Love is not enough: Analyses of court reports on parents with intelle...

Background: Parents with intellectual and developmental disabilities facedisparities in the child welfare courts. However, little is known about thedata contained in court reports and how it is interpreted in cases of parentswith intellectual and developmental disabilities. The purpose of this studywas to survey child welfare court reports of parents with intellectual anddevelopmental disabilities to document the demographic data, decipherhow judges make their decisions and based on what evidence.

Methods: 119 reports concerning one or both parents with intellec-tual and developmental disabilities, were found in an open-access site.These reports include 128 children of 106 different families headedby at least one parent with intellectual and developmental disabilities.A grid was developed by the authors to analyze the court files, aimingto provide descriptive statistics as well as a basis for further analysis.

Results: The parents' health and diagnosis, reason for referral, servicesreceived, history of domestic violence, substance abuse and criminalrecord will be presented. Parents' intellectual disability was often usedto substantiate claims of parental incapacity.

Conclusions: Parents with intellectual and developmental disabilitiesare subject to injustice in the child welfare courts, as they experi-ence higher rates of child removal, restricted access to their chil-dren and a lack of services to support the identified issuespresented in court