Acknowledgements endorsements Background methodology executive Summary 11 Recommendations 22 Article — general obligations 38

Removal of Children from Parents with Disability

408. 
     Parents with disability, particularly those with intellectual and psychosocial disability are significantly over represented in the child protection system, and children of people with disability are subject to removal from their parents at a higher rate than the general population.⁴²⁵ In many circumstances children are removed pre-emptively despite there being no evidence of any neglect, abuse and/or parental incompetence.⁴²⁶
     
409. 
     Approximately one in six children in out of home care has a parent with disability.⁴²⁷ There is also evidence that there is an increasing incidence of parents with disability experiencing the removal of one or more of their children by government child protection agencies.⁴²⁸
     
410. 
     This raises serious concerns in respect of Article 23. Evidence from consultations, from advocates, support workers and researchers finds a number of reasons for this situation:
     
     1. 
        a presumption that removal of children of parents with disability is in the child’s best interest;
        
     2. 
        a presumption that parents with disability, particularly those with intellectual and psychosocial disability are intrinsically incapable of being ‘good’ parents or of developing parenting skills even with support;
        
     3. 
        the limited number of early intervention measures, programs and support that provide individualised support and advocacy assistance to people with intellectual disability in their parenting;⁴²⁹
        
     4. 
        a lack of sufficiently resourced, accessible parenting support programs,⁴³⁰ which encompass both generic and more specialised disability focused support programs;⁴³¹
        
     5. 
        a lack of coordination and collaboration within the parental support system, lengthy assessment processes, impediments to accessing services and stringent eligibility criteria, including the requirement for referrals from child protection departments as well as discrepancies in approaches to parenting by different support agencies;⁴³² and
        
     6. 
        a lack of data and statistics concerning parents with disability and the child protection system with the most recent national data on the numbers of parents with intellectual disability over ten years old.⁴³³
        
411. 
     Women with disability are particularly affected by the removal of their children as removal is often threatened during pregnancy and can occur at birth or a few days after birth. In consultations it was reported that women who have had children removed experience significant trauma and life-long grief as a result.
     

Case Study

“I have an intellectual disability. My son was removed from my care when he was born by the department of child safety. They hadn’t assessed my abilities as a parent nor did they tell me they were going to take away my son before I gave birth. They didn’t trust me and said that they wanted to prevent me from harming my baby, even when I had done nothing wrong. No support has ever been provided to help me be a parent of my son. We got an independent assessment done and it showed that even though I have a mild intellectual impairment, my behavioural functioning is normal. Even now, I only see him every Friday and he stays overnight once a fortnight.”⁴³⁴