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In the 1970s, the United States Congress enacted two statutes that have had dramatic and far‐reaching effects on the education of handicapped children by public schools. These two laws, Section 504 of the Rehabilitation Act of 1973 and the Education For All Handicapped Children Act of 1975 (known as Public Law 94–142), have required local public school agencies to provide new eductional programs for thousands of handicapped children not previously served by the public schools. Counselors, principals, and teachers were quickly informed of the law's requirements and willingly began the task of main‐streaming and assimilating these children into various curricula. Their physical needs were attended to rapidly; their societal and emotional needs, unfortunately, lagged behind. Within the past seven years, there has been an increase in books, articles, and films specifically addressed to counseling the handicapped. Unlike past literature which focused only on the vocational aspect of rehabilitation counseling, current writing emphasizes personal counseling meant to assist a disabled child to participate fully in the problems and joys of daily living.

This article examines the impact on disabled children and their families of the Children Act 1989 from the author's perspective of close involvement in this area of policy from 1992 to 2005. It argues that the inclusion of disabled children explicitly for the first time in children's legislation marked a necessary step in seeing disabled children as children first. Two main areas of concern about the effectiveness of the Act's implementation are highlighted. First, provisions in the Act for disabled children living away from home in health and education establishments have been widely ignored and are now seen as inadequate. Second is whether the provisions regarding short breaks (respite care) have been effective in providing the sort of support that families need at the required levels. The article suggests that passing legislation may be insufficient in itself to have much impact on the lives of disabled children.

Outlines the problems faced by women with disabilities, stating that previous research has not usually singled out this category. States that this category faces double discrimination because of disability and gender, with few role models to follow. Discusses the early education of this group and the use of residential schools. Concludes that much more research is needed in this area.

This paper aims to investigate the unique issues childhood burn survivors experience in relation to sex education and sexual development.

Using a phenomenological approach, participants described their lived experiences with regards to sex education and the sexuality issues they encountered as child burn survivors. One‐to‐one semi‐structured interviews and a focus group were used to gather data, which were analyzed using a constant comparison method.

Results provide educators with better insight into the experiences of burn survivors as well as strategies for approaching sex education. Findings centered around five areas: exposure, sex education content, timing of sex education, characteristics of the educator and most appropriate methods of delivery.

Sexuality is a value‐laden topic that has the potential to increase apprehension and decrease willingness to discuss. As a result, the sample may not be wholly representative across age groups, concerns or social attitudes regarding sexuality present within this population. Additional limitations are also noted. Future studies, which utilize a mixed method approach with a larger sample of both adolescent and adult burn survivors, would increase the value and generalizability of the findings.

Research findings confirm that persons living with childhood burn injuries experience similar feelings and concerns regarding their sexuality as their able‐bodied peers which contradict social views. However, mainstream sex education falls short of addressing their unique needs and as such this study's findings provide strategies to allow for appropriate knowledge acquisition to ease the transition from childhood to adulthood.

This is an invited short overview from a clinician working in a national secure inpatient setting which aims to focus on inpatient forensic services for adolescents with developmental disabilities.

The paper gives a brief overview of the needs of this population and the requirements for inpatient assessment and treatment.

This is a complex population who are referred relatively late to inpatient services, often after recurrent failings in residential services where mental disorders are commonly unrecognised. Comprehensive multidisciplinary assessment and treatment are required for this group.

This paper will be useful to a range of professionals dealing with adolescents with developmental disabilities who are engaging in offending and other high risk behaviours.

This article identifies the broad reasons why costs in children's care services might vary, illustrating them with examples from research literature relating to England. An intentionally broad use of ‘costs’ is employed. The literature has been neither systematically nor comprehensively reviewed but does include most of the recent work in the social care field. Articles have been selected to illustrate particular cost associations. This article finds that there is as yet insufficient research into the costs, cost variations or cost‐effectiveness of children's services. However, the findings provide guidance for decision‐makers as they try to understand how resources are currently deployed and why this might be.

People with learning disabilities have traditionally been denied access to a range of psychological therapies. Similarly, offenders with learning disabilities, particularly in prison settings, have largely been unable to access treatment strategies that are provided for offenders who do not have such disabilities. As a consequence these individuals are denied the opportunity to address their criminogenic needs and/or attend to their psychological welfare. This paper provides a brief exploration of the reasons and evidence for such practice, alongside the evidence that people with learning disabilities can successfully engage in psychotherapy. It is concluded that there is no evidence that would support the exclusion of people with disabilities from treatment options.

Many factors have been identified as being responsible for increasing the vulnerability of people with learning difficulties to sexual abuse. However, there has not been a great deal of debate about the term ‘vulnerability’. Here, an argument is developed that puts forward the case for a social model approach to understanding vulnerability, which avoids a focus on victim characteristics.

There needs to be an increased recognition of fetal alcohol spectrum disorder (FASD) in services that deal with young people with disruptive and offending behavior, not just those services that deal with adolescents with a recognized intellectual disability. The paper aims to discuss these issues.

This is a general review of the current available evidence on FASD and how it is likely to predispose affected young people to have contact with secure mental health services and the criminal justice system.

FASD is likely to have become a more common cause of intellectual disability and behavioral disturbance but the history of significant alcohol exposure in utero if often missed. There is evidence that the hyperactivity is less responsive to psychotropic medication and may represent a different condition to conventional ADHD. However the majority of those affected are in the low normal IQ range.

There is so far very limited research in what is likely to be a relatively common disorder with significant costs to criminal justice, mental healthcare and social services. Epidemiological information from the UK is lacking and urgently needed.

Professionals who work with mentally disordered young people need to be more aware of FASD and its potential contribution to the problems and disabilities in their population.

Social workers, foster carers and adoptive parents need to be more aware of FASD and how it can contribute to the breakdown of social care.

There is currently no other review of FASD and the implications for criminal justice, secure mental health and social care for young people.

Although adolescents and older adults are often targets for nutritional change interventions, little has been done to explore how people in these transitional life phases perceive the matter themselves. The aim of this paper is to explore and compare adolescents' and older adults' own perceptions of the barriers and facilitators of a change towards healthier eating.

This study design consisted of four focus groups that were conducted with adolescents and older adults to identify their health orientations, and their expected and experienced outcomes and self-efficacies in implementing approach and avoidance behaviours in relation to healthy eating, i.e. increasing consumption of fruit and vegetables and decreasing consumption of soft drinks and red meat.

The study resulted in a number of interesting insights, e.g. that older and younger participants alike: were keen not to seem “overly healthy” to their important others, had a demonstratively detached orientation towards healthy eating and felt that their diets were generally healthy (although this was generally disproved by their self-reported intake data).

The study and findings reported in this article contribute by providing the first steps towards a better understanding of how social cognition and self-efficacy perceptions related to healthy eating develop in the transitional phases of adolescence and older adulthood. In order to complement and validate the findings of the study; and with the aim of facilitating efficient nutritional change interventions directed at adolescents and older people, further studies should be conducted.