Showing titles in Dysfunctional Families

Evie and Elliot are scrawny, filthy and scared when they turn up on foster carer Maggie Hartley's doorstep. Aged just two and three years old, this brother and sister have hardly set foot outside their own home. They have been prisoners, locked in a world of abuse, violence and neglect. Maggie soon realises that Evie and Elliot are lacking the basic life skills we all take for granted, and the outside world terrifies them. Gradually unlocking the truth of their heartbreaking upbringing, Maggie tells their shocking true story.

It's late on Friday night when Casey's mobile starts to ring. She is expecting it to be her daughter, Riley. But it isn't Riley. It's a woman from the Emergency Duty Team. So begins Casey and Mike's latest fostering challenge - a 15-year-old girl called Keeley who's run away from her long-term foster home 25 miles away.

Fred and Rose West are virtually unique in British criminal history: a husband and wife who loved and killed together. During their long relationship, the Wests murdered a series of young women, burying the remains of nine victims under their home at 25 Cromwell Street, Gloucester, including those of their daughter. What was left of Fred West's eight-year-old stepdaughter was dug up from under the Wests' previous Gloucester home; his first wife and nanny were buried in open country.

Tilly hates her stepfather, Dave. He abuses her mother, but she refuses to leave him. Frightened for her own safety, Tilly asks to go into foster care and is placed with Cathy. Tilly arrives with a graze on her cheek, and Cathy becomes increasingly concerned by Dave’s behaviour, especially when she learns he has been showering Tilly with gifts. While she’s busy looking after Tilly and trying to keep her safe, Cathy is also worried about her own daughter, Lucy.

The Covert Passive Aggressive Narcissist: Finding Healing After Hidden Emotional and Psychological Abuse is the most comprehensive and helpful audiobook on the topic of covert narcissism. This type of narcissism is one of the most damaging forms because the abuse is so hidden and so insidious. You can be in a relationship that can last for decades and not realize you are being psychologically and emotionally controlled, manipulated, and abused.

A new memoir from Sunday Times and New York Times bestselling author Cathy Glass. Eight-year-old Aimee was on the child protection register at birth. Her five older siblings were taken into care many years ago. So no one can understand why she was left at home to suffer for so long. It seems Aimee was forgotten. The social services are looking for a very experienced foster carer to look after Aimee and, when she reads the referral, Cathy understands why.

Six-year-old Ralph has only been in the care system for three days and has already been rejected by three different foster carers. After hitting a teacher at his school and causing mayhem since he arrived four months ago, staff are unable to get a hold of his mum and her partner. Social Services are called and when Ralph turns up at Maggie's house, she knows immediately it's going to be a challenge. From Britain's most-loved foster carer, a new powerful true story of abuse, family and hope.

Like many women, Clare Pooley found the juggle of a stressful career and family life a struggle, so she left her successful role as a managing partner in one of the world's biggest advertising agencies to look after her family. She knew the change wouldn't be easy, but she never expected to find herself an overweight, depressed, middle-aged mother of three who was drinking more than a bottle of wine a day and spending her evenings Googling 'am I an alcoholic?'

Della Wright is an incredible campaigner for the rights of abuse victims after suffering a lifetime of betrayal. Left alone at home for the first time at only two years old by those tasked with her care, Della was let down first by social services. When known paedophile Terry Price entered her life when she was six, moving into her home, he would groom and sexually abuse her for the next five years. Even the sight of a little girl going to his probation meetings wasn't enough to make the authorities act.

When 16-year-old Jess arrives on foster carer Maggie Hartley's doorstep with her newborn son, Jimmy, she has nowhere else to go. Arriving straight from the hospital, having just given birth, Jess is like a rabbit caught in the headlights. Scared, alone, and practically a child herself, she is overwhelmed with the responsibility of caring for a newborn without the support of a loving family or her beloved boyfriend. With social services threatening to take baby Jimmy into care, Jess knows that Maggie is her only chance.

Ashley is a young single mum raising her daughter, Eden, and working hard to do the very best job she can - until one night she can't find a babysitter and makes the decision to leave Eden home alone for a couple of hours, asleep inside a wardrobe. It is an action that begins a terrible downward spiral for both of them. When Eden arrives at experienced foster carer Louise Allen's home, she has entered the care system because her mother is in prison. Eden is five years old and will not speak to any human.

The best news on the planet is that your mother doesn't have to change in order for you to be happy. In fact, author Karen C.L. Anderson will take it a step further and say your mother doesn't have to change in order for you to be free, peaceful, contented, and joyful. You can emotionally separate without guilt: Inspired by her own journey, Anderson's Difficult Mothers, Adult Daughters shows women how to emotionally separate from their mothers without guilt and anxiety so they can finally create a life based on their own values, desires, needs, and preferences.

Growing up in a quiet, middle-class suburb outside of Amsterdam, childhood best friends Anna and Olivia had their whole lives ahead of them. But every parent's worst nightmare came true when the teenagers fell in with the wrong crowd. Eleven years their senior, Ryan was charming and good-looking - and Anna and Oliva easy prey. Blind to his grooming, the girls were soon trapped in a terrifying cycle of sexual and physical abuse.

The heartbreaking story of three little children searching for someone to love them. Maggie Hartley faces one of the toughest challenges of her career when three abused and neglected siblings she’s been caring for are placed for adoption with a family she believes are unsuitable. The couple are looking for a perfect ready-made family, and Maggie knows that they’re not going to find it with these traumatised children.

Groomed and procured by a woman, raped by several men and labelled ‘one of the most abused girl in Rotherham’, now Elizabeth Harper is fighting for answers as to why so many people paid to protect our children simply turned a blind eye. Aged just 15, lonely and bullied by her peers, Elizabeth ‘El’ Harper felt like an outcast. But then a chance encounter in the street with a friendly woman suddenly brought hope to her world. A friendship between El and this benevolent stranger blossomed, and life began to feel worth living again.

If you want to keep a secret, put it on Facebook! What would you do if you found out that the man you married had a secret life that culminated in the ultimate betrayal? Yve Gibney tells the real-life story from their love-at-first-sight chance encounter while working as expats in Nigeria to the gradual realization that her husband of 19 years, Maurice Gibney, was actually full of deceit, manipulation, and coercive control and that their marriage had been a lie from the moment they had met.

The wounds of our inner child, though hidden, can silently devastate our present reality. They shape our beliefs, influence our choices, and hinder our joy. But here’s the truth: you hold the power to heal them with the help of “Healing Your Inner Child”—an empowering guide designed to illuminate the path to healing using practical, yet profound tools deeply rooted in Cognitive Behavioral Therapy (CBT).

Barbara was 12 when she was admitted to the psychiatric hospital Aston Hall in 1971. From a troubled home, she'd hoped she would find sanctuary there. But during her stay, Barbara was systematically drugged and abused by its head physician, Dr Kenneth Milner. Somehow, eventually, she started to campaign for answers. This is a shocking account of how vulnerable children were preyed upon by the doctor entrusted with their care.

Officers from the RSPCA investigate reports of animal cruelty and neglect on a farm, only to discover a 5-year-old boy curled up asleep in a dog bed, amidst filth and squalor. He has severe physical and cognitive impairments, and no one outside the family seems to know of the existence of little Jacob. When he arrives in the Allen household, a terrified Louise wonders how on earth she will cope looking after a child with his level of physical and emotional damage. With the support of veteran social worker, Mary, the fight begins to get Jacob the support he needs.

Emily has always felt like an outsider, so when a family friend takes her under his wing she is delighted. But soon it becomes clear that his motives are not all they seem. At the age of 11, Emily is groomed into being a ‘county lines’ drug trafficker. It is the beginning of a vicious cycle that sees her become prey to one abuser after another, involving a huge child-sex-trafficking gang. The scale of the abuse—at the hands of hundreds of men—is sickening, and at times it feels like there will never be an escape. But then, in the darkest of moments, a ray of light shines....