The State of the World's Children

Today sees the publication of The State of the World's Children 2013, the latest annual edition of UNICEF's flagship report which examines key issues for children around the globe. The theme for this year's report is disability, and examines the barriers which can deprive children with disabilities of their rights and keep them from participating fully in society.

You can read the full report by clicking here. For further supporting documents and film clips you can visit the report's official site, while access to previous year's reports is available here.

VIPER

VIPER (Voice, Inclusion, Participation, Empowerment and Research) is the name of a research project carried out by several children's organisations. VIPER set out to investigate to what extent disabled young people are able to participate in decision-making about how health and social care services that effect them are delivered.

You can now read all the outputs from the research on the VIPER website; these include the findings of an extensive literature review, the results of a survey, and the project's final conclusions.

Helping Schools with Special Needs

New research from the Specialist Schools and Academies Trust argues that schools need to change their teaching methods to meet the needs of children with increasingly complex special needs; as more disabled children are surviving to school age, so schools need increased support in providing education to these pupils.

For now only the recommendations from the research are available to read online. From next week a dedicated website with further information about the Complex Learning Difficulties and Disability Research Project will be available.

Complex Needs, Complex Challenges

A new report from the National Deaf Children's Society argues that deaf children with additional needs face a difficult future due to poor or non-existent support and medical care. The research, entitled Complex Needs, Complex Challenges, examines the experiences of families who have deaf children with additional complex needs - around 40% of deaf children are estimated to have an additional disability. The timing of the publication is perhaps not coincidental - later this month the government will publish a new Green Paper with proposals on strategies for dealing with special educational needs (SEN).

To access the full text of the report, click here.

Disabled Children

The Centre for Excellence and Outcomes in Children and Young People's Services (C4EO) has recently published a series of studies which examine current provision for disabled children, and how this could be improved in the future. Links to each of the reports are below:

• Improving the Wellbeing of Disabled Children through Early Years Interventions (Age 0–8)
• Improving the Wellbeing of Disabled Children and Young People through Improving Access to Positive Activities
• Ensuring all Disabled Children and Young People and their Families Receive Services that are Sufficiently Differentiated to Meet their Diverse Needs

The C4EO website looks like it's well worth visiting on a regular basis; the organisation is a relatively new one, and focuses its work on children's services on seven different themes as identified by Every Child Matters. Already it has also published a series of studies on Early Years, and reports on vulnerable children; child poverty; parents, carers and families; youth; schools and communities are all set to follow over the coming months.

Contact A Family

Contact A Family is a UK charity which provides advice, information and support to the families of disabled children. As part of this work they produce a range of leaflets, factsheets and reports, many of which are freely available online. Take a look at the publications section of the website to acess these materials.

Bits and Pieces

This is going to be another of those blog posts which doesn't have a central theme, but rather is composed of odds 'n' ends. So in no particular order, here's a selection of useful reports / research which have come to my attention in recent days:

• Claiming Asylum at a Screening Unit as an Unaccompanied Child was published last week by the Children's Commissioner, and highlights "unacceptable treatment" of young asylum seekers who are arriving in the UK
• Child poverty in London is under the microscope in a new report entitled Capital Gains
• Interested in care and children with complex health care needs? Try looking at SCIE's 2007 report Necessary Stuff
• Also from SCIE, some students may be interested in the 2006 publication Supporting Disabled Parents and Parents with Additional Support Needs

Leadership / Disability

The theme of leadership seems to be a recurring one in the latest issue of OnTheWeb, which contains details of several related pieces of research which appeared in December. The DCSF published a report entitled The Impact of School Leadership on Pupil Outcomes, while the National College for School Leadership released Leading under Pressure: Leadership for Social Inclusion and also Leading Schools to Promote Social Inclusion: a Study of Practice, which is essentially a literature review of the available material in this area.

There were a number of other reports in the OnTheWeb newsletter which students may find useful for their research. One that particularly caught my eye was another DCSF publication entitled A Transition Guide for all Services: Key Information for Professionals about the Transition Process for Disabled Young People, although you should really have a look at the latest issue for yourself to see what it contains. If you're not actually sure what OnTheWeb is, look at this previous post to learn about this excellent service.

Disabled Children

A recent report from the Treasury and DfES has examined how services for disabled children can improve their life chances. Aiming High for Disabled Children: Better Support for Families was published on 21 May, and coincided with a government pledge to commit £340 million to improving services in this area.

Three reports from the past year are worth reading if you have an interest in this area. The DfES has been behind two of these - A Better Start: Children and Families with Special Needs and Disabilities in Sure Start Local Programmes and Preventing Social Exclusion of Disabled Children and Their Families - while the University of Birmingham was responsible for My School, my Family, my Life: Telling it Like it is. Further useful information can be obtained from the Disability Rights Commission, although this is due to be superseded by the new Commission for Equality and Human Rights in October.