Safeguarding Adults: Enabling Adults in Vulnerable Circumstances.

Within this essay the areas in which discrimination and oppression occur will be highlighted and then evaluated to show how ‘good’ anti oppressive/ discriminative practice within social work can ‘aid’ and empower service users who are in groups that experience oppression and discrimination to overcome their problems. Gil (1994) states that “the conditions that cause people to seek help from social services are usually direct or indirect consequences of social, economic, and political institutions, and... the profession of social work is ethically committed to promote social justice. Insights into oppression and social

1.1 Analyse the differences between the concept of safeguarding and the concept of protection in relation to vulnerable adults

There are numerous concerns based on the quantity and content of stop and searches which are often influenced by institutionalised racism (Home Office, 1997). Studies suggested that the police maintain a belief that black people are prone to be involved in violent crimes (Reiner, 1989). Therefore leading to black individuals routinely falling victim to police stereotypes and overgeneralisations (Bowling and Phillips, 2007). Police interviews have suggested that police perceive certain ethnicities to be involved with certain crimes, one interview suggested that if police are alerted of a robbery, 90% of the time they will assume it is involving a black individual (Quinton et al, 2000). Despite that there is evidence suggesting that racial disadvantages will cause an increase in young blacks to be involved with crime, suggesting that these suspicions are justified (Waddington et al, 2007). Furthermore, there is little research suggesting that police enforce their prejudices when working on the streets, thus suggesting that racial views are a result of police canteen sub-culture (Waddington, 1999).

In the past most of the people with learning disabilities suffered regularly from discrimination. All to often people with learning disabilities aren't considered worth living and they are the subject of

Adult safeguarding was defined as, a range of activity aimed at upholding an adult’s fundamental right to be safe at the same time as respecting people’s rights to make choices. Safeguarding involves empowerment, protection and justice. In practice the term “safeguarding” is used to mean both specialist services where harm or abuse has, or is suspected to have, occurred and other activity designed to promote the wellbeing and safeguard the rights of adults. Following the Civil Service rapid evidence assessment methodology1, having formulated the questions to be addressed by the review and developed a conceptual framework, inclusions and exclusion criteria were agreed. Articles published in 2002 or later, relevant to the review questions were included. Studies were excluded if they were not relevant, for example: health focused, concerned with children rather than adults. A wide range of databases, web-sites and grey literature were searched and screened, using search terms related to adult safeguarding, adult protection and workforce, staff and training. Experts in the field were also asked to identify relevant resources and guidance. Results Overall, much of the evidence on workforce and adult safeguarding is based on a limited number of studies and cases. Much of the work reviewed was of little specific relevance to the social care workforce. Most

The Human Rights Act 1998 (also known as the Act or the HRA) came into force in the United Kingdom in October 2000. It is composed of a series of sections that have the effect of codifying the protections in the European Convention on Human Rights into UK law. All public bodies (such as courts, police, local governments, hospitals, publicly funded schools, and others) and other bodies carrying out public functions have to comply with the Convention rights. The Human Rights Act protects individuals from torture (mental, physical or both), inhumane or degrading treatment or punishment and deportation or extradition (being sent to another country to face criminal charges) if there is a real risk that they will face

OUTCOME 1 Understand the legislation and policies that support the human rights and inclusion of individuals with learning disabilities.

According to Becker deviance is ‘a consequence of the application by others of rules and sanctions to an offender’. Becker came to the conclusion that people are criminalised through the process of negotiation, known to be social constructionism for example the Crown Prosecution Service may drop the charge of murder to manslaughter if there is not enough evidence to convict for murder. By doing this the defendant becomes labelled for the crime of manslaughter even though he may truly be guilty of murder. By introducing what could be regarded as ‘petty’ legislation more people will be labelled criminals, which in turn may lead the offender to act further on this basis. Lemert referred to this as secondary deviance as when a person is labelled criminal they change their view of themselves and this then becomes their ‘master status’. On the other hand primary deviance is when someone violates a social code, but does not get labelled. Therefore a person is only labelled a criminal if he is caught and since ethnic minorities are subject to much more scrutiny than the white population this puts black people at an automatic disadvantage. Following the inquiry into the death of Stephen Lawrence it was uncovered that the police are institutionally racist. Institutional racism can be defined as ‘the collective failure of an organisation to provide an appropriate and professional service to the people

The murder of Stephen Lawrence, a black British teenager, in a racist attack in 1993, resulted in a detailed inquiry published in 1999 outlining the existence of institutional racism and as many as 70 recommended changes in policies regarding how police should communicate with ethnic minority

Children with a learning or physical disability may be subjected to prejudice or discrimination at school because they could be treated differently

In the 1990’s, a huge scandal regarding institutional racism came about from the death of male Stephen Lawrence, whom was fatally stabbed outside a bus stop near his home in South London. In 1999, the Macpherson Report became one of the most important moments in modern history criminal justice in Britain, which concluded institutional racism and corruption was happening in the police force by the Metropolitan Police (as well as in other forces.) The handling of the case, as well as failure of the police in providing evidence and following up information was also investigated into. Police are assigned to the enforcement of the law of land, as well as the protection of people. However, a huge controversy regarding police accountability arose from the Stephen Lawrence Inquiry Report, as well as the 1984 Police and Criminal Evidence Act (PACE) which questions when and why police have suspicions of citizens simply based on their ethnicity or the way they are dressed.

The process of criminalisation refers to instances where certain groups of people are more likely to come into contact with police due to an ascribed characteristic of criminality (Scott 2007). Both racialisation and criminalisation can be embodied in institutional practices such as the discriminatory practice of ‘hot-spot’, ‘zero tolerance’ or ‘stop and search’ campaigns in ethnic enclaves or targeting minorities through profiling of recent offenders (Scott 2007; Poyting, Noble, Tabar 2001).

However, there is also an under-policing of minority groups in Canada, which involves a lack of police absence or police neglecting to fulfill their duties (Porat, 2008:416). This neglect of policing can involve the lack of accountability and oversight police are subjected to when they engage in excessive force. For example, a lack of justice occurred when police kill innocent unarmed black individuals, such as Abdiraham Abdi, who was brutally killed by Ottawa police in late July of 2016. This lack of justice has led to no charges against the police involved in Abdi’s murder (Engel & Lindell, 2016). The black community in Toronto are disproportionately affected by police bias as mistreatment and prejudice have become normalized by some of the police force that use social constructionist labels to purse their own agenda.

‘The Macpherson Report describes institutional racism as ‘The collective failure of an organisation to provide an appropriate and professional service to the people because of their colour, culture or ethnic origin.’ (Craig, 2007, p. 92).

The Effectiveness of the Legislation and Policy Reforms in Practice In this essay I will set out to identify key legislation, which has impacted and shaped the lives of my particular client group, adults with learning disabilities. Learning disabilities can be hard to define, but it is widely accepted that impairments in the ability to read, write, spell, speak or perform any mathematical calculations can lead to a diagnosis of learning disabilities. The campaign group Values into Action defines learning disabilities as “A disorder in one or more of the basic cognitive and psychological process involved in understanding or using written or spoken language”. I will give an overview of service