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Parents with mental illness and their children worry that professionals will try to separate the family and implement child protection procedures, research has revealed, writes Katie Leason.

It shows how in some cases professionals and agencies discriminate against parents with mental illness and their children, who often care for them.

It also found that that worrying about their family being separated can have a negative effect on the parents' mental health.

The report reveals that children are rarely consulted about their needs as carers, and that professionals from both adult and children's services consider living and caring for a mentally ill parent to be "wholly negative and damaging in respect of childhood experiences and psychosocial development".

But the research suggests that, in some cases, caring for their mother or father improves the child’s relationship with them and can help the child feel included.

Jo Aldridge, principal researcher for the Young Carers Research Group at Loughborough University, said that the study found that the children often had close and loving relationships with the parents they cared for.

"What children need is recognition for what they do and support for families as opposed to support that is aimed only at adults as patients," she said.

The report, produced with mental health charity Rethink, suggests that where a parent has a mental illness, adult and children's services need to work more closely together to support the whole family.

It adds that professionals from adult mental health teams need to recognise that their patients may also be parents and that sometimes children may have caring responsibilities they do not want.

http://www.lboro.ac.uk/departments/ss/centres/YCRG/PDF%20files/Evidence5.pdf