Alcoholics’ ‘orphans’

Press, Volume CXVI, Issue 34147, 7 May 1976, Page 13

Alcoholics’ ‘orphans’

(N Z Press Assn —Copyright i LONDON. The children of alcoholic parents are the for- j gotten casualties of the) disease, according to a report just published by the Greater Manchester Council on Alcoholism. While their plight is being studied in other countries, including Canada, the United States, and Sweden, Britain is doing little, and certainly not enough, the report concludes. The council’s director (Mr Ken Jones) says that in the last two vears his organisation has dealt with 200 families in which at least one parent was an alcoholic. Of the 340 children under the ; age of 16, every one had, been badlv affected. Many of the children react against the stresses of living; with an alcoholic parent; with aggression or van-! dalism. Others withdraw or

; become depressive. Their I scho >1 work suffers and ‘ they become ill or disturbed. The report details the case of nme-year-old Paul, who begins trembling and shaking when his alcoholic father is due home. He smashes his toys, fights with tbe two younger children in the family, and comes home with bad reports from school. “I just can’t get through to him,” his mother says. Fourteen-year-old Jenny, eldest of five children, went to the council to tell them: “I’m terrified of going home and finding mum dead instead of drunk.” Her mother turned to drink when her soldier father went to serve in Ulster, and it was left to Jenny to look after the other children. The council was able to arrange for her father to be posted home, 'and mother is now cured. At the age of 12, Brian is leading a life of misery — I the laughing-stock of the ‘ kids in his street because

i his father is always drunk. I“I wish that dad could be I like .a normal dad,” was his . plea. “He’s always drunk 'and mum shouts at him . . .1 don’t like school. My teacher gets mad, but J can’t stop thinking what dad’s goingI to be like when I get home.” I The “alcoholics’ orphans”! as the Manchester report; described them, have had their case backed up by- the actor, Peter Adamson, who plays Coronation Street’s beer-swilling Len Fairclough and is a reformed alcoholic. He told a meeting of the council how his 10-year-old: son saw him lurching drunkj down theaisie of a plane. I “His accusing look con-; veyed everything I felt for! myself: loathing, disgust,’ and an all-consuming re-| morse,” he said. “When a child has been! rejected, bullied, and ridi-j culed by a slobbering inco-| herent parent, that child is' not going to respond with! love.”