B6 - Ensuring the Rights of Families Affected by Parental Disability: A Call to Action

Research shows that more than 6 million children in the U.S. have parents with disabilities, which amounts to nearly 1 in 10 American children. Parents with disabilities are the only distinct community of Americans who struggle, solely because of their status, to retain custody of their children. Removal rates of parents with psychiatric or intellectual disabilities are as high as 80%.            Parents with sensory or physical disabilities also encounter extremely high removal rates and loss of parental rights.  In 2012, the National Council on Disability, an independent federal agency that advises the President and Congress on disability policy, released “Rocking the Cradle: Ensuring the Rights of Parents with Disabilities and their Children”.  “Rocking the Cradle” is a comprehensive policy study, infused with real life stories of parents with disabilities, that examines the discrimination faced by the more than four million parents with disabilities in raising their families. This workshop will provide an in-depth understanding of the needs of these families and ways the child welfare system can work with them to ensure families are supported and children thrive.  The diverse and unique backgrounds of the presenters, including a former child welfare worker, a person with a disability, and an adult child of a parent with a psychiatric disability, provide the opportunity for meaningful dialogue between the child welfare and disability communities.

Presenters: Robyn M. Powell, National Council on Disability, Washington, DC; Katharine Kaplan,  Temple University Collaborative on Community Inclusion of Individuals with Psychiatric Disabilities, Philadelphia, PA; Traci LaLiberte, Center for Advanced Studies in Child Welfare, School of Social Work, University of Minnesota, St. Paul, MN; and Elizabeth Lightfoot, School of Social Work, University of Minnesota, St. Paul, MN