Danielle Turney & Beth Tarleton University of Bristol

1. ‘Talking across the divide’
Building multi-professional understanding for work
with parents with learning difficulties where there are
concerns about child neglect
Danielle Turney & Beth Tarleton
University of Bristol
9th
BASPCAN Congress
12th
-15th
April 2015, Edinburgh
1 July 2015
1

2. Outline
• Why is parenting by people with learning
difficulties an issue?
• Professional challenges in developing
positive practice
• Using ‘conversations with a purpose’:
exploring personal, professional and
parenting perspectives
• Supporting effective multi-professional
working

3. Parents with learning difficulties
• Increase in number of people with LDs
who are becoming parents
• 12.5% of care proceeding cases
involve parent with LD (Masson et al.,
2008)
• Concerns re neglect by omission
• Large number of professionals
involved

4. How things are now
Parents with LD
Children’s
Services
Adult
services
Social attitudes &
stereotypes of people with LDs
Policy/service context
Paramountcy
principle &
children’s needs
Paramountcy
principle &
children’s needs
Parents’ right to
parent
Parents’ right to
parent

5. Key issues for parents
• Stigma, social exclusion, stereotypes
and suspicion
• Professionals’ presumption of lack of
capacity
• Parents’ fear of engagement with C&F
social work
• Lack of formal & informal support
networks and accessible information

6. Practice issues
• Historically limited communication
between children’s and adults’ services &
sometimes antagonistic relationships
• Advocacy services may promote (adults’)
rights-based arguments rather than
discussing children’s needs.

7. Challenges for Children’s Services
• Paramountcy of child’s interests
• Eligibility criteria & threshold decisions
• Family support and/or child protection
• Short-termism vs long-term and/or
recurring support needs
• Lack of knowledge/training to work with
parents with LD

8. Challenges for Adult Services
• Strict eligibility criteria - moderate LD
• Another group to meet needs…..
• Lack of focus on parenting
• Perceived emphasis on ‘adults’ rights’
• Engagement where children removed
‘unnecessarily’  championing positive
practice

9. Parents’ access to support
Early intervention Family support Child protection
Desired
entry
point
Actual
entry
point
entry point

10. Where we need to get to …
Non-stigmatising views of parents with LDs
Support for vulnerable families as part of society

11. ‘Conversations with a purpose’
• ‘Conversations with a purpose’
• Using ourselves as a ‘test case’ to try
and reach understanding of different
perspectives
• Structured and purposive discussions
• Further on-going & informal discussion
between DT and BT

12. ‘Conversation with a purpose’ (2)
• Reflective and critically reflexive
• Drawing on personal, professional and
parenting experience/beliefs/values
• Development through dialogue of areas of
common understanding
• Understanding individual positions as
situated within broader professional
challenges and debates

13. Ground rules
• Being honest while managing own level of disclosure
(particularly in relation to own history)
• Respecting each other’s contributions
• Recognising that these conversations may be difficult
for us individually but committing to the process
• Using as a learning experience - potentially
transferable to external context
• Acknowledging that we won't all agree all the time
and recording/ accepting differences of opinion or
approach.
• We do not have to ‘toe the professional party line’
• ‘What’s said in the room stays in the room’

14. Questions we asked ourselves
• What assumptions – personal, professional,
societal – do we hold about what it means to
be a parent and the boundaries around this
role?
• How can structures and approaches to
service delivery be organised to meet
parents’ and children’s changing support
needs in a context of diminishing resource?

15. Talking across the divide
A number of factors necessary to support
discussion:
• Time
• Trust
• Truthfulness

16. Challenges
• A learning difficulty/disability is for life
so how long can/should a family be
supported?
• How much do you have to be able to
do yourself to be a parent?
• Current professional realities v ideal
world

17. Challenges of providing effective
services
• Mainstream and/or specialist?
• Building effective multi-agency and multi-
professional responses
• Timescale for professional involvement
• Emphasis on early intervention is positive but work may
need to be long-term or recurrent
• Response that meets changing developmental needs of
child AND changing support needs of parent(s)

18. Professional working ‘across the
divide’
Time
Trust
Truthfulness
Transparency
Tailored response

19. Examples of positive practice
• Wtpn.co.uk
• Healthy Start
• Birmingham hub
• Valuing People Support Service

20. Changing our thinking?
• Political commitment to addressing long-term and
‘returning’ support needs of parents with learning
disabilities
• Organisational structures and approaches to
service delivery to meet parents’ & children’s
changing needs
• Exploring underpinning assumptions about what is
means to (be a) parent, and who can/should take
on this role