Parents living with Intellectual Disability
Your Right to Marry and Have Children
Everyone has the right to get married and raise children. This includes people with intellectual disabilities. But sometimes, parents with intellectual disabilities are treated unfairly just because they have a disability. Often, no one checks if they can be good parents with the right support.
What the United Nations Says
The United Nations has a rule (Article 23 of the Convention on the Rights of Persons with Disabilities) that says a child should not be taken away from their parents just because the parent or child has a disability.
Challenges for Parents with Intellectual Disabilities
Parents with intellectual disabilities may be watched closely to see if they make mistakes. They often feel scared that their children might be taken away. Many parents don’t understand why their children were removed or what they can do to get them back.
Problems Parents Face
- People assume parents with intellectual disabilities can’t be good parents, so they don’t get as many chances to learn how to be good parents.
- They might have money problems, not have enough help from others, or face other difficulties.
- They often don’t get the kind of teaching that works best for them.
Because of these challenges, parents with intellectual disabilities might not ask for help, because they are afraid people will think their child is in danger. Sometimes, the services that are supposed to help them end up taking over their parenting instead of supporting them. There is also a feeling that the NDIS doesn’t plan enough for families where a parent has an intellectual disability.
Organisations and groups supporting parents with intellectual disability
Self Advocacy Support Unit (SARU)
The Self Advocacy Resource Unit, based in Melbourne, Victoria, Australia is an organisation that supports the development and running of self advocacy groups where people with intellectual disability join together to have their voices heard and support each other.
Reinforce Self Advocacy Group
Reinforce is a self advocacy organisation for people with an intellectual disability that provides training, resources, lobbies government, holds forums, and promotes socialising and networking. Reinforce is run almost entirely be volunteers.
The Powerful Parenting Self Advocacy Group
Positive Powerful Parenting Self Advocacy Group (PPP) is a group of parents with an intellectual disability who believe that most parents should be supported to have their children at home with them. The group is support by Reinforce and meets regularly to provide mutual support and think of ways to make the system fairer for parents with I.D. The group was founded and is led by Susan Arthyr who herself is a parent with intellectual disability who has had her child removed from her care
PPP meet every month. Contact Susan at Reinforce on 9650 7855 or susan@reinforce.org.au if you would like more information about the group
Healthy Start
Healthy Start is a national capacity building strategy which aims to improve health and wellbeing outcomes for children whose parents have learning difficulties.
Includes
- practical resources to support practitioners and parents
- Hundreds of abstracts and references on research articles
- Best-practice approaches and in-home education