Rebecca Moles: How AAC Can Help Prevent Abuse and Neglect

This week, the Talking with Tech team is joined by Dr. Rebecca Moles, a pediatrician who specializes in child abuse, to discuss how we can recognize and prevent the abuse and neglect of people with complex communication needs (CCN). Before the interview, Rachel, Lucas, and Chris connect to talk about some of their experiences with families dealing with abuse and how core vocabulary has been used in some cases to report neglect. The team concludes with a discussion of what we can do to prepare people with CCN to report abuse when it happens, including teaching the word “hurt”, teaching emotion words, and other strategies.

Next, Chris interviews Dr. Rebecca Moles about identifying abuse and neglect, particularly when working people with CCN. Areas covered include: why teaching language is so important to stopping abuse, signs that abuse may be occurring, and what happens (and doesn’t happen) when a report is made to Child Protective Services.

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Links:

Crime Against Persons with Disabilities, 2009-2014 Statistics (bit.ly/abusestats2014)