Problems with the Term and Concept of 'Abuse': Critical Reflections on the Scottish Adult Support and Protection Study

Abstract

This paper critically reflects on the Scottish Adult Support and Protection study (the ASP study), a research project conducted at a time when "adult protection" was understood in Scottish policies to be the professional response to "abuse". During the course of analysing the ASP study data, it became apparent that practitioners themselves did not necessarily construct "abuse" and "adult protection" concerns as coterminous categories. Some examples are recounted to illustrate the potentially more partial, less linear relationship between these categories in practice than in policy constructions.The paper concludes with suggestions for further research into professionals' constructions of "adult protection" concerns. It explains why such research would have continuing, if not greater, relevance in the context of recent Scottish policy moves to re-conceptualise adult protection as a response not to "abuse" but to "harm".

Models of adult safeguarding in England: A review of the literature

“…Firstly, the likelihood of a substantiated allegation ('proven' abuse) and potential for change or resolution have been suggested as influencing practitioners' decisions to label a concern as a safeguarding alert (Taylor & Dodd, 2003;Harbottle, 2007;Johnson, 2012b). Safeguarding may also be the default response to poor practice Simic, Newton, Wareing, Campbell & Hill, 2012 Secondly, McCreadie, Mathew, Filinson and Askham (2008) found some referrers were conscious of the impact making a referral may have on the organisation involved.…”

Interactional perspectives on the mistreatment of older and vulnerable people in long‐term care settings

“…; Biggs et al. ) and have become increasingly inclusive in terms of setting, identity or intent (Johnson ). However, for our purposes, a broad definition may be sufficient, such as the one used in the US National Research Council Panel on Elder Mistreatment (NRC) (Bonnie and Wallace ):…”

Discovery or Construction? Theorising the Roots of Adult Protection Policy and Practice

“…For instance, 'elder abuse' had currency as a social problem prior to the rise of more generic policies for the protection of adults, and there were theoretical and strategic arguments both for and against its absorption into this wider discourse (Slater, 1999). There have been arguments to keep the definitions of 'abuse' or 'harm' very tightly focused, and others to cast these nets very wide indeed (Johnson, 2012a). The increased breadth of definitions in the contemporary Scottish context has underpinned a shift from the terminology of 'abuse' to the terminology of 'harm' (Stewart, 2012), whilst elsewhere 'abuse' has itself been characterised as a worryingly euphemistic way to conceptualise the assault, rape or theft from certain undervalued members of society (Hugman, 1995).…”

“…Hence the effects of a particular family carer's behaviour and the effects of a particular NHS policy might equally fit the formal definition of 'harm' to an 'adult at risk', but only the former might be categorised as ASP where social workers feel powerless to address the latter. Conversely, practitioners have been shown to initiate ASP proceedings where they feel that these would help, even where the fit of the circumstances with formal definitions of harm/abuse is arguable and/or has not been explicitly considered (Johnson, 2012a). This is all in line with the predictions of interpretive sociology that we categorise the world in order to act upon it, rather than merely to describe it, and that the categorisations arrived at might be negotiated differently in different local contexts because of the range of factors shaping and/or impeding particular actors' abilities to exert influence in any given context.…”