'Parental Intellectual Disability and Child Protection' (Issues Paper 31, Australian Institute of Family Studies) by Alister Lamont & Leah Bromfield considers parental intellectual disability and the common risk factors associated with child abuse and neglect in order to understand if and why parents with intellectual disability are at heightened risk of abusing or neglecting their children.
The authors note that parents with intellectual disabilities (aka "mental retardation", "developmental disabilities", "learning disabilities" and "learning difficulties") represent 1-2% of all parents in Australia. However, they are over-represented in child protection and legal proceedings, with parental intellectual disability a characteristic in 12.5% of cases reviewed by the Victorian Child Death Review Committee in 2007-08 and Victorian child protection cases in which a parent had an intellectual disability being "almost twice as likely to be substantiated, and more than three times more likely to be re-substantiated than cases where parents did not have an intellectual disability". A 2000 review of 285 court files in two children's courts in New South Wales found that 8.8% of cases featured a parent with an intellectual disability. That over-representation is evident in other jurisdictions, with a UK study in 2000 for example finding that 15.1% of child protection cases before two English family courts featured a parent with learning difficulties.
Research suggests factors contributing to over-representation of parents with intellectual disability in child protection include discrimination, prejudice and a lack of support services.
The Lamont & Bromfield paper discusses key issues associated with parental intellectual disability and child protection, including definitions of intellectual disability; whether there is a link between parental competence and intellectual disability; risk factors for abuse and neglect (and whether or not parents with an intellectual disability experience higher rates of these problems); and the role of support services in assisting parents with intellectual disability.
