Third of recent infant care cases involved parents with learning disabilities or difficulties – research

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However, in most cases, parents’ conditions were only identified at the court stage, in part because social workers lacked the time and training to do so.

As a result, parents missed out on support that could have helped them prove or develop their parenting abilities, found the study, commissioned by family courts research body the Nuffield Family Justice Observatory (NFJO).

The research, by academics from Oxford Brookes University, found that as a result, reasonable adjustments were not made for parents at the pre-proceedings stage and, more generally, parenting support from councils was insufficiently adjusted to their needs.

Social work ‘need better training’

The study report called for improved training for practitioners in working with parents with learning disabilities or difficulties and for action to promote their earlier identification, for example, through screening by children’s social workers.

The conclusions of the research echo those of a separate King’s College London study, which found parents with learning disabilities lacked support before, during and after care proceedings, including because they were often ineligible for adults’ services.

In response to the latest report, the NFJO said parents faced a “serious injustice” due to services’ failure to adapt to their needs, while children’s directors said it showed the need for closer working with adults’ services for these families.

What the research involved

The research team studied records for the 50 most recently concluded care cases involving children aged under one, as of March-April 2023, in each of four local authorities.

They also interviewed 42 social care professionals, 17 lawyers and four mothers with learning disabilities or learning difficulties who had experience of proceedings.

It found that parents’ conditions were generally identified using cognitive assessments that invariably tested IQ: an IQ of less than 70 indicated a learning disability and one of between 70 and 85 a borderline learning disability.

Assessments explored 10 domains seen as relevant to parenting: understanding and comprehension; processing information; literacy; attention and concentration; memory; verbal or non-verbal reasoning; independent living skills; adaptability; social interactions; understanding other people’s thoughts and needs.

Proportion of cases involving parental learning needs

Researchers found that, in 67 of the 200 cases, there was reliable – mostly expert – evidence that at least one parent – 60 mothers and 25 fathers – had a learning disability or learning difficulty. According to government data, about 2.16% of the adult population has a learning disability

In just under half of these cases (45%) – 15% of the total – evidence indicated that the parent had a learning disability; this compares to an estimated prevalence of about 2% of the adult population in England having a learning disability.

A similar proportion found to have a borderline learning disability; in the remainder (10%) of the 67 cases, the parent was found to have a learning difficulty, mostly ADHD.

About half (49%) of the mothers in the 67 cases had already had children removed in previous proceedings, while in a similar proportion of cases (51%), the mother had experience of the social care system as a child.

Conditions ‘identified far too late’

In most cases (81%), parents were referred to children’s social care during pregnancy. However, the most common reasons for referral were mental health (75%) and domestic abuse (73%);  learning disabilities or difficulties “were very infrequently mentioned as a concern or risk, or even identified”, at the point of referral, said the report.

Analysis of case files found that parents’ learning disabilities or difficulties were not identified until the care proceedings stage in 45% of cases, while in a further 30%, they had been registered during a previous set of court proceedings involving the parent.

Professionals interviewed for the research said that parents’ conditions “were identified far too late and that there were frequently missed opportunities to identify these earlier in the journey”.

Delays were partly driven by the costs to councils of commissioning independent cognitive assessments prior to proceedings (at which point costs could be shared between parties) and the unavailability of adults’ services to carry these out.

Social workers ‘lack training on learning disabilities’

However, interviewees also said that children’s social workers lacked the experience and expertise, and the face-to-face time with parents, to effectively identify learning disabilities or difficulties.

“Social workers considered that there was only very limited training for them on learning disabilities or difficulties at any stage of their career,” said the report. “It was not prioritised.”

The failure to identify learning disabilities or difficulties, as well as social workers’ lack of training and time, undermined the quality of practitioners’ communications with parents, which in turn adversely affected parental engagement.

Mothers interviewed for the research reported that practitioners’ communications were not tailored to their needs, while they also criticised the turnover of social workers, which meant they had to retell their stories.

Lack of reasonable adjustments

More broadly, the report found a lack of reasonable adjustments were made for parents prior to the care proceedings stage, contrary to councils’ duties to make such adjustments to avoid disabled people being put at a “substantial disadvantage” (section 20 of the Equality Act 2010).

This was evident both in parenting capacity assessments and the provision of parenting support. In just under two-thirds of cases (64%), parenting support was “poorly or not at all tailored to the parent’s needs”; in most of these circumstances, the parent’s learning disability or difficulty had not been identified.

Problems included parents being given inappropriate worksheet-based learning materials, having pre-birth sessions that covered far too many topics or being referred to non-tailored parenting classes.

Adults’ services were rarely involved, contributing to an assessment in 15% of cases, despite having been asked to in 27%. Professionals reported that support from adult social care was “often unattainable” for parents with learning disabilities or difficulties because of long waiting times or high thresholds.

This is despite people with learning disabilities being eligible for care and support under the Care Act 2014 if, as a result of needs arising from their condition, they are unable to achieve at least two of 10 outcomes  – including caring for a child and maintaining family relationships – with significant impact on their wellbeing.

Call for improved social worker training

The report’s recommendations for councils included:

• Requiring children’s social workers to screen for and, where indicated, organise a more in-depth assessment of a parent’s learning disabilities or difficulties as a core part of any early assessment work and at the latest during formal pre-proceedings.
• Making sure children’s social workers and family support workers undergo regular training to identify, communicate effectively with and tailor support for parents with learning disabilities or difficulties.
• Ending the practice of delaying support until after a pre-birth assessment has been completed, or until the child’s birth, so practitioners engage and work with parents as soon as possible.
• Ensuring lay advocacy is consistently available pre-proceedings and provided by people sufficiently trained in working with parents with learning disabilities or difficulties.

It also called for national policymakers to improve “visibility and impact” of the Good Practice Guidance on Working with Parents with a Learning Disability, originally published by the government in 2007. This has been subsequently updated by specialist academics at Bristol University, but without government involvement.

They should also explore, with Social Work England, how far there is sufficient focus on working with parents with learning disabilities or difficulties in social work qualifications.

FDAC model mooted

In addition, it called for pilots to test ideas such as embedding learning disability specialists in children’s social work teams and the development of more tailored pre- and post-birth and post-proceedings support, and mooted applying, in part or whole, the family drug and alcohol court (FDAC) model to this group of parents.

Under FDACs, multidisciplinary teams work with parents to help them tackle their substance misuse, while specially-trained judges undertake fortnightly sessions with them to oversee progress.

At the same time, specially trained judges undertake fortnightly sessions with parents – in the absence of lawyers – to oversee progress and foster positive working relationships between families, the judiciary and FDAC practitioners. There is evidence that children are more likely to be reunified following FDACs, compared with standard care proceedings.

‘Serious injustice’ risk

For the NFJO, director Lisa Harker said: “The number of babies being removed from their families has been rising for many years. Uncovering that such a significant proportion of the parents in these cases are likely to have learning disabilities or difficulties has a profound impact on how we should be thinking about the type of support they need.

“The pre proceedings period is a vital chance for parents to learn or prove their parenting ability, and if these services are not being adapted to meet the needs of people with learning disabilities or difficulties then we could be looking at a serious injustice.

The Association of Directors of Children’s Services (ADCS) said the report made for “difficult reading” and the issue required “attention and action”.

“This cohort of parents illustrates the need for close working between children’s and adult social care to understand needs and where this is in the best interest of the child, support families to stay together,” said Helen Lincoln, chair of the ADCS’s family, communities & young people committee.

“Where this need hasn’t previously been identified, the system in which we work absolutely places the child’s interests above all else, which is right.”