Preventing abuse in accommodation services: from procedural response to protective cultures

This article reviews current approaches of disability accommodation services to addressing the abuse and neglect of people with intellectual disability who live in them. We review international literature and provide practice examples from accommodation services for people with intellectual disability in Australia to develop a framework of current research, policy and practice in this area. The results of this review show that dominant policy and practice approaches do not give adequate consideration to the prevention and protection of people from harm, focusing primarily on responding to individual instances of maltreatment. Managerial, compliance-based systems may be deflecting attention from recognizing and responding more effectively to abuse and neglect at individual, systemic and structural levels. The current dominant approach fails to develop a culture of prevention and protection for people with intellectual disability. Further, some systemic and structural preconditions are set which make abuse and neglect less likely to be prevented.