Children's services 'fail to support children of disabled parents'
Gabriella Jozwiak
Tuesday, September 25, 2018
Children's social care services risk unnecessarily separating children from disabled parents through misunderstanding their conditions and weak joint working with adult services, research has claimed.
A study of disabled parents who had all been referred, or self-referred, to children's social care, found support offered by the services did not aim to support parents to care for their own children, but rather provided substitute care that separated families.
Parents told researchers from the Tilda Goldberg Centre for Social Work and Social Care at the University of Bedfordshire, and the charity Ginger Giraffe, that during family assessments children's services social workers did not seek to understand the family's needs, and instead focused on risks and incapacities associated with the parents' conditions.
One interviewee said: "The professionals, when they asses us, they already have a negative perception and it's an ideological barrier, in the back of their mind they assess based on preconceptions.
"They have a negative attitude that you will remain disabled all your life, there's no cure, hence you are always a risk."
The report said assessments conducted by adult social care services were also inadequate, with professionals treating disabled parents as individuals "without any reference to their parental role and associated support needs".
In an example cited in the report, a parent told how adult services were planning to discharge her from hospital to a nursing home until an accessible flat became available, without considering where her children would be housed.
She was offered meals on wheels as a result of being unable to cook, but the services failed to extend this offer to her children.
Parents who contacted children's social care services for support to prevent problems escalating, such as emergency hospital admissions, said early help was not provided.
The report said: "During times of crisis services were provided but on a time-limited basis. They were also withdrawn abruptly."
As a result, the parents said dealing with children's social care teams required a careful balance of demonstrating they were eligible for assistance, while ensuring they did not appear so needy that children's social care would consider them to be a risk.
One parent said: "You don't want to call social services, you are scared to call them because they might think you are incapable of looking after the child, so you have to struggle with what you have because you are scared to call to ask for help because then they will say, ‘we told you she's disabled, she can't look after her child'."
Director of the Tilda Goldberg Centre and report author professor Emily Munro said more collaborative working relationships are needed between children's social care and adult services "to ensure disabled parents can access the vital support they need in order to fulfil their parenting role".
The report's authors also called for more research to be done to examine whether adult and children's social care services were meeting statutory responsibilities towards disabled parents and their children.
Figures released earlier this month suggested there could be as many as 800,000 young carers in England looking after parents - those with disabilities among them.
In June the government published a two-year Carers Action Plan that aims to provide better support to young carers by improving their identification and making the NHS more "carer friendly".
A spokeswoman for the British Association of Social Work said: "Good social work practice is based upon strong working relationships between social workers and children and families.
"These relationships take time and it is essential that social workers are supported by the right organisational structures and processes to allow increased levels of direct contact with children, families and carers. This is not a case of remodeling social work but getting back to what works best."
