A federal agency is warning the White House that more protections are needed to ensure the parental rights of those with disabilities.
Even as an increasing number of Americans with special needs choose to become parents, laws across the country routinely undermine their rights, according to a National Council on Disability report which was sent to President Barack Obama on Thursday.
In two-thirds of states, courts are allowed to deem a parent unfit solely based on their disability. And, disability can legally be taken into account in every state when assessing what’s in the best interest of a child, the council found.
“Even today, 22 years after the passage of the Americans with Disabilities Act, parents with disabilities are the only distinct community of Americans who must struggle to retain custody of their children,” wrote Jonathan Young, chair of the National Council on Disability in a letter to the president that accompanied the report.
Currently, some 6.1 million children in the United States have parents with disabilities. They are significantly more likely than other kids to be forcibly separated from their parents, the federal agency found.
Estimates suggest that among parents with intellectual disabilities, removal rates are as high as 80 percent. Similarly high rates are seen among parents with psychiatric disabilities.
Meanwhile, the council found that people with special needs are more likely to lose custody of their children after divorce and have more difficulty adopting kids.
“A nexus should always be shown between the disability and harm to the child, so that a child is taken from a custodial parent only when the parent’s disability is creating a detriment that cannot be alleviated. However, this is not the reality,” Young said.
The council is urging the administration and Congress to collect data and fund research to better understand the experiences of people with disabilities as parents.
What’s more, the agency is recommending that new laws be implemented at the state or federal level to protect the rights of parents with disabilities. The report also indicates that social services agencies need to work to better understand and accommodate this population.
Is there a list available of those 2/3 of states with the most worrisome laws? It might be helpful to those wishing to get involved in advocacy. I’m not a parent myself, but it seems like important information to share.
Yes, Lady Ashmire. The list is contained in the report.
I suppose my opinion will label me as some kind of a monster, but I feel that people with disabilities who already depend on the taxpayers for their daily care are not in a position to be parents, adding yet another burden to social services. Each case should be evaluated of course, but it is foolish to encourage such “house playing” among those who cannot even adequately care for themselves.
What about our financial disabilities as well? Disabled parents can only work up to $750 gross a month or their benefits get cut and should they have a disabled child in the home..their benefits get cut or discontinued. Our government believes that $1,100.00 a month is sunstantial employment and all Soc.Sec and SSI benefits are terminated. I’m not sure WHO or WHERE they have these figures from but California a 2bedrm apt in Ventura County costs at the lowest $1400 a month..we still pay utilities, car gas, insurance for car, car pmt and remember food, clothes and shoes?? Wake Up America!
I have worked with children and adults with disabilities for over thirty years including my two sons. I can say that I know young adults with cognitive and mental health impairements who because they have on one responsible or who cares enough to protect them, they get pregnant, have babies they cannot care for and the state or sometimes others who are no better off, emotionally or cognitvely raise the child. The cycle goes on. Just because we are able to reproduce doesn’t mean we should. People forget we do not survive in the human society by instinct as the mammals such as primates. Even they are dying out because of exploitation and loss of ability to do what they do best. Then you have the adults who are taken away and locked away from their loved ones, state ordered by one judge. That’s another debate. Too much freedom or not enough. Where is the balance?
to Annee: If dependence on governmental supports is the standard for who can have children, lots of people without disabilities couldn’t have children.
As a mom with a disability, I would have been outraged if someone had tried to remove my kids. Whether I could walk has no real bearing on my ability to mother my children or care for my grandchildren. There are certainly differing levels of disability and it is more difficult for some than others to work out the logistics of physically caring for small children. That said, there are many cases of “normal” adults who are completely unfit to care for their children! Why should people with disabilities take so much space in the spotlight? It might be easier to SEE my disability than in someone who is able-bodied or in a higher income bracket, but I’d pit my parenting skills against any able-bodied person any day. My two kids are as well-adjusted as the average and one of them is quite comfortable financially. Changing the tenor of my comment, it is extremely difficult to find work as a person with a disability, even when qualified for a particular job. If one cannot find work, even when qualified and searching, does that automatically make them unfit to parent? If that were the case, especially with the economy in the past decade, then the foster care system would have been so flooded as to need to shut down. Furthermore, there are parents with disabilities who HAVE jobs; not all of them, “already depend on the taxpayers for their daily care” or “are not in a position to be parents, adding yet another burden to social services” as stated by Annee below. Let individual situations be “judged” according to the facts; are the children well cared for? Do they have enough to eat? Do they appear to be happy? Is there evidence of abuse? What about neglect? If the answer to the first three questions is “yes” and the last two, “no” then leave the kids in their home!
Regarding receiving gov’t support as a disqualifier: well, it’s always fashionable to knock the people who need it for basic necessities. Criticizing those corporations who whinge on and on about how they need a Get-Out-Of-Taxes-Free card or they’ll take their plant elsewhere, though, never seems as popular…for some reason.
Let’s not even think about people using federally funded schools, mass transit, food stamps, health insurance, or highways. No more local libraries or museums for you! (And I sincerely hope you don’t have a government job…then you’d *really* be getting government benefits!)
Anyway.
If you ask me, age-appropriate sex education (to include contraception use and non-procreative methods) would go a lot farther to stem the tide of people breeding children who they cannot or will not raise to the best of their ability. Chastising and otherwise degrading reproductive-sex-having people has been going on for a long time now–it still doesn’t seem to be reducing their numbers–and weaponizing children as a punishment for sex does all involved a disservice.
My young adult daughter, who has FASD, mild intellectual disability, Borderline Personality Disorder, and depression, is an active, fun-loving young woman whose sexual instincts match her chronological age, but whose developmental age ranges from about 6 to 15. Like most young women, she wants to get married and have children. She’s sure she would love a baby and take good care of it, and what more is there to it? I have no doubt that she would unintentionally neglect and abuse a baby, treating it like a little girl treats her dollies. After all, my daughter herself is a child in a woman’s body.
Given that she lives in a group home with 1-on-1 staffing due to safety issues, I cannot fathom how she could raise a child when she will need lifelong supervision herself. If she gets pregnant, she will consider neither adoption nor abortion. How could she possibly raise a child while living in a group home? I have no doubt that CPS would show up in the maternity ward to whisk her baby away for adoption. I believe any baby my daughter may bear deserves to be adopted by a capable family. I also have no doubt that my daughter will try to commit suicide when her baby is taken from her — and based on her history, she will succeed at that sooner or later.
Society would gasp at the thought of forced sterilization because, somehow, the law gives my disabled daughter the right to produce a child that will be seized at birth. And my daughter’s subsequent misery and suicide? Oh well, so sad. Can’t be helped.
There is definitely a built-in bias against parents with disabilities amongst the general population, which could feed into higher rates of loss of parental rights. Nonetheless, from where I sit, parents with substance abuse issues and other psycho-social maladies continue to parent their children, generally in dreadful neighborhoods. Many students struggle with the realities that their own and their parents’ impairments impose upon their lives.
By the time they get into high school, they are years behind their counterparts living in more affluent circumstances, surrounded by peers with equally devastated lives and poor educational and psycho-social development.
This is a pervasive public health issue, for whole communities are at risk and pose enormous social costs. In my opinion, we need to apply public health strategies to develop a matrix of interventions that deal with the whole community, in much the same way that we have scientifically addressed the high costs of motor vehicle deaths and injuries. It requires systematic interventions devised in concert with experts and hands on practitioners. No one field of expertise will suffice: it requires a marriage of public health, education, and economic leaders working together with elected leaders to educate the public.
this problem really needs to be addressed. we need to be giving these parents support, not taking their kids away. it would be more cost effective in the long run :)