“Being Heard” Seminar is near!!

'Getting it right for looked after disabled children' consists of series of workshops.

The podcast is now available for the first seminar, on 'Being Counted'.

The 2nd workshop of this series – “Being Heard” -- is being held on Wednesday 5th December.

This workshop will focus around a forum theatre exploring what matters to looked after disabled children. A great chance to engage with issues about children and young people identify as being important to them.  Looking forward to seeing all the participants and to having an illuminating discussion.

A blog and podcast will follow!

Afternoon highlights – The Challenge of counting and defining disabled looked after children

The afternoon part of the seminar was equally stimulating to the morning (see post below), with an emphasis on action - what can be done to improve data and information for disabled looked after children?

Dr Berni Kelly & Dr Sandra Dowling, from Queen’s University Belfast, presented on-going research about the lives of disabled children who are looked after in Northern Ireland.  A core challenge in collecting prevalence data is the variations across 5 Health and Social Care Trusts in recording and service provision for disabled children.

Charlie Hogg and Sharon Glen, from the Scottish Government, explored national statistics for disabled looked after children in Scotland. Scotland is the only part of the UK to include information on disabled looked after children in annual national statistics. The speakers suggested at least five challenges for these statistics: the large number of ‘not known’ returns from local authorities, in regards to whether or not a child has a disability; whether the children returned as having disabilities in fact are assessed by a ‘qualified professional’ as required for the statistics; matching up the classification of disabilities with adult services’ classifications; how multiple disabilities are recorded; and how changes in individual children’s  circumstances (e.g. impairments become evident, or a diagnosis is made) are recorded within local authorities, and thus included within the annual returns. 

Both presentations pointed out the data regarding disabled looked after children are problematic. Longer-term planning, continuous and consistent data collection should be promoted and monitored.

Following intensive discussions, the seminar concluded with suggested action points. For example, a standardised definition of disability should be negotiated across services and jurisdictions. Governments and non-governmental organisations should co-operate to improve information of disabled looked after children on their presentation situation – as well as their placements and other outcomes – to assist in substantially improved planning.

Further information

View the presentations and podcast for the first seminar.

The first workshop “Being Counted”, on October 24th in Glasgow, started off the four-part series “Getting it Right for Looked After Disabled Children and Young People”. The series is organised through the Scottish Universities Insight Institute, by the programme team from Action for Children, CELCIS and the University of Strathclyde, CRFR, and the Strathclyde Centre for Disability Research. 

Morning session - The Challenge of counting and defining disabled looked after children

The first workshop “Being Counted”, on October 24th in Glasgow, started off the four-part series “Getting it Right for Looked After Disabled Children and Young People”. The series is organised through the Scottish Universities Insight Institute, by the programme team from Action for Children, CELCIS and the University of Strathclyde, CRFR, and the Strathclyde Centre for Disability Research. 

Being Counted focused on the challenge of counting and defining disabled looked after children and understanding how looked after disabled children are theoretically constructed across disciplines.

The morning session started with the warm welcome from Dr Graham Connelly, CELSIS, University of Strathclyde. Dr Claire Baker, Senior Policy Manager, Catch 22’ National Care Advisory Service, presented her insights on the challenge of counting and defining disabled looked after children. In her presentation, she demonstrated the lack of standardised statistics – let alone any statistics – on disabled looked after children across the UK. Her research showed that disabled looked after children are less likely to be adopted, but more likely to be placed in residential care or stay in foster care. [for further information about her research, see http://www.iriss.org.uk/resources/permanence-and-stability-disabled-looked-after-children]

Professor Nicholas Watson, Strathclyde Centre for Disability Research, University of Glasgow, presented on “Theorising Disability and its implications for Looked After Children”.  Disabled looked after children can face at least three ‘problems’ in terms of claiming services: they are children, they are disabled and they are looked after. He discussed how disability theories encourage attention to ‘barriers to doing’ and ‘barriers to being’, which can be very salient for disabled looked after children. He reflected how research that does include disabled looked after children often fails to include their views, presents the children as passive and ‘vulnerable’, focuses on service provision and their future outcomes. 
 
Both speakers raised questions on definitions of disability: the variability of definitions, the problems of defining and identifying disability, and the differing use of such definitions by different stakeholders (professionals, parents/carers, children and young people). Participants joined groups to discuss in-depth their agencies’ approaches to these issues, the dilemmas and the potential solutions. 

More on the afternoon session to follow … 

Over the next few weeks, more information will be available from the seminar – podcasts, powerpoints, publications – and we will highlight these over the blog.

Researching the lives of disabled children and young people: are they any different from non-disabled children?

The vast majority of disabled children and young people in the western world live at home with their families, most attend mainstream schools, and disabled children have the same rights to inclusion and equal treatment as non-disabled children and young people. Yet, they often remain left out – from generic children’s research, from policy-making about children’s services and, in their everyday lives, from inclusion in friendship groups and social and sporting activities.

So begins the editorial of the current special issue of Children & Society, dedicated to highlighting the views, experiences and opinions of disabled children and young people through the presentation of cutting-edge research and examination of current issues at policy level. Including the views of families affected by disability in mainstream research and literature is something that CRFR is keen to promote; it forms a central aim of the About Families project to support the development of evidence-based parenting services, and disability issues feature in research agendas across our work.

Considerable progress has been made in the last 20 years. The voices of disabled children and young people are increasingly included in research across a range of disciplines and the focus of research has shifted more recently to consider aspects of family functioning, relationships between families and professionals, transition to adulthood, identity, friendships and social lives. These topics feature in some of the papers included in the journal.  The publication of this special issue within a generic children’s journal marks an important achievement in itself – and we echo the editorial team when they express their hope that it won’t be necessary or appropriate to continue publishing work relating to disabled children in separate literature or within the confines of special issues. What this issue succeeds to do, and what has emerged from the About Families project is that the challenges, preferences and issues facing disabled children as they go through their lives remains largely the same as non-disabled children, albeit many disabled children face additional practical and social barriers to achieving their goals.

CRFR is delighted to welcome this special issue and congratulates everyone involved in its publication.

The contents include:

·         Editorial: Researching the Lives of Disabled Children - Kirsten Stalker

·         The challenge and challenging of Childhood Studies? Learning from disability studies and research with disabled children - Kay Tisdall

·         Theorising the lives of disabled children: How can disability theory help? - Nick Watson

·         Everyday segregation amongst disabled children and their peers: a qualitative longitudinal study in Norway - Borgunn Ytterhus

·         Understanding disabled childhoods: What can we learn from population studies? -  Eric Emerson

·         Rights of Disabled Children and their Families: a decade of policy change - Janet Read, Clare Blackburn and Nick Spencer

·         Working on well-being: researchers' experiences of a participative approach to understanding the subjective well-being of disabled young people - Bryony Beresford

·         Other Voices, Other Rooms: Reflections on talking to young men with Duchenne muscular dystrophy (DMD) and their families about transition to adulthood - David Abbott

·         Disabled Children's Voices: The nature and role of future empirical enquiry - John Carpenter and Roy McConkey

·         Practice Piece: Sixth Sense: The Disabled Children and Young People's Participation Project - Rosemary Murray.

Access the special issue at: ‘The Everyday Lives of Disabled Children and Young People: New developments in research and policy’, Special issue: Children & Society, 26 (2012) http://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1111/chso.2012.26.issue-3/issuetoc

All papers from the ESRC seminar series which led to the special issue are available from: http://www.strath.ac.uk/humanities/schoolofappliedsocialsciences/socialwork/esrcseminarseries/

Learn more about About Families at: http://www.aboutfamilies.org.uk/.