan Smart, the fathers of the three older children. Chloe, Hannah and Caitlin were in care for a while, when Lisa was unable to extricate herself from a relationship with Caitlin’s father, Dan, and the children were frequently exposed to the violence and verbal abuse that Dan directed at Lisa.

Lisa met Lee online, after eventually ending the relationship with Dan, and Lee moved from the far side of the country to live with her. Up to that point he had been living with his mother.

Lisa is chronically depressed, with little energy, and very low opinion of herself, and she is very overweight. Lee is a small but strong and stocky man, with a lot of energy, and a sharp eye for any slights directed at himself or his family. Under the guise of banter, he puts Lisa down a lot, referring to her weight, to her poor dress sense, and her looks. He also teases the three girls a lot, saying that, if they are not careful they will end up like their mother. He is very proud of his son Josh and often encourages Josh to join in with him in teasing his mother or older sisters. He likes to take Josh with him to football matches and to go fishing on the local river. He spends a lot of money on state of the art fishing equipment, which can be seen around the house, along with stuffed and mounted fish and fishing trophies.

The house is in a fairly shabby state. From time to time, Lisa will clean the house, when pressured to do so by Lee, or by professional agencies, but otherwise it will go for long periods uncleaned. Lee never involves himself in cleaning or domestic chores, arguing that he works hard enough at his job and that this is Lisa’s job. Caitlin has a bed-wetting problem, and though wet bed linen is changed, the house is pervaded by the smell of urine due to wet sheets often lying around for some time before being put in the wash.

Lee is often away for several days at a time. When he is not there, it would appear that Lisa will often simply retire to bed, leaving the older daughters in charge, and the children spend a lot of time pretty much unsupervised, in front of the TV eating microwaved meals. When Lee is there, he expects to be the centre of attention and likes to watch TV in the living room with Josh beside him, having food prepared for him by Lisa and the older girls. A teacher heard Hannah tell a friend that Lee doesn’t like Caitlin in the room when he is watching TV because she ‘stinks of piss’, and that he prefers the girls to watch TV in the kitchen with their mother.

Lee often points out that he is the main breadwinner for the family (Lisa only works 8 hours a week in the supermarket) and that his work is tiring and draining. (If he has been away for several days, he will have spent the nights in the cab of his truck.) He sees himself as having rescued Lisa from herself, and from a violent partner, providing her with a decent income and a proper family. He reacts with anger to anything he reads as criticism of himself and will often round on his perceived abuser, making counter-accusations of incompetence or naivety. He can be very harsh and sarcastic.

Chloe and Hannah’s school attendance is poor, especially when Lee is away on the road. When challenged about this, Lisa just shrugs and says that she can’t control where they go once they leave the house. Lee will blame Lisa, or the girls’ father Mark, who lives not far away, and they still see from time to time. However, Lee dislikes any kind of prying into the family, and will often give it as his view that welfare professionals are a waste of time, and a waste of the taxes he pays out of his hard-earned wages. They ought to poke their noses into other families that really need looking into, is his view, particularly immigrant families in the neighbourhood who, he maintains, ‘are getting away with murder’. In particular he frequently raises the case of the family’s Bangladeshi neighbours, the Begums (see Maryam Begum’s family: Case Study E), who he has reported for mistreating the grandmother of the family. ‘But no one ever does a thing about it’, he says.

Lisa is very quiet with professionals. She will generally accept any criticism and promise to do something about it, although her follow-through is usually short-lived. It is difficult to get her to talk about herself and she will tend to bat away questions about how she is, or how she is feeling, with ‘I’m alright’, ‘I’m okay’, or by making self-deprecating comments. When Lee is present, she will defer to him.

None of the girls is keen to talk to professionals. At school, when there, the three girls are quiet and disengaged. It is thought that none of them is of very high ability, though they could achieve more than they do.  Their schools find it very difficult to engage with the parents in any way.

Hannah fell pregnant at the age of 14 and had a termination. She refuses to name the father of the child. Lee says that this is because she knows he’d ‘kill the bastard’ if he knew who it was.

Josh is somewhat disruptive at school. He has a short attention-span, and tends to act up when the focus of staff attention moves away from him. He can also be something of a bully. There’s an ongoing difficulty between him and a girl called Xenia Veloso (who I also know), who he teases and gets into fights with (see Veloso family: Case Study I).

Caitlin’s teacher, Penny, is concerned about how isolated and disengaged she is (see Case Study A for more on Caitlin). I completely understand those concerns, though it is difficult to know what a social work agency can do in a situation like this, given the absence of any specific evidence of child maltreatment, and given that the family are not asking for help and that Lee in particular is strongly opposed to any professional involvement. A new development, however, is that a classmate of Chloe, the oldest daughter, has confided to a teacher that she is concerned that Chloe may be suicidal. Chloe has said she intends to kill herself, and has shown her classmate various suicide sites she’s found online which give advice on how to do so.