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	TX: 14.07.05 - Disabled Child Protection 听 PRESENTER: WINIFRED ROBINSON

	Downloaded from www.bbc.co.uk/radio4 THE ATTACHED TRANSCRIPT WAS TYPED FROM A RECORDING AND NOT COPIED FROM AN ORIGINAL SCRIPT. BECAUSE OF THE RISK OF MISHEARING AND THE DIFFICULTY IN SOME CASES OF IDENTIFYING INDIVIDUAL SPEAKERS, THE 麻豆约拍 CANNOT VOUCH FOR ITS COMPLETE ACCURACY. ROBINSON The abuse and neglect of children with disabilities too often goes unnoticed or ignored. That is one of the key areas for concern identified in a report published today. Safeguarding Children, draws on the findings of no fewer than eight independent government inspectorates. Although it identifies an overall improvement in child protection and welfare, since an initial assessment three years ago, it says that the needs of some children, and particularly those with disabilities, are not being given sufficient recognition or priority. We'll be hearing from David Behan, who heads the Commission for Social Care Inspection, in a moment. But first, today's report draws heavily on research carried out by the NSPCC and published 18 months ago in a booklet It Doesn't Happen to Disabled Children . David Miller is one of the co-authors of that report. The title of your report suggests that we find it hard to believe that the abuse of disabled children is even possible and that I suppose is the same attitude that once prevailed about all child abuse. MILLER Yes I think you're right. It is a big issue that needs more recognition that the abuse of disabled children - there are many reasons why people aren't recognising that the abuse exist, I think that some of those relate to a general lack of awareness of the experience of disabled children generally, some of the difficulties they can experience, abuses, in small ways and some of the frustrations they can experience. I think this is compounded by the barriers that can often exist in communication with disabled young people and that's not only the impairment - as a result of the impairment that the disabled young person may have, it's also about whether the person with them takes the time to communicate with them in their preferred method of communication. ROBINSON Well tell us about the research you carried out. MILLER Yes, well the research we carried out, the national working group is a group of national disability and childcare organisations and professionals concerned with the safeguarding of disabled children and came together initially in 2001. And what we did with the research was drawing on existing research that had been undertaken and also the knowledge and experience of disabled young people and professionals working in the field. And one of the key findings - well one of the key pieces of information here that confirms the risk of abuse of disabled children is a study that was undertaken in 2000 in the States, there was a large scale study involving 40,000 children and what they found was that disabled children were 3.4 times more likely to be at risk of abuse or neglect than non-disabled children. ROBINSON And yet they are under - under-represented on child protection registers. MILLER Well that's correct. I mean we believe that there are many barriers in the child protection system to the effective safeguarding of disabled children and that scans the whole process of child protection from safeguarding in the first place to avoid abuse but when abuse does occur recognising abuse and then the investigation itself and moving on to steps to protect the child. ROBINSON What sort of cases did you uncover? MILLER Yes, well if I can give you some examples. There's one example where a disabled child attended a residential school, had multiple physical impairments and very limited communication and during school holidays he would return home and share a bed with a male lodger and he displayed significant changes in his behaviour when he returned from visits and had bruising. But his mother explained that the bruising resulted from epileptic fits and the school staff did not consider that the child could be at risk of sexual abuse. And I think this kind of characterises one of the problems here - that very often when indicators of child protection concerns - that may be child protection concerns are often considered to be the result of the child's impairment. If I can give you just another example to highlight that point? ROBINSON Briefly if you would. MILLER Yes. It was a child who had red marks on his arms and legs and the staff believed that that was as a result of eczema when in fact it had been a result of abuse of the child being tied to their buggy. ROBINSON David Miller from the NSPCC, thank you. Well let's turn now to David Behan, the chief inspector of the Commission for Social Care Inspection, who helped draw up today's report. As I said in your report you draw heavily and you quote extensively from the NSPCC's research, are there any more to your findings though than that? BEHAN Well yes, as you said the eight inspectorates have produced this report, we've drawn on the evidence that - from Ofsted inspections, from our own inspections in the commission and from some work done by the Healthcare Commission, in relation to children with mental health problems. So what we're saying today is that we think child protection work - safeguarding work has improved in the three years since our last review and what we've done in this report is shine a torch in the corners of the safeguarding world and looked specifically at a number of groups, including children with disabilities. And we are seeing improvement, but the issues around recognition of children of abuse for those with multiple needs, the appropriateness of the placement of some children with mental health needs in adult wards or in secure settings are the issues we're raising in this report. And what we want to see is staff working with children with disabilities, to have the skills to recognise where abuse and neglect is taking place, to have the skills to communicate effectively with children and we need to review the approach that agencies are taking to safeguard and to ensure that they're focusing on the particular needs of children with disabilities and that those children's needs are not being overlooked. ROBINSON You draw attention to the failure to prosecute in cases where children have disabilities because obviously these are very serious allegations, allegations of physical and sexual abuse and often these children are not considered to be reliable enough witnesses to bring a case and importantly to win a case. It's very difficult to see what could be done about that. BEHAN That's correct and I think that's an issue that goes way beyond the issues of children with disabilities but on the evidential tests that are required for prosecutions clearly those people that have been the victim of a crime, the subject of a crime, would need to give evidence and there are clear communication issues here. So our recommendations that we're making today is not just about those staff with direct care of children with disabilities, be they in education, health or social care settings, but they are there in relation to those staff that work in the criminal justice system. And amongst the eight inspectorates that have produced this report are our colleague inspectorates in the criminal justice system and we're using today's report to highlight these issues with a view to progress being made and we expect to pick these up in our future safeguarding reports when we bring these forward. ROBINSON Well John Coughlan chairs the Children's and Families' Committee of the Association of Directors of Social Services. This is a multidisciplinary report, joining together the views of inspectors who look at health, at schools, at police, at prisons - before we focus on social services, what more do you think other authorities ought to do? COUGHLAN I think the situation's obviously complex and challenging but I do want to stress one of the points that David just made, that what we are pleased about with this report, it obviously identifies a huge amount of work still to be done but it also identifies the progress that's been made in the last three to four years. I think one of the challenges that the report clearly identifies is that it's sometimes still more difficult for those agencies whose closeness to the safeguarding system and for the child protection system isn't as much as social services, who may be encounter situations where children may be at risk on a much less frequent basis and so their need to be alert is more challenging for them. And I think the report helps us to take that set of issues forward and supports the way in which we've got to implement the current changes in legislation. ROBINSON Well we heard David Behan talk about the need for there to be better skills developed among staff in communicating with children with disabilities, do you have time to offer your staff even more training? COUGHLAN Well I think we have to and I think we are training staff well at the moment and I think it's terribly important that people out there who are either within the child protection or children safeguarding system considering it know that they will be properly supported and trained. But I think one of the telling comments in the report is a quote from a child reflecting that they want adults and professionals to talk to the children not through their parents and I think that's a particularly telling issue for children with disabilities. ROBINSON Now you only have to look at adoption lists to see that children with disabilities make up a large proportion of those children who are in care, nevertheless a failure to recognise that they may be being abused, can that really be so? COUGHLAN Well I think as the two previous speakers identified there are complex issues at play there which are to do with the way we think about people with disabilities, and especially children with disabilities, and about the way that we recognise the pressures that can apply to families of children with disabilities. But we have to be flexible in our thinking, we have to recognise that all children have needs for safeguarding. ROBINSON John Coughlan, David Behan, thank you both. Back to the Transcripts homepage Back to the You and Yours homepage The 麻豆约拍 is not responsible for external websites

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