What Happens at a Child Protection Compliance Review

What is a learning inability or difficulty?

This post contains data taken from talk past Beth Tarleton from the University of Bristol at the St John'southward Chambers Fair Access seminar on quaternary December 2014.

Mencap describe information technology in this way:

A learning inability is a reduced intellectual ability and difficulty with everyday activities – for example household tasks, socialising or managing coin – which affects someone for their whole life.

A parent with a 'learning disability' has a IQ below 70; a parent with a 'learning difficulty' has an IQ in a higher place 70, just both parents may struggle with the same difficulties. Often, mainstream services don't accept feel of working with adults with learning disabilities or learning difficulties [LD] and may non use specialist assessments.

There is piffling reliable information about how many parents currently face such challenges; there is an guess of 53,000 in the Great britain with a diagnosed learning  disability. Dr Sue McGaw (1997) estimated at that place are 250,000 parents with learning difficulties known to health and social services agencies in the Uk.

What challenges exercise parents face up with LD in intendance proceedings?

Best Beginnings describe it in this way:

Many people who have a learning disability adopt to use the term "learning difficulty".
A person with an IQ of less than 70 can be diagnosed as having a learning disability.
Effectually 7% of adults with a learning disability are parents, but nearly accept a balmy to deadline damage, which may make it difficult to identify them as they will not accept a formal diagnosis.
Around 40% of parents with a learning inability do non live with their children. The children of parents with a learning disability are more likely than any other group of children to be removed from their parents' care.
Parents with a learning disability are often affected by poverty, social isolation, stress, mental wellness problems, depression literacy and communication difficulties.

Parents with LD may suffer bigotry from professionals who have piddling relevant experience and who make assumptions nigh what parents with LD can or cannot do. This leads to parents with LD often fearing intervention from land agencies. The parents may perceive:

• Opposition to their want to parent
• People assuming the pregnancy was a mistake
• Assumptions that their parenting capacity won't meliorate
• Negative expectations/stereotypes about their parenting ability
• Their learning difficulty is automatically equated with an inability to parent
• People don't given enough consideration to other environmental or social factors which could affect on parenting difficulties.

There is no consensus from research that children of parents with learning difficulties volition automatically face up poor outcomes; some studies find that children born to parents with LD are vulnerable due to poor parenting; other studies report that children can do well in the intendance of their parents if the parents are given back up and assistance.

There needs to exist a recognition from support services that parents with LD need life-long support and that support needs to be constructive, making provision of information accessible to parents. Constructive support services will:

• cover the family life cycle and a variety of situations
• offering a co-ordinated approach across services
• be family unit-centred in approach and support children in their ain right
• provide accessible and understandable information nigh parenting
• recognise the potent association between supportive social networks and the positive psychological well-beingness of parents with LD
• include a range of services
• appraise/brainwash parents in their own homes and using their own equipment, wherever possible.

Case constabulary

Medway Council v A & Ors (Learning Disability; Foster Placement) [2015] EWFC B66 (2 June 2015) deals with the failures of the LA to be fair to a parent with LD.

The court cited from the sentence of Baker J in Re X Y X (Minors) [2011] EWHC 402 (Fam):

132. The last thirty years have seen a radical reappraisal of the fashion in which people with a learning inability are treated in society. It is now recognised that they need to be supported and enabled to lead their lives as full members of the community, complimentary from discrimination and prejudice. This policy is right, not only for the individual, since it gives due respect to his or her personal autonomy and human rights, only also for lodge at large, since it is to the benefit of the whole community that all people are included and respected as equal members of club. I upshot of this modify in attitudes has been a wider credence that people with learning inability may, in many cases, with assistance, exist able to bring up children successfully. Another effect has been the realisation that learning inability often goes undetected, with the result that persons with such disabilities are not afforded the assist that they need to encounter the challenges that modern life poses, particularly in sure areas of life, notably education, the workplace and the family unit.

133. To run across the particular difficulties encountered in identifying and helping those with a learning disability in the family unit, the government published in 2007 "Practiced Exercise Guidance on Working with Parents with a Learning Disability". In their endmost submissions, Miss Ball and Miss Boye contended that such practiced practice guidance is required considering there is niggling evidence of effective joint working between adult and children'due south services and practitioners in each area rarely have a expert working noesis of the policy and legislative framework within which the other is working. They submitted that local authorities oftentimes do not take account of the fact that, if children are to be enabled to remain in their own families, a specialist approach to a parent with a learning inability is admittedly fundamental to whatever work that is done, any protection which is offered and whatsoever hope of keeping the family together. The 2007 guidance points out, inter alia, that a specialised response is often required when working with families where the parent has a learning disability; that key features of skillful practise in working with parents with a learning disability include (a) accessible and articulate data, (b) clear and co-ordinated referral and assessment procedures, (c) support designed to meet the parent's needs and strengths, (d) long-term support where necessary, and (due east) access to independent advocacy; that people may misunderstand or misinterpret what a professional is telling them then that it is of import to check what someone understands, and to avoid blaming them for getting the wrong message; that adult and children's services and health and social care should jointly concord local protocols for referrals, assessments and care pathways in order to answer appropriately and promptly to the needs of both parents and children; and that, if a referral is fabricated to children's services and then it becomes credible that a parent has a learning disability, a referral should also be made to developed learning disability services. The guidance also stresses that shut attention should exist paid to the parent's access needs, which may include putting written material into an accessible format, fugitive the employ of jargon, taking more fourth dimension to explain things, and beingness prepared to tell parents things more than once."

Some other important case is re D (A Child) (No iii) [2016] EWFC1 which looked at how parents could be supported at home to intendance for their children (although in this instance the courtroom concluded that the children should be removed). Suesspiciousminds identified some useful questions put to the court by the parents' lawyers:

1. Were the things that happened to this child a result of parental deficiency, or were they bluntly things that could happen to whatever child and any parent, merely they were pathologised considering of the parents known issues?
2.  Were the failings here attributable to the parents, or the support provided?
3. Is there such a thing in police force as reparative care, or is insisting that a kid needs higher than good enough care simply a social applied science statement in disguise (topical, given the proposed reforms to adoption)
4. Is a parent with learning difficulties treated differently (or discriminated against) than a parent with physical disabilities?
5. Is a plan that involves extensive professional person support and carers actually harmful to a kid, or is it the sort of thing that happens all the time with children whose parents are very rich?

Academic Inquiry

Parents with learning difficulties, child protection and the courts

Professor Tim Booth from the Academy of Sheffield carried out research in this area which was published in 2004. He noted fundamental features of professional exercise and service system that undermined parents in their parenting and heighten their vulnerability. Parents with LD are unduly represented in care proceedings and have a high chance of having their children removed from their care. He noted the impact of 'organization abuse' or setting up vulnerable parents to fail by depriving them of adequate back up:

• System corruption – significant policies and practices that harm the families they are supposed to support or protect. Organisation corruption is the unacknowledged scourge of families (see, for case, Berth and Booth, 1998, chapter 9). Information technology is rampant, pervasive and destructive of family life…
• Competence-inhibiting support – meaning back up that deskills parents, reinforces their feelings of inadequacy and undermines their independence.

Parents with LD and advice nearly the law

In that location is as well research from the University of Bristol in July 2013 'What happens when people with learning disabilities need advice about the law'

The report concluded that:

The research confirms the findings of previous research that access to legal services for people with learning disabilities remains problematic. The report adds detail and depth to our understanding of the barriers that they face, but likewise furnishes some of the potential solutions. It highlights the dissimilar needs of people with mild learning disabilities and those with more complex disabilities who rely on others to human activity on their behalf.

The report makes recommendations which middle on:

• Developing attainable data for people with learning disabilities most the purpose of legal services and how they tin be used;
• Developing information and resources to clarify the routes that family unit carers and others can take to access specialist legal services on behalf of others;
• Strengthening the awareness legal professionals have about learning disabilities through professional person training and guidance;
• The promotion of collaborative working between legal services and the social care sector.

The influence of 'powerful others'

In that location is an fantabulous and informative commodity from the British Journal of Learning Disabilities about parents with learning disabilities and their experiences of having their children removed for non being 'good enough' parents. Its a useful reminder that there is no universal accepted definition of what exactly makes us 'good enough'.

Cheers to Matt Harding for bringing this to our attending.

Accessible summary

• People with learning disabilities might take their children taken from their care. If they practice, what then happens to the parents?
• I talked to nine mums who had their children taken abroad from their care. They told me about what this was like and how they felt.
• This research gives advice to people (specially professional person people) about how to piece of work ameliorate with mums who accept had their children removed. It also shows that sometimes information technology is difficult for people with learning disabilities to know their rights and say what they think.

Abstruse

There is a recognised adventure of parents with learning disabilities having their children removed. Lilliputian research has investigated the impact of this on these parents. This article looks at the perceptions of ix mothers with mild learning disabilities and their experiences having had their children removed. Interview data were analysed using Interpretative Phenomenological Analysis (IPA). Findings reveal the struggles mothers with learning disabilities faced being 'suitable female parent' – including presumed incompetence and scrutiny of parenting. Participants' responses to having had their children removed are looked at and support reviewed. Finally issues of ability were highlighted throughout Participants' accounts and the touch on of this is discussed. Clinical implications indicate areas for service improvement.

Decision

In that location appears to be an overwhelming influence of 'powerful others' upon the lives of mothers with learning disabilities. Before they even take a kid, society seems to suggest they should not. When they do have their kid, however, they appear to have to be better than 'good plenty parents' and seem set up to fail by the standards of those monitoring them (Chinn, 1996 cited in Edmonds 2000). When the mothers do 'fail', powerful others remove the child. There seems fiddling negotiation in this process. Few mothers appear to have advocates and the child is oftentimes then adopted –a conclusion sometimes not even fabricated through courtroom. To the mothers, the conclusion appears a foregone determination over which they have fiddling control or choice.

What so practice the mothers do? How exercise they cope? They are left feeling helpless and bereft. They could plow to others for help simply past experience has taught them that this may not be beneficial. Moreover, for many mothers it might mean turning to those who removed their kid in the first identify. Should mothers reveal their true feelings information technology might only serve to prove it was right to remove their children. Worse still, it could support the removal of yet more than of her children. The mothers' voices and feelings therefore seem to remain hidden and they attempt to block out upsetting thoughts and reminders. It appears their only solace is that i day their child might return. Meanwhile any contact volition suffice. However, all this in one case again appears to residuum in the hands of powerful others.

Useful resources

Books/Assessments

• 'Care Proceedings and Learning Disabled Parents: A Handbook for Family Lawyers' past Abigail Bond. A handbook for all those involved in care proceedings where one or both of the parents is learning disabled. The book sets out the relevant governmental policy and guidance in this area; examines the statutory framework relevant to developed learning disability social workers and children southward services social workers where at that place is a parent with a learning inability; considers and analyses the legal and practical arguments and issues likely to ascend in learning disability cases.
• Competency based assessment of support needs: PAMS three.0 is a complete Parent Assessment Application used past social workers, psychologists and other professionals across the UK and abroad. Developed by psychologist Dr Sue McGaw.

Guidance/blogs

• Good Exercise Guidance on Working with Parents with Learning Disabilities [DoH and DoE 2007] Includes a summary of relevant legislation and policy, on how adult and children'southward services should work together to meliorate support to parents with a learning disability and their children. This has been updated in 2018; see Guidance from the President of the Family Segmentation.
• You may also be interested in this post on how the court should ensure proceedings are fair for parents who take a learning inability.
• The Abet's Gateway -The Abet's Gateway gives gratis access to practical, testify-based guidance on vulnerable witnesses and defendants. Their 'toolkits' provide advocates with full general good practice guidance when preparing for trial. See for example the Toolkit 'Example Management in young and other vulnerable witnesses cases'
• Run across this post nigh how the court ensures fairness for parents with a learning inability.

Organisations

• Working Together with Parents Network – supports professionals working with parents with learning difficulties and learning disabilities, and their children. Provides information and research about parents with learning difficulties, guidance, packs, toolkits and links to other organisations.
• Communicourt – Provides intermediaries at all stages of the legal procedure, to ensure the vulnerable client has a fair hearing, agreement the procedure, existence involved fully in decision making and able to respond to questions if appropriate.
• Mencap -organisation with a  vision for a globe where people with a learning disability are valued equally, listened to and included and for anybody to have the opportunity to achieve the things they desire out of life.
• Changepeople.org  – is a human rights organisation led past disabled people and looking to build an inclusive society. The focus is on delivering existent change in areas that thing.
• Selection Advocacy – a service based in Bradford that supplies gratuitous advocacy to adults with learning disabilities.

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Source: https://childprotectionresource.online/parents-with-learning-difficulties/

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