Assessment of all parents should have the ultimate aim of keeping children within their families, where possible. This shouldn’t change when assessing parents with learning difficulties.
Policy, legislation and guidance provide frameworks within which services operate and establish that children’s needs are usually best met by supporting their parents to look after them.
The White Paper – Valuing people, included within its strategy for people with learning disabilities, a specific policy aim of: ”Supporting parents with learning disabilities to help them, wherever possible, ensure their children gain maximum life chance benefits”.
The ‘Good Practice Guidance on Working with Parents with a Learning Disability’ was published in 2007 by the Department of Health and the Department for Education and Skills. It set out how children’s and adult services can and should work together to improve support to parents with a learning disability. Failure to apply the principles of the Good Practice Guidance is detrimental to the children’s welfare and amounts to a breach of their and their parents’ rights, such as those under:
- the United Nations Convention on the Rights of the Child,
- the United Nations Convention on the Rights of Persons with Disabilities,
- the Equality Act 2010
- and the Human Rights Act 1998.
Parents with learning disabilities must be given every opportunity to show that they can parent safely and be good enough parents, with appropriate support.
Case Law identifies principles to be applied when assessing parents with a learning disability and introduces the concept of ‘parenting with support’. It recognises that parents with a learning disability need to be supported and enabled to lead their lives as full members of the community, free from discrimination and prejudice. There is a wider acceptance that people with a learning disability may in many cases, with assistance, be able to bring up children successfully.
Our approach to assessments of parents with a learning difficulties.
Intelligence or IQ measures are a poor predictor of parenting ability and it should never be assumed that learning difficulties, in themselves, lead to parenting deficits. Research shows that 12.5% of care proceedings in the UK courts involves parents with a learning difficulty (McConnell et al, 2011) and that these cases are more likely to conclude with permanent removal.
As Social Workers, we are familiar with psychological methods to assess parent’s cognitive functioning and these consider both verbal and practical intelligence. It is often the case that an individual’s verbal comprehension is impacted by learning difficulties and there is a significant discrepancy in what they can do practically in contrast to how they may describe that task. Cognitive Assessments often offer a ‘likelihood’ of difficulties however, it must be recognised that individuals with learning difficulties have had a lifetime to both mask and mitigate areas of difficulty in order to function within an adult world. It should never be assumed that abilities are static and that strengths cannot be utilised or adapted to compensate for areas of need.
At Advanced CCA, we are committed to providing co-ordinated, holistic, and balanced assessments that account for a parent’s individual abilities and circumstances. All of our assessors who undertake these types of assessments are experienced in working with parents who experience all levels of learning difficulty and we offer all our Social Workers opportunities for additional training to enhance their assessment skills. Our Social Workers incorporate measures to optimise a parent’s engagement and inclusion throughout the assessment process, such as:
- clear and simple communication,
- visual aids,
- role modelling,
- positive reinforcement,
- the breaking down of tasks into smaller steps
These processes offer a parent the opportunity to practice these skills to reinforce learning.
We recognise the impact of professional and court intervention and the negative experiences of exclusion and discrimination that these parents encounter within society. Equally, we value the principle that individuals have the capacity for change and that with support, many parents with learning difficulties can overcome and exceed identified limitations and expectations.
Research demonstrates clearly that parents with learning difficulties can often learn and adapt when methods of assessment and support resources are appropriate to specifically identified needs. It further identifies that optimal outcomes are achieved when learning takes place in the environment where the skills are to be used. It has been partly with this in mind, that we have developed our 24/7 at home service.
We believe that a residential assessment of parents, particularly those with learning difficulties, can sometimes offer an artificial measure of their abilities. Parents are removed from their support network, their local resources, and the familiarity of their own home, all of which are essential components of any comprehensive assessment. By removing parents from all that is familiar to them, they can be disadvantaged and for some, the emotional impact of change will compromise their ability to demonstrate effectively, their parenting capacity.
We pride ourselves on the provision of high quality, comprehensive and balanced assessments which strenuously promote the preservation of family as our prime objective.
In our next blogs, we will focus on the types of assessment that we can provide, the history of those assessments and how, at Advanced CCA, we promote the preparation of assessments that go beyond a ‘tick box’ exercise and showcase the expertise of our experienced practitioners.
