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The representation of ‘the child’ within children's services and the representations of ‘risk’ and its management have implications for disabled people hoping to qualify for and work within certain professions. This article assesses the relevance for children's services of findings from the Disability Rights Commission's Formal Investigation into the impact of professional regulation on disabled people studying and working within three public sector professions in Britain ‐ nursing, social work and teaching. Many professional regulations include varied and vague requirements for ‘fitness’. These are interpreted and implemented differently, often informed by unexamined negative assumptions around disability. Disabled people, particularly those with ‘hidden disabilities’, can be discouraged from disclosing their conditions. This deprives them of the support and adjustments necessary for them to practise safely and effectively. Professional regulation can thus paradoxically induce a false sense of security. The various professions are urged to review and update their regulations, guidance and policies in order to ensure concordance with recent developments in disability and wider antidiscrimination legislation.

The importance of ties between older people and their children has been widely documented as a fundamental component in the provision and receipt of support. While the reference to such support is usually made in a benign manner, it is overly simplistic to assume that support provided by family members will always and necessarily lead to positive outcomes for older people. A person's perception of the adequacy or quality of support is inevitably influenced by his or her expectation of the type, frequency and source of support preferred or required. Most existing British research on the family support of older people has concentrated on those from the white‐British majority with little cross‐group comparisons. This article reports on in‐depth qualitative research with 17 and 21 older people from white‐British and Asian‐Indian backgrounds respectively. It demonstrates how gender, ethnicity, migration history and a range of other factors interweave in complex manners to affect individuals' expectations for support from their adult children. The findings reveal commonalities and differences within and between groups and demonstrate that the association between expectations of support and resultant sense of well‐being is complicated and is often conditional. Stereotypes within and across groups need to be examined given the observation that while familial norms may be played out differently in different cultural contexts, individuals make sense of and rationalise their expectations for support to take into account the dynamics of changing structures and attitudes.

The purpose of this paper is to provide a commentary on “‘I felt I deserved it’ – Experiences and implications of disability hate crime”.

Comparing the findings reported by Richardson and her colleagues with the wider evidence base, it is clear that there is considerable consistency. While scholarship in this area is still nascent, there is sufficient clarity around key issues that should support action to tackle hate crime against people with learning disability and/or autism.

Interventions should not make uncritical assumptions around the vulnerability of people with learning disability and/or autism. Poor service commissioning, design and delivery can play a part in heightening risks. Hate crime is not simply a criminal justice issue, and effective intervention will rely on multi-agency working.

The commentary recommends a social model approach towards understanding hate crime and how it may be tackled. It identifies the challenges confronting multi-agency working by situating the analysis against the wider context of public spending cuts and the impact of these on wider societal attitudes towards disabled people.

Interviewing minority ethnic older people can seem daunting. It is easy for stereotypical views of minority ethnic groups and of older people to lead to pathologising approaches being adopted unwittingly. This article attempts to illuminate several key aspects of conducting interviews with such population groups by drawing partially on the experience of working on a Growing Older project funded by the Economic and Social Research Council of Britain. This project looked at the social network and social support of older people from different ethnic groups in Britain and the relationship between these and their quality of life. The research instrument comprised both structured and unstructured components. Interviews were conducted by a multi‐ethnic team of interviewers speaking a range of community languages. By focussing attention on the interactional nature of interviewing, this article explicates the process of conducting research. Issues pertaining to the choice of language, the use of interpreters, ethnic matching of interviewers and interviewees, the use of standardised instruments and the interview itself as a tool for data‐generation are examined. This article contends that a reflexive approach to methodology can lead to a more robust approach to data by confronting the practical, methodological and ethical issues encountered in doing research with such population groups. The issues raised are not merely in terms of ‘white’ researchers working with ‘non‐white’ respondents, but relate to the improvement of research practice in general regardless of the ethnic background of researcher and respondent.

This paper aims to examine the extent to which police services are set up to deal with hate crime against people with learning disabilities; looking at infrastructure, policies, procedures and levels of awareness and understanding.

Semi‐structured interviews were conducted with representatives from 14 police services in England. Key documents submitted by the police services were reviewed, and a focus group with eight people with learning disabilities was conducted.

Many police services are committed to tackling hate crime against people with learning disabilities. A wide variety of individuals have responsibility for dealing with hate crime and accountability structures are often unclear. Many services do not have hate crime policies that deal specifically with people with learning disabilities, or even disabled people in general. More training is required to ensure relevant staff are equipped to deal with the issues. Hate crime statistics are regarded as unreliable due to significant under‐reporting, although a few services have implemented innovative interventions to encourage reporting through awareness‐raising and multi‐agency working.

The Coalition Government has called for greater efforts at combating disability hate crime. It is widely acknowledged that the police are still failing disabled victims and witnesses. This paper identifies specific areas for improvement as well as innovative and effective practice that should be shared more widely.

Despite laudable intentions and evidence of progress, significant barriers remain in relation to the access to and experiences of child and adolescent mental health services (CAMHS). This article draws on the findings of a literature review and reports a number of barriers and their impact on children and young people with learning disabilities. Children and young people with learning disabilities are at a disproportionate risk of experiencing mental health problems yet access and experience of CAMHS can be highly uneven. Families are often unclear about how to access mental health services and what services are available. Such information and knowledge‐related barriers are particularly significant for certain minority ethnic groups. Barriers related to the CAMHS workforce mix, skills and staff attitudes can also mean that skills required for working with people with both mental health conditions and learning disabilities can be lacking. At a macro level, systems‐related barriers include a lack of joint commissioning and planning, unclear care pathways, the lack of a single point of referral, difficult transition to adult mental health services and a lack of inappropriate services.

The fear and experience of violence, harassment and abuse of those with learning disabilities are significant barriers to full social inclusion. The patchy evidence base and the confusing, and sometimes contradictory, array of policy and legislative instruments hamper efforts to tackle the issues. This article draws on the findings from an extensive review of literature looking into disabled people's experiences of targeted violence, harassment and abuse. The review found that people with learning disabilities and/or mental health conditions are at higher risk, and experience greater levels, of violence, harassment and abuse, not only than non‐disabled people but also than other disabled people. Situational vulnerabilities mean that the probability and experience of violence, harassment and abuse are due not simply to any inherent characteristics of those with learning disabilities. Under‐reporting and lack of appropriate response and support from criminal justice agencies compromise access to justice. People with learning disabilities are also found to have a propensity to report to third parties instead of to criminal justice agencies. However, the evidence points to lack of joined‐up working in various agencies, which hampers efforts at redress. There are particular concerns over a vacuum of responsibility as a result of confusion about the No Secrets guidance.

The Disability Rights Commission's Formal Investigation into the impact of professional regulation on disabled people's access to nursing, social work and teaching professions identified that unclear regulatory fitness requirements and their inconsistent implementation can have discriminatory effects. This article explores the relevance of the Investigation's findings for other health and social care professions, demonstrating that they similarly have a range of regulatory fitness requirements that may be interpreted and implemented in different ways, potentially discouraging disabled people from entering the professions or from disclosing their conditions. Regulations and guidance across health and social care professions need to be reviewed, bringing them up to date with current disability and anti‐discrimination legislation. A more proactive stance towards disability equality is required if the professions are to achieve the aim of a more diverse workforce.

This paper aims to discuss the sensible management of risk for disabled people, which can turn into disproportionate steps to attempt to completely eliminate risk, leading to diminished opportunities across life. Instincts to protect are heightened in the context of disabled people as potential victims of targeted violence and hostility. Individual‐, organisational‐ and systemic‐level responses can often be orientated towards protection and/or the minimisation of risk rather than towards providing access to justice and effective redress.

This paper draws on evidence generated through a literature review, interviews with disabled people and interviews with representatives from a number of key organisations.

For many disabled people, incidents can be persistent and ongoing. Common responses by disabled victims include avoidance and/or acceptance strategies. They are also advised by those around them and by agency staff they come in contact with to ignore perpetrators or to avoid putting themselves at risk. Criminal justice agencies may be more concerned about a victim's disability than about taking action to provide access to justice and effective redress. The protectionistic approach underpinning much of policy, legislation and guidance can be at odds with the positive promotion of disability equality.

The paper examines the need to move away from a protectionist paradigm to a rights‐based paradigm. It calls for a more inclusive approach where disabled people are involved meaningfully in the process of risk management and in other decisions around combating targeted violence and hostility against them.