This project aimed to support children with communication difficulties discussing personal safety and protection.

"How it is is an image vocabulary that has been developed to help children communicate about a range of important issues. It has been developed by Triangle and funded and supported by the NSPCC. The project was led by Ruth Marchant and Merry Cross of Triangle.

More than 100 children and young people contributed by drawing or commenting on images. The project was also supported by a multi-disciplinary group of professionals and parents.

Why the images were developed

There are widely recognised gaps in existing symbol vocabularies. These gaps both reflect the social position of disabled children and contribute to their increased vulnerability to abuse. In Triangle we have worked with many children who have a wide symbol vocabulary but are missing some of the basics that we feel are essential, for example:

• Children who have more than 20 symbols for body parts but no symbol for bottom (or any other private body part).
• Children who can communicate about the national curriculum but cannot say 'leave me alone'.
• Children who have 15 different colours in their communication system but can't ask for a cuddle.

The vocabulary gap also means that adults working with disabled children face additional and unnecessary difficulties in respect of child protection. We know of experienced child protection investigators who resort to freehand drawing of new symbols for children when investigating concerns about possible abuse, which creates serious questions about the safety of the evidence.

These new images are designed:

• to support children to communicate about their feelings, their bodies, their rights and their basic needs
• to assist adults to work with children on these issues to enable children, when necessary,to communicate about abuse in evidentially safer ways
• to enable adults, when necessary,to investigate concerns about children's safety in more evidentially valid ways."

(From www.howitis.org.uk)

Types of Images

Because of the sensitive and complex nature of the vocabulary a variety of images were often needed for a single word. For example:

Some contexts require an illustration of the idea, whist in other circumstances a more generalised image, from a symbol, is more appropriate. For this reason the How It Is images include both symbols and drawings. We worked on the project to develop the necessary symbols which are now also included in the main Widgit Rebus Symbol set.