New research from the Tilda Goldberg Centre for Social Work and Social Care at the University of Bedfordshire, has found that social services often assume having a disability is a child protection risk. The research also confirms that social services often monitor families rather than provide meaningful support that would keep families together and avoid a crisis later on.
In an interview with the BBC, one parent with a condition that limits her mobility and strength explained how she chose to hide her pregnancy from social services, fearing they would refer her to the borough’s child protection team and then take her baby away from her, once she was born. The mother, who already had a care plan in place with adult social services for her disability, was also aware that councils try to refer cases away from their departments in order to avoid having to pay for further assistance, making a referral to a child protection team more likely.
The mother told the BBC:
“The fear you carry with you…cannot be understated.”
“Every disabled person I spoke to, when I was pregnant, had a concern.
“There is always some implication because you have an impairment, that you may not be a fantastically good parent.”
She went on to say:
“For the first 10 to 12 months while Sally wasn’t mobile, my existing day-care package and support was enough.”
“Once she moved on from milk and was mobile, it wasn’t.”
One of the things the mother needed help with was making her baby’s food.
“It seems like such a little thing to make your child something to eat, but if you can’t stand for long, and your hands don’t work very well, it can be one of the most distressing things.”
“It was as if because I couldn’t provide that, I wasn’t competent as a mother.”
In the end the mother felt she had no choice but to call for help:
“When that contact came back, I remember ringing my health visitor and just sobbing hysterically. It was devastating.”
“I don’t think that any parent sees being transferred to children’s services as a positive thing.”
The mother goes on to tell the BBC that this kind of prejudice is reserved only for disabled people, however this is not the case. Legal Action for Women have been highlighting discrimination against single, poor parents for some time, and we know that parents home schooling their children have also been targeted by social services across the country.
Unlike most cases, the social worker the mother was allocated agreed her need was because of her disability, not her ability as a mother, and promised to fight her manager’s intention to pass her on to children’ services. The issue of how parenting capacity is determined has begun to be viewed as controversial, with emerging research in America suggesting that this kind of assessment is in fact outdated and unhelpful.
Crucially, the social worker in this instance successfully argued that the service user’s needs as a mother should be met by adult social services.
This argument is hugely important, as it highlights a different way of thinking which allows for both mother and child to be cared for.
The mother makes the following observations about her daughter and the care they now both receive:
“She’s the greatest joy of my life – she’s wonderful, happy and loved… And having social care support in her life means she is loved by lots of adults. The care staff are like our extended family.”
And that’s how it’s done.
(We’ve asked the Centre whether they would mind sharing the research with us, as we can’t seem to find it on their website, and will let you know when they reply).
Many thanks to Dana for alerting us to this development.
Researching Reform 
This is a shameful revelation and needs to be addressed at once.
To be disabled is not an invitation to be stigmatised by social workers whose job it is to enable those with disabilities to function as well as they are able.
The ParAlympic Games have shown that those with disabilities can reach pinnacles never previously reached through sheer courage and determination.
I have personal experience of living with a husband who, at twenty-six, was the victim of a drunk driver. He adapted to reduced mobility when one leg was amputated at the thigh and the remaining limb was subjected to more than twenty surgical procedures to make it look like a leg with limited function, albeit with the prognosis of increasing pain with decreasing mobility – yet he went on to become a doctor and then a consultant ophthalmologist at an eye hospital and responsible for helping young and old with defective sight, as well as indulging in his love of flying and photography as hobbies.
The only limits for the disabled are the restrictive parameters that society places around them – so get rid of the restrictions.
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my wife as mild cerebral palsy and adult services were already involved with her when we first met. in the constitutionally illegal family court, they claimed that my wife is too disabled to look after a baby and that as a carer i wouldn’t be able to cope. funny how we coped very well for 7 years as parents to two children. it was when a social worker wanted to close the file because “you are doing everything right”, she was replaced with an obese anti-white racist black immigrant that went by the title “senior practitioner” because she wasn’t a registered social worker. this senior practitioner decided to pull the support we had, then kidnap the children at the slightest wobble. then my wife gets pregnant and they kidnap the baby two days before the due date by forced inducement (we invited florence bellone to witness and record the forced birth). the social worker claimed “it’s because your other children were successfully adopted”. a year later and they kidnap our only son via a home invasion within a few hours of his birth that i recorded via webcam and it went viral. it ended with another forced adoption. my wife recently had a miscarriage, we desperately want a family life, probably more so than people who adopt, but she decided to be sterilised out of fear of having to go through the trauma of yet another kidnap and kangaroo court case.
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How many parents were failed on this alone, without anything else?
It could help make a ‘huge’ difference if said parents got signposted to relevant areas, depending on their disability (needs?/requirements?) when also nothing might need to be done….
Crucially, the social worker in this instance successfully argued that the service user’s needs as a mother should be met by adult social services.
This argument is hugely important, as it highlights a different way of thinking which allows for both mother and child to be cared for.
The mother makes the following observations about her daughter and the care they now both receive:
“She’s the greatest joy of my life – she’s wonderful, happy and loved… And having social care support in her life means she is loved by lots of adults. The care staff are like our extended family.”
And that’s how it’s done.
(We’ve asked the Centre whether they would mind sharing the research with us, as we can’t seem to find it on their website, and will let you know when they reply).
Many thanks to Dana for alerting us to this development.
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Even something non physical like autism is used against parents.
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