Breaking Barriers Against Support for Children with Disabilities and their Carers

Children with disabilities experience increased vulnerability than most children and the intersectionality of risk factors present for these children may have an overlay of issues with how carers and systems are set up to help them. Instead of being seen as a young person who needs support, children with disabilities are more likely to be subject to child protection claims and out of home care as their behavior is viewed as the problem. This may result in carers feeling as though they have no other option but to keep the child in out-of-home care or not know how to properly care for the child.  

It is unclear whether the behaviors from a group of children are stemming from trauma of services or from disabilities as many are undiagnosed. The overlap between disability and trauma needs to be further explored to improve out of home care and child protection systems for children with disabilities. There is an overreliance on out of home care that leads to a cycle of intervention and trauma over adequate support for children and carers. There is an intersection of risk factors in children with disabilities depending on the establishment of their care systems. However, many of these children are being referred around to different services without a holistic approach to help, a diagnosis or an early intervention and support including their carers. Instead, we should be working with families and carers to see how to better address the needs of the child with the disability.

Show Notes:

Commonwealth Royal Commission into Violence, Abuse, Neglect and Exploitation of People with Disability (AUS) (2021-22) Care Criminalisation of Young People with Disability in Child Protection Systems

Baidawi, S & Sheehan, R. (2019).  'Crossover' Children in the Youth Justice and Child Protection Systems, (Routledge).

Baidawi, S. & Ball, R. (2022). Multi-system factors impacting youth justice involvement of children in residential care. Child & Family Social Work. https://doi.org/10.1111/cfs.12940

Susan Baidawi: https://www.monash.edu/medicine/spahc/socialwork/about/our-people/susan-baidawi

Evelyn Bugel: https://www.evelynbugelpsychology.com/about.html

Declan Kavanagh-Bugel:

https://declankbart.bigcartel.com/category/prints

https://www.instagram.com/deckies_artworks/

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GuSfs0nGHos

Best Interests Children’s Law Podcast is sponsored by Ex Curia: Coaching & Consulting Pty Ltd, Meliora Psychology and Claudia Grimberg Lawyers.

Got questions, comments, compliments or something to add
to the discussion? We'd love to hear from you on our website.