Safeguards don't always

Photo by Sebastian Fissore http://www.sebafissore.com.ar/ accessed via http://www.sxc.hu/

This is the second of two posts on the topic of abuse and safeguards.

Safety and safeguards are rarely far from people's thoughts about supports for people who live with additional vulnerability.  Interest is heightened when dreadful things happen, be it at home, on the street, or in the arms of a service provider.  If the magnitude is sufficient, this can result in a jurisdiction putting formal arrangements in place to help protect people.

For example, as part of its Disability Act 2006 the Government of Victoria set up the Office of the Senior Practitioner to regulate the use of restrictive support practices so that people's rights are safeguarded. The Act also provided for a Community Visitors Program, where trained volunteers can inspect disability services without notice.

Also in 2006, the Government of Queensland established a Disability Services Act that included measures aimed at protecting people, including approval processes for service agencies and investigation arrangements.

In what was obviously a busy year for legislative action on safeguarding, 2006 saw the UK Government pass the Safeguarding Vulnerable Groups Act, as a response to something unspeakably evil, establishing the Independent Safeguarding Authority, whose role is to help ensure that unsuitable people are not unleashed on vulnerable people.   

In South Australia, there is currently a Bill before Parliament relating to Mandatory Reporting, designed to help ensure that anything approaching neglect, abuse or assault is quickly brought to the attention of the authorities who can then act to protect the person living with disability.

The above are several different examples of how jurisdictions can take formal steps to provide safeguards for people living with additional vulnerability.  Such measures are often taken as the king-hit (irony intended) response to people's concerns about vulnerability and safeguards, and are designed to give people confidence that matters are in hand.

Unfortunately, there are at least two problems with such approaches.  The first problem is that they are not necessarily successful at protecting people with the greatest vulnerability.  To illustrate this, I refer again to the UK, and the recent Panorama investigation (mentioned in the previous posting) that revealed abuse and assaults perpetrated by staff on residents living with disability, in a state-of-the-art, high-cost ‘specialist’ service supervised by registered professionals.  You can view the program in 4 parts here, but be warned that it includes scenes you may find deeply upsetting.

The investigation took place earlier this year. What is particularly depressing about the deplorable practice uncovered is that it took place despite the presence of the above-mentioned Independent Safeguarding Authority.  In short, the safeguarding authority didn't.

It gets worse. The UK also has the Care Quality Commission (CQC), whose role is to ensure that "people get better care".  This includes a a wide-ranging set of powers and duties, with the commitment that "if we think that people’s rights or safety are at risk, we will act quickly".  A senior staff member working at the service agency investigated by Panorama was so unsettled by the practices he saw that he contacted the CQC.  Unfortunately, the CQC failed its own commitment.  It did not act quickly, and in fact did not act at all, until Panorama shared their undercover research with several million people.

So what we have here is a situation where an approved service agency, working within a contemporary building and using professional staff, and designed to provide a specialist response to people with allegedly high needs, was responsible for a despicable catalogue of neglect, abuse and assault, and all this despite the presence of a range of formal legislative and regulatory safeguards.

The lesson from this is that formal safeguarding arrangements by themselves do not necessarily reduce the risk of vulnerable people being exploited.  

image by Banzai Creative

As a society it is of course important we continue exploring how we might best legislate and regulate to advance and uphold people's well being.  However, such measures are not a substitute for the work we all need to do to support people into ordinary valued lives.  This is because a good life is not achieved simply by reducing the chances of bad things happening.  If that is the main tactic, then that life will seem at best sterile and at worst empty.  Instead, the primary tactic must be how to increase the chances of good things happening in the person';s life, not just reducing the chances of bad things happening.

As mentioned in the previous posting, a starting point for this approach will be the deeply felt values about people living ordinary valued lives, and how this is then translated into expectations about how each citizen behaves, not just in terms of legislation, regulations, and specialist funding, but in terms of mainstream education, public transportation, buildings and spaces, ordinary employment, and neighbourhoods that are welcoming.

The better we support a person living with disability to take up their rightful place in the heart of our communities, the more likely it is that there will be natural safeguards present in that person's life - family, neighbours, acquaintances, friends, co-workers.  After all, these are sources of natural safeguards for any citizen, so why should it be any less so for a citizen living with disability.

To Protect and Serve?

image by Sanja Gjenero, accessed via http://www.sxc.hu

Recent media coverage on issues of justice and mistreatment triggered the next two blog postings.  This first posting, below, was published earlier this week on The Punch and on the ABC's Ramp Up.  A second posting, looking at measures such as regulators and mandatory reporting, will be out soon.

The Adelaide Advertiser story (Monday 27 June 2011, ‘Justice Disabled’) highlighted the apparent difficulties in securing convictions where a person living with intellectual disability has been the victim of an alleged sexual assault.

Some alleged assaults take place where people are receiving care.  This warrants closer examination, given the reasonable expectation that human services are meant to reduce risk of harm, not add to it.  Also, the greater the degree of disability a person lives with, the more likely it is the person will be living in a formal service arrangement, sharing with other persons living with similar degrees of disability and served by staff.

These arrangements typically involve people served in group settings, away from the view of the wider community.  To the casual observer, such arrangements might appear competent at safeguarding people’s wellbeing, with features like individual private bedrooms, qualified staff , and supervision by registered professionals.  The arrangements might also include an activities program, active monitoring, and guidelines that permit liberty-reducing practices, such as restraint or seclusion, as a last resort only. 

However, such arrangements do not guarantee protection from neglect, abuse or assault.  In fact, they can achieve the opposite.  When people are required to live together for no other reason than their degree of disability (or other disadvantage), it creates a situation where people are living on top of each other with very little to do.  It is not unknown for this to sometimes result in assaults between residents, a tragic situation that brings its own complexity in justice and yet could be largely avoided if we stopped herding people like cattle into group services.

image by Konrado Fedorczyko, accessed via http://www.sxc.hu

Worse, these group arrangements render the person vulnerable to the attitudes and outlook of staff, who have the capacity to exercise great control over the lives of those they are meant to serve.  The extent to which this can go badly wrong was illustrated in a UK Panorama investigation that revealed abuse and assaults perpetrated by staff on residents living with disability, in a state-of-the-art, high-cost ‘specialist’ service supervised by registered professionals (to view, go to http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8yuPvUHsx1Y&amp).

We cannot safely assume such practices are any less discoverable in Australia.  The less  we think about people living with disability as individual human beings, the less personalised will be the support arrangements, separating people physically and culturally from community life.  This can leave at least some people with no one in their lives other than paid staff and other people living with disability.   

That is wrong.

If we really want to tackle the problem of unprosecuted assaults on people living with disability, we must first discontinue the practice of grouping people living with disability on the basis of service convenience, be this a group home, a sheltered workshop or a special education class, and instead build personalised supports that bring people fully and visibly into community life. 

More than this, If we truly value diversity and shared wellbeing (which is the whole point of communities), we each need to take up our responsibility to welcome people living with disability fully into our neighbourhoods and our workplaces.  This is not an issue of rights but something more important - values.

Turning now to problems of justice, the main reason reported in the Advertiser is that the alleged victim, because of disability, might be an unreliable witness.  So what?  Witness testimony from anyone can be an unreliable source of evidence in criminal proceedings, and there are other sources of evidence that can assist prosecution.  There is no reason why an assault case involving a person living with severe disability, whose capacity to recall might be compromised, should be treated any differently from a case involving a frail older person, a child, or a victim who was incapacitated by alcohol or other substances at the time of the alleged offence.

Image by michaelaw, accessed via http://www.sxc.hu

A second issue is consent, whether the victim was a willing participant at the time of the alleged assault and changed their mind subsequently.  Many adults, from all walks of life, may have comparable stories of hindsight-driven regret, especially if the experience had turned out to be embarrassing, deeply disappointing, or even frightening.  Just like anyone else, a person living with disability is not immune to the possibility of such experience.  However, it would be a great mistake for us to assume that this is more likely to have happened simply because the person happened to live with disability. A far more important move, especially where the person is more vulnerable in their decision-making, would be to assure the availability to the person of good, accessible information and supports about consent and related matters.  

The bottom line?  Let‘s not further disable people by placing them in ‘support arrangements’ that do more harm than good.  Instead, let’s uphold the individual person’s right to an ordinary valued life, and assure the presence of safeguards so we do not fail people when the going gets tough.

ABC New Inventors show: how to snatch defeat from the jaws of victory

The ABC's New Inventors show (for their website, click here) was on last night, and this week they were running a 'special', funnily enough on the topic of disability.  For the uninitiated, the New Inventors format is a studio show where three different inventions are showcased each week before a panel of three judges.  At the close of the program the judges do what they're there to do, which is to judge and determine a winner, who then goes on to be considered for the Inventor of the Year.  Viewers also get the chance to be involved, by each week voting for their favourite invention of the three, an award called the People's Choice (usually prefaced by a phrase that is something along the lines of, 'did the judges get it right?  You decide').

So that's how the show works.  Occasionally they have 'special episodes' where the inventions cover a common theme.  The previous special was on firefighting, and this time it was looking at inventions that speciflcally relate to people's experience of disability.  

The ABC started well, by titling the episode 'Access and Ability'. Very affirming, focusing on the positive.  The language used throughout the episode was also affirming.  Bravo ABC.  Also, the three guest judges all had a personal experience of disability.  Well done again, ABC.  

Things were going so well.  The three inventions were showcased - one covering an adapted dune buggy that could be entirely hand-controlled through an accelerating and braking steering wheel, a second invention involving open source, totally portable, screen-reading software, and the third invention involving a lightweight, no-axle manual wheelchair that is designed to also be used as a shower/toilet chair - and there was much useful commentary about the aspects and considerations in each case.

And then the show ended.  Without the judging.  What was that about?  I went to the ABC's live forum (to go there, click here) which was running after the show and where anyone can put a question or comment about program content.  Sure enough, someone had raised a query about how come there was no judging.

The ABC moderator replied by saying that,

"the New Inventors specials are about showcasing innovation in particular areas and are not part of the regular competition. All inventions featured as part of the special undergo the same rigorous research and checks, but are not in competition for the 2010 Inventor of the Year."

The immediate practical question here is, why not?  Just because they have a theme show, the inventions are still inventions.  There is still the rigorous research, the rigorous checks.

So of course, someone points out the effect of the ABC's approach is to exclude.  To which our ABC moderator replied, 

 "as stated earlier The New Inventors specials are about showcasing innovation in particular areas and are not part of the regular competition. This has been the case for all inventions featured in our previous specials such as 'Disaster', 'Fighting Fire' and 'Future'. All inventors were aware of this before they agreed to appear on the program."

In repeating the same point, the moderator has missed the real point that was made, that the effect of their approach has been to exclude, to inadvertently reinforce the stereotypical view that the topic of disability lies outside the mainstream.  And so what if the inventors were aware of the no-judging' before they agreed to appear. What inventor would turn down the opportunity to showcase their invention on prime time television?  Their understandable assent to the special format does not make the format ok.

As I said last night on the live forum, I don't think the ABC moderator's reply is enough.  The program was going so well, and then the ABC snatches defeat from the jaws of victory by not having a winner.  The winning inventor does not therefore get the opportunity to compete for the Inventor of the Year, and so there is no more exposure for the 'access and ability' theme and invention, which in turn means no further opportunity to educate a willing public (well at least that part of the public who are enthusiastic viewers of this program) about the practicalities that can assist a person living with disability to get a fair go at what life has to offer.

Also, by not having a moment of judging, there was no corresponding Peoples Choice award, the chance for a multitude of viewers to give further thought to the inventions and consider which one they thought was particularly strong. What an opportunity to keep the theme of 'access and ability' uppermost in people's minds for a little longer. What an opportunity lost.

I can hope that the ABC didn't intend to be so patronizing, but that is the unfortunate effect.  This omission serves to reinforce the idea that people living with disability (and topics that are relevant to their lives) are to be treated differently from everyone else. It even diminished the guest judges, by not giving them the opportunity to make a judgment (isn't that what a judge is meant to do, or is this just pretend-judging for folk living with disability?).

The ABC may indeed have rules about program 'specials' but in this case there have been unintended, adverse consequences that warrant further reflection by the ABC.  

In closing, I don't want to totally bring down the ABC's efforts, because it was good to have a program that placed 'access and ability' front and centre.  It's just that such good work can so easily be squandered.  Apparently, the inventor Thomas Edison said that, 

"Genius is one percent inspiration, ninety-nine percent perspiration". 

So maybe the ABC can rightly be applauded for having the inspiration to do this particular show, and can rightly be counseled for not putting enough perspiration into the details.