Disability, Mental Health and Child Protection: Towards a New Understanding - Micro-credential

Program Overview

This micro-credential equips professionals in education, healthcare, social care, and policing with a comprehensive understanding of disability, mental health, and child protection issues. Through online lectures, exercises, and case studies, learners explore historical contexts, current research, and best practices in these fields. The program emphasizes the unique needs of children and parents with disabilities and/or mental health issues in a child protection context, and provides a theoretical framework for understanding these complex issues.

Program Outline

Degree Overview:

This micro-credential provides learners with an understanding of key issues in disability, mental health, and child protection. It is designed to meet the specific training needs of all education, health, social care, and policing professionals working in areas where the client base could include individuals who may have a disability and/or mental health issue.

Objectives:

• Critically discuss examples from the history of key disability, mental health, child welfare, and child protection contexts, issues, and practices.
• Apply key insights from research, literature, and inquiry reports to critically inform practice in various settings around issues of child protection, mental health, and disability.
• Evaluate unique strengths and risk factors associated with disability and mental health in a child protection context.
• Assess the various needs of children and parents with disabilities and/or mental health issues in a child protection context.
• Apply a theoretical framework to understand disability, mental health, and child protection issues.

Outline:

• Module 1: Historical Context of Disability, Mental Health, and Child Protection in Ireland
• History, legislation, policies, and practices of child protection and welfare, mental health, and disability.
• Module 2: Current Research Evidence, Inquiry Reports, and Practice Wisdom
• Strongest current research evidence, seminal inquiry reports, practice wisdom, and contemporary understanding related to disability, mental health, and child protection.
• Foundational knowledge in the area, such as different recognized kinds of abuse and the meaning of common terminology.
• Child protection and welfare practice for children with disabilities, including extra-familial abuse and child victimization, parental disability and child protection, and perpetration of abuse by individuals labeled as having a disability.
• Particular concerns and challenges for practice, such as conducting authoritative parenting capacity assessments, working well in multidisciplinary contexts, and capturing credible accounts from individuals with verbal inarticulacy or intellectual disability.
• Module 4: Contemporary Trends and Perspectives on Disability, Mental Health, and Child Protection
• Key contemporary trends and perspectives on the subject matter of disability, mental health, and child protection.
• Focus on the implications of disability theory and children's rights for social work.

Assessment:

• Written assignment that requires learners to reflect upon a multidisciplinary-based practice-orientated case example.
• Presentation to peers on the course.

Teaching:

• Fully online with weekly live lectures over 5 weeks.

Other:

• This micro-credential qualifies for a 50% subsidy under the HCI Fees Subsidy.
• Applicants must have a minimum of a 2.1 grade in a level 8 degree and experience of a practice setting and/or life experience pertaining to disability/mental health and child protection.