If anyone needs confirmation why the abuse of disabled people is a major issue they need look no further than a court case in Devon.
A 57-year-old driver at a residential home was jailed for 12-and-a-half years for sexually abusing women in his care.
All the women were either physically disabled or had mental capacity issues, and James Watts thought they would be unable to communicate to give evidence.
But he underestimated them - one blinked her eyes to answer "yes" or "no" to questions and helped to secure the conviction.
The prosecution also benefited from the deployment of an intermediary who assisted communication in court.
Although in this case the punishment was fitting, the battle against disability hate crime is far from over.
In The Independent, Ian Birrell highlighted the casual use of words such as "retard". He excoriates the casual acceptance of them and compares their use to words most of us would describe as racist and which are taboo.
He writes: When did [people with disabilities] become such a forgotten minority that they ceased to matter in the battle against bigotry?"
Should anyone think that the casual use of words such as "retard" and "autistic" (one favoured as a term of abuse recently by France's Europe minister, Pierre Lellouche) are acceptable, Birrell points out: "Language reflects how we view the world."
If these words are gaining wider currency - and Birrell is certain that they are, particularly among schoolchildren - it surely demeans any attempt to tackle disability hate crime.
But at the same time it is up to all of us to be more vigilant.
When will students have access to 'fitness to practise' panels composed of practising social workers, rather than academics who are often totally out of touch university tutors who left practice because they burned out (many of them haven't been practising social workers for decades).
If university tutors think that it is acceptable to refer to 'suitability' proceedings as a professional 'reward'... 'familiar to us in our professional practice', can we be reassured that these educators are still IN professional practice?
The majority of university staff aren't even on the social work register, and aren't therefore answerable to the GSCC code which they are applying so rigorously to students, and on which they are ruling. If academics misbehave or lapse from the high standards which they set for students, who holds them to account?
If staff face conflicts of interest, who is going to enforce the appropriate conduct on the staff member? This is a moral and ethical quagmire, with one rule for the students, and quite another for social work educators.
"Fitness to practice" panels are essentially legal proceedings, but run by people without adequate legal training in the means to arrive at a fair and lawful outcome.
Currently, nobody can rein in this potential for abuse of due process because universities are all autonomous, and this, in effect, hides the big discrepancies between the very different practices in different universities.
University staff who publish papers in which they refer to "non traditional students" who are in difficulty, as being "resource and time intensive" and "a pain... to themselves and other students" go unchallenged, but who is going to examine their standing and challenge their credentials as anti-oppressive and empowering educators? Would students want to attend a university which only wants "traditional" students?
If academics identify "struggling students" as predominantly those with learning differences, without referring to the circumstances regarding the support services on offer, then they are doing those students a grave disservice.
Will disabled students ever be able to challenge the discrimination rife in the profession, as shown by the last Disability Rights Commission report on barriers faced by disabled students on placement?
Finally, when will universities admit that there simply aren't enough adequate (let alone good) placements for students? That universities take on more students than they have suitable placements for?
This means that, as often as not, problems arise directly from poorly run placements, untrained placement supervisors, from poor oversight by university staff.
There is an unhealthily close relationship between universities and placement providers, who universities need to keep sweet to provide the 50% of the degree which placement training provides. This is regardless of agencies' failings as trainers of social work students: if a placement breaks down, the student is always regarded as the guilty party, regardless of the facts of the case.
Finally, students are given the social work code, but the implications of the code are not presented.
How many students know that if they are pressured into going into work when they are unwell, they can be struck off the register?
Students are, in fact, held to a higher standard than qualified social workers. You can be struck off the register for spelling mistakes or misdialling a phone call. Your first mistake may well be your last...