ABSTRACT
Observing differences in touching patterns between professionals with disabled children can provide an example which destabilises the ‘rules’ by a consideration of how we sometimes transgress them. Here, a different operational practice comes into play – a ‘needs must’ approach is adopted, which can result in placing some children in a very different situation from others. For example, communicating through touch is considered quite normal when working with children who are either blind or deaf (Miles 1999). Adults and other children frequently use touch in order to gain each others’ attention, and/or engage in a conversation. Generally children with a variety of physical difficulties will be touched so that routine dressing and toileting can take place. Miles describes the importance of hands for the person who is deaf-blind, and notes that hands serve as sense organs. Workers are advised to watch a child’s hands for cues; use their own hand under the child’s hand to express feeling; and to make their own hands available for the child to use as he or she wishes. Touch is similarly recommended for children with autism as a way of helping prevent an orienting to irrelevant sounds and other stereotypical behaviours (Kazuka in Field 2002), although some also claim that children with autism prefer not to be touched at all (see Chapter 7). Yet why some children should be assumed less likely to make false allegations of physical or sexual harassment just because of their disability; why others who police our behaviour would question our motives less in such a situation; and why some professionals have until recently felt less need to police themselves in these circumstances, is less clear. However, as noted below, fears have now spread to those working with disability and their comments probably bear too many similarities to those in earlier chapters.
