What are your views? Are there different issues for people with disabilities?

Many people in the UK advocate a change in the law on assisted dying. They believe that, subject to strict upfront safeguards, the law should allow terminally ill, mentally competent adults to request life-ending medication from a doctor. The dying patient would then have the choice to self-administer that medication at a time that was right for them.
It is believed that the change in the law on assisted dying would not lead to more deaths, rather it would lead to less suffering for those dying people who want the choice to control how and when they die.
This change is reflected in Lord Falconer’s Assisted Dying Bill which had its First Reading in the upper house of the UK parliament, the House of Lords on 5 June 2014. The principles of the Bill will be debated, and possibility voted on, for the first time when the Bill receives its Second Reading on Friday 18 July.

A recent YouGov poll found 73% of adults in England and Wales support the proposals in this Bill.

Summary of the Assisted Dying Bill
The Assisted Dying Bill is a specific, focused piece of legislation based on a recognition – repeatedly expressed by the courts – that the issue is one for Parliament to address. A change in the law that every opinion poll has shown is supported by an overwhelming majority of the public.

You can view the Bill in full and track its progress on Parliament’s website here.
If enacted it would:
• Result in fewer dying adults – and their families – facing unnecessary suffering at the end of their lives, subject to strict upfront safeguards, as assessed by two doctors.
• Bring clarity to an area of the law that is currently opaque and thereby provide safety and security for the terminally ill and for medical professionals.
• Neither legalise voluntary euthanasia, where a doctor directly administers life-ending medication nor act as a slippery slope to do so.
• Protects anyone who doesn’t have a terminal illness, including elderly and disabled people, by not in any way affecting the law that makes it a criminal offence to assist ending their lives.
• Above all it will give dying adults peace of mind that the choice of assisted dying is available if their suffering becomes too great for them in their final months of life.
• Without a change in the law, terminally ill patients will continue to take decisions without adequate safeguards, whether by travelling to Dignitas, in Switzerland, to die, ending their lives themselves or being illegally helped to die by doctors.

Impact of the Assisted Dying Bill
The Bill draws on the experience of Oregon’s Death with Dignity Act. This law has been in force for 17 years and has enabled a small number of people who were terminally ill to request the choice of an assisted death. In practice only a very small number of patients have an assisted death – less than 80 in total in 2013 out of the annual 30,000 deaths in Oregon. There has been no evidence of abuse since its inception.
The Assisted Dying Bill would:
• Provide safeguarded choice and control to terminally ill adults and prevent prolonged suffering among these dying adults who want to have choice over how and when they die.
• Ensure that terminally ill adults who have assistance to die do so having met clear pre-determined criteria and have explored all their alternatives; rather than as at present, in secret, when checks are only made after someone dies (as set out in the prosecuting policy on assisted suicide).

The Assisted Dying Bill would not:
• Legalise assisted suicide for people who are not dying (for example disabled people or older people).
• Legalise voluntary euthanasia where a doctor administers the life-ending medication. Under the Assisted Dying Bill the person choosing an assistance to die would self-administer the prescribed life-ending medication.
• Legalise a system where the person being directly helped to die is no longer competent to make that choice for themselves. This Assisted Dying Bill would only apply to adults with mental capacity both at the time of their request and at the time of their death.

How should we protect children with disabilities from being marginalised, excluded or bullied at school? Inclusive education has the possibility of opening many doors that were previously closed but children with disabilities may have a significantly less enjoyable experience of schooling than many of their peers

According to researchers, children with special needs often have a lower social standing among the other students in the classroom which may lead to them so frequently becoming the targets of bullying. For children with special needs, and their parents, this present unique challenges that can, at times, overwhelm. “Many parents have a hard enough time dealing with the day-to-day challenges of life with a special needs child. Add bullying into the mix and everybody is just completely overwhelmed,” said one parent.

Research conducted has demonstrated conclusively that children with disabilities are significantly more likely than their peers to be the victims of bullying. A study in the British Journal of Learning Support (2008) found that 60 percent of students with disabilities reported being bullied compared to 25% of the general student population. According to researchers Wall, Wheaton and Zuver (2009) only 10 studies have been conducted in the United States on bullying and developmental disabilities. All studies found that children with disabilities were 2 to 3 times more likely to be victims of bullying than their non-disabled peers. In addition, the researchers found that the bullying experienced by these children was more chronic in nature and was most often directly related to their disability

Many classmates choose to not be friends with these children, thus leaving them purposely out of the social fabric in the classroom. Simply stated, students with disabilities stand out by virtue of behavioural, vocal or physical challenges

Overall, researchers have concluded that children with special needs are bullied more because:

• They may have a low frustration tolerance. When frustration increases and reaches a threshold, it can lead to a meltdown, which makes the person stand out as being different.

• Students with developmental disabilities may have difficulty paying attention to more than one piece of information, which may cause them to stay “stuck” in a conversation. Such actions can have adverse effects on their social skills and make it difficult for them to hold conversations and make friends. They may also have different interest, because of their level of cognitive development, from their peers

• children with autism and Asperger’s syndrome have higher rates of peer rejection and higher frequencies of verbal and physical attacks because of difficulties with social interaction and the inability to read social cues. They are also more likely to be thought of as odd, abnormal and even dangerous

• Children with a degree of motor difficulty have difficulty reading, writing and participating in games. As such, they are often made fun of on the playground and in class because they are unable to perform age-appropriate motor skills, such as kicking a ball to the right person or colouring in the lines. Students with physical impairments may move slower, have less stamina and an unsteady gait. These conditions, as well as others, may be viewed as signs of weakness and precipitate physical or verbal abuse. Children with cerebral palsy may dribble or eat in a messier way than their peers which may result I their being ostracised.

• Children with communication disabilities sometimes have assistive technology devices that other students do not understand and, as such, the other students view them as “weird.” Conversation with them can be slow and onerous and so there are increasingly marginalised.
In a study conducted in 1994, researchers found that children with visible physical conditions or disabilities, such as cerebral palsy and Down’s syndrome, are more likely to be called names or aggressively excluded from social activities. Other researchers have discovered that students with disabilities were more worried about school safety and being injured or harassed by peers, compared to students without a disability. In 2009, the Massachusetts Advocates for Children in a survey of nearly 400 parents of children with autism across the state found that 88 percent of children with autism have been bullied at school ranging from verbal abuse to physical contact.
In Connecticut, Julie Swanson, an advocate for families with special needs and her colleague, Jennifer Laviano an attorney in private practice who represents children and families with special needs, joined forces with other parents to persuade the State Department of Education, to begin to track the number of incidents of bullying and the child with special needs. Julie stated that while there is no “official” data being kept on the incidence of bullying among kids with disabilities, the incoming call data reflected a disturbing trend: more than 50 percent of the complaints involved a student with an IEP, or a disability. The unofficial conclusion is that there is a disturbing, disproportionate occurrence of bullying among students with disabilities.

“This is the exact type of data I attempted to identify as an unmet need in special education in my involvement of the State Advisory Council,” said Swanson. “However, the state did not recognize this as an unmet need that warranted money allocated to officially track the incidence among kids with disabilities.”

Special education programs and inclusion efforts have opened doors for thousands of children with special needs. Yet, those very doors may have also made them vulnerable to bullying. Special classes, extra help and visible assistance given to such students makes them different from other students. As a result, other students too often characterize children with special needs as not smart or too different to be included. Jerome J. Holzbauer reported occurrences of harassment of students with disabilities witnessed from 90 special education teachers in a large public school district. Overall, 96.7 percent of the teacher reported that they observed more than one incident of school-related disability harassment conduct.
“I have a 10-year-old daughter with cerebral palsy, said the father of a child with special needs. “Several days ago, I walked into my daughter’s school cafeteria unannounced. The ‘normal’ kids were throwing food at the children with special needs.”

So what can be done?
Do organisations which deal with bullying make provision for children with special needs?
What was your experience, or your child’s experience of school?
Have any schools or colleges found a strategy which works to minimise bullying and increase integration?
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