Mother with learning difficulties has her children taken into care

A couple with low IQs must give up their children for adoption
due to being unable to adequately look after them, a High Court
judge ruled yesterday, writes Amy
Taylor.

The judge agreed with Essex social services that the
four-year-old girl and 14-month-old boy would be at risk if they
stayed with the parents.

The 28-year-old mother has learning difficulties and the father,
37, has a low IQ.

Clair Pyper, service director for the children and young
people’s service at Essex Council, said that the authority
felt that both children were likely to suffer significant harm
unless they were removed and that one of them had already suffered
significant emotional harm

She added that social services had done all that they could to
try and keep the family together.

Disability campaigners have reacted angrily to the ruling. Bert
Massie chair of the Disability Rights Commission said that
misguided assessments of risk were reducing disabled people to
second class citizens.

“Throughout our lives, risk is being used as the excuse to
deny disabled people the opportunities to contribute and
participate fully in society. In this case the experience of family
life seems to have been denied. But in other cases we know of it is
the right to remain in work, to live independently, or even to
travel that are being constantly curtailed.”

The children have been living with foster parents since last
autumn. A permanent placement will now be found for them.

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