A Fragmented System: Understanding Child Protection Decisions for Canadian Parents with Intellectual Disabilities

Abstract

Parents with intellectual disabilities are disproportionately represented in child protection investigations in Canada and around the world. In some cases, children are removed from mothers with intellectual disabilities soon after birth. Research has shown that parents’ intellectual disability status often plays a role in child protection decisions. However, there is limited research on what specific conditions or factors impact the final decision to remove child custody or reunify a family headed by parents with intellectual disabilities. In an effort to comprehensively examine the conditions that influence child protection decisions involving Canadian parents with intellectual disabilities, this dissertation undertook three qualitative studies: 1) content analysis of published court cases in Ontario; 2) semi-structured interviews with child protection workers from local agencies in Ontario; and 3) semi-structured interviews with parents with intellectual disabilities in Ontario and Manitoba. The first study examined how child protection decisions were made at family court and how the COVID-19 pandemic impacted child protection decision-making for parents with intellectual disabilities in 10 published Ontario court cases. The findings of this study contributed to the extant literature showing judicial reliance on parents’ intellectual disability to permanently remove child custody. Furthermore, this study highlighted cognitive accessibility challenges and inconsistent use of “evidence-based” practices in the child protection system. The second study captured the perspectives of 11 child protection workers supporting parents with intellectual disabilities in Ontario through semi-structured interviews. The findings of this study revealed the immense need for disability-specific trainings for child protection workers and the need for collaboration across developmental service agencies and child protection agencies. This study also had a promising finding regarding child protection workers not relying solely on parents’ intellectual disability status in their decision-making and taking intersecting factors into consideration. The third study used an inclusive research design and included 13 parents with intellectual disabilities in Ontario and Manitoba. Their perspectives were analyzed in collaboration with a co-researcher with lived experience. The findings of this study showed the importance of informal social supports and the need for continuity of formal social supports. Some parents named the child protection agency itself as an instrumental support and reported having positive relationships with their workers, in contrast with some previous research. The overall findings of the three studies are discussed using the Inequities Contextual Framework by Powell et al. (2024) to demonstrate that barriers at the contextual and institutional levels heavily influence outcomes for families headed by parents with intellectual disabilities. The implications for service system changes are also discussed.