Parental Learning Disability and Children's Needs: Family Experiences and Effective Practice

This book offers a window into the current operations of the child protection system in the United Kingdom. More than this, though, it provides a sobering insight into how well, or otherwise, this system operates for families headed by a parent with a learning disability. The authors analysed the case files of 228 referrals to Children’s Social Care, the UK’s statutory children’s service. Two groups of children were identified: a study group (n 1⁄4 76), who had a parent with a learning disability, and a comparison group (n 1⁄4 152), whose parents had no known disability. From the study group, 23 parents and their social workers were interviewed and 64 case files were followed up 3 years later. The magnitude of issues faced by families headed by a parent with learning disabilities was striking. In over half of cases these families had one or more children with a disability. Perhaps not surprisingly then, children from families headed by a parent with a learning disability were assessed as having greater needs than the comparison group across all measured domains: child developmental needs, parenting capacity, and family and environmental factors. They were five times more likely than their peers to have experienced multiple problems in all three domains. In two thirds of study group households both parents had a learning disability and in one third a single mother with a learning disability was raising her children without any identified informal support. The authors note that external factors have a role to play in how families headed by parents with learning disabilities are perceived. For example, they suggest that social workers’ attitudes and prejudices may help explain the higher referral rate for families headed by a parent with a learning disability. Despite the high rate of social isolation and complexity of children’s needs identified, over 80% of study group cases were closed to Children’s Social Care after an assessment and initial intervention because parenting was deemed to have improved sufficiently for them to no longer require support. Over half of these cases were re-referred within the follow-up period. The key findings of the study point to the complexity of problems faced by vulnerable families most in need of support and the inadequacy of shortterm intervention for them. In over 50% of cases where children were identified as having multiple needs at the first assessment, they continued to be in a similar situation 3 years later. The study provides evidence of a systemic lack of monitoring and followup in many of the cases reviewed, a lack of collaboration between children’s services and adult disability services, and a focus on immediate, crisisdriven response, rather than a systematic, planned, and holistic approach. The authors make a number of recommendations to improve policy and practice, which include that services be structured to provide support in a more ongoing manner and with greater collaboration between sectors; that information be made available to parents in an accessible format; that practitioners receive training and encouragement to utilise available resources on working appropriately with parents with learning disabilities; and that assessment and case review procedures are streamlined to improve consistency and response to needs. The material is ostensibly organised around the topics of referral, assessment, service provision, and child outcomes; however, a vast number of subheadings are used in each chapter. Some case files were incomplete and not all of the original study group were followed up after 3 years, so the size of the data group varies throughout the book. Similarly, interview excerpts and case examples, while illuminating and very moving, are scattered throughout the book and at times disrupt analysis of case file data. Further, the three domains used by Children’s Social Care to determine whether a child is in need and where support might be provided could have been successfully employed to organise the material within the book. While there is rich material here, it is not always easy to access by specific subject, stage of intervention, or group of participants. This potentially reduces its impact as a resource for practitioners Journal of Intellectual & Developmental Disability, December 2009; 34(4): 329–330