Disability and Child Protection

Parents with intellectual and learning disabilities, and disabled children, are among populations that encounter inequalities across child protection systems. Indeed broadly, the convergent space between disability and child protection is one characterized by multiple concerns alluded to in existing literature. Disabled children experience much higher rates of maltreatment than their majority population peers. There are also documented barriers to executing successful safeguarding work with these children. Such impediments include barriers to gathering credible disclosures from disabled children for court in the context of a considerable burden of proof. Attitudinal and social justice impediments are also exemplary, with reference to ensuring thresholds for service provision are applied fairly to disabled children. Meanwhile, parents with intellectual and learning disabilities find themselves at increased risk of child protection and welfare investigation. Finally, professional competency concerns proliferate, such as social workers at the grass-roots child protection practice level, reporting low confidence in understanding and working with disability. Due to issues such as these, child protection can present complex challenges in a disability context. The aim of this chapter is to straddle key strands of this subject matter, through providing an introductory overview of the topic of disability and child protection.