Editorial

The seven articles within this issue of Child Care in Practice challenge us in a number of ways to re-define how we understand disability and the fact that disability occurs within a family and societal setting. A good starting point for this discussion is offered within the article by Thomas-Skaf & Jenney (2020). There can be a tendency for words such as “Disability” to be used in a general, catch-all sense, without realising either the complexity, variation or negative presuppositions which over time can come to be associated with it. This article challenges us to confront this through developing an understanding of the concepts of “Ableism” (the proliferation of discourses and practices about being “normal”) and “Disableism” (which can be defined as the negative attitudes and attributes associated with disability). Quoting from the paper, “Disableism involves the erasure of a disabled person’s capabilities and humanity because of their real or perceived impairments, which results in prejudice, discrimination, and oppression” and the article goes onto describe a number of examples. It leads to the insight that Disability and Disablement occur on a number of levels – not just the physical. In the article by Flynn (2020), the author looks at barriers to effective child protection and welfare assessment with disabled children, and also focusses on understandings of “Ableism” within the child protection context. Flynn (2020) cites the global definition of social work provided by the IFSW in 2014 which promotes a vision of empowerment and liberation with respect for diversities (and not just cultural ones) and acknowledges that given the pressures upon all our services, finding time for reflective practice is not easy. However, there is a need to change the narrative from the negative to the positive, which we can do through (i) an emphasis on children’s rights (ii) learning from disability to improve practice with all children and (iii) a focus more towards solutions and safety, rather than prolonged consideration of problems and causation. A number of the articles in this issue highlight specific aspects of disability and also the fact that many of these are linked or can occur as a consequence of each other. The article by Yesilkaya et al. (2019) is a first good example, highlighting disability which can occur as a result of visual impairment. The article raises awareness that disability not only affects a specific individual, but the wider human family around them – their immediate family, as well as educators and others. As one of the authors above comments “disability is a socially constructed experience”. Given some of the pressures cited above, the link between research leading to evidence which can inform practice often seems hard to make. This article, in the form of a scoping review, is an excellent example of why this link is critical to all practitioners, as it aims to “identify, collate and appraises the available research evidence on implementation barriers and facilitators of interventions for children with visual impairments, their parents/ guardians or educators” which can then lead not only to integrated working but also lead to positive changes in future practice (Yesilkaya et al., 2019, p.1). The second article by Flynn (2019) relates to the impact of austerity measures, arising from the Irish economic recession in 2008 and beyond, on intellectually disabled young people and their families. The intention, as with Yesilkaya et al. (2019), is to lead to positive changes in future practice. Flynn (2019) uses a Framework Method of analysis applied to transcripts produced from a Biographical Narrative Interpretative Method (BNIM) of interviewing, across a