To the point...
Beatrix Campbell
Wednesday, May 17, 2006
Our weekly columnist Beatrix Campbell looks behind the statistics of parents who have learning disabilities Surely not! But that's terrible! These would have been the reactions of thousands of us reading the report published last week which revealed that half of parents with learning difficulties lose their children.
Surely not! But that's terrible! These would have been the reactions of thousands of us reading the report published last week which revealed that half of parents with learning difficulties lose their children.
The presumption was that Gestapo social services were whipping children away from hapless - but with support, good enough - parents.
So, why are so many learning disabled parents losing their children? Sadly, closer scrutiny of the report, Finding the Right Support by the Nora Fry Research Centre in Bristol, does not enlighten us.
The figure is more or less consistent with global figures. There is a positive trend: more people with learning disabilities are having children, their parenting is 'good enough' and their children are doing fine. But the 50 per cent who lose their children is as much a mystery as before.
However, think of this: a young mother who loves her baby manages, with deep institutional backing, to learn to feed her baby and change nappies.
But the services couldn't staunch her violence - perhaps an effect of her own childhood. Finally, they couldn't get past the violent father who controlled the woman and put the child at risk.
Think of this: a learning disabled mother can't prepare the baby's milk.
But the father can. She can't respond when the baby cries. But the father does. She doesn't know how to play with the baby. The father does. But the father is a serial sex offender who has done time for rape. The baby is only safe if he's there - but the baby will never be safe while he's there.
Both of these cases expose the way that the difficulties faced by learning disabled mothers compound the routine risks on any woman's horizon. It is the crimes of domination, domestic violence and sexual abuse that multiply these mothers' vulnerability.
In the desperation to support their right to family life, professionals lower their tolerance threshold for abuse and violence - a threshold that is readily exploited by abusive men who target vulnerable women.
What appears in family court proceedings as 'neglect' may be a cover for a problem with no name - the havoc caused by learning disabled mothers being exploited by dangerous men.
