Published on 12, July, 2020
Hi,
I am an autistic adult who is a parent. Since having my daughter I went through a terrible time with social services who set me up to fail and removed my daughter from me because I have a diagnosis of autism. It took me two years to fight for my daughter back and through this time social services and Cafcass used the so called deficits of my autism to justify the removal and to stop the return of my daughter. Thankfully the judge saw through this and returned my daughter concluding in her judgment that I parent my daughter to a high standard.
I want to know how many my adults will autism who are parents have been through a similar situation. How many parents with ASD and other disabilities and or impairments are being targeted by social services and having their children removed? If you have experienced this please tell your story because the current system is outrageously discriminative against parents who have a disability and or impairment and I would like to raise awareness of the current failures within the current child protection system which is targeting parents with disabilities and or impairments so that change can happen.
There is a lot of fear mongering in this thread. Many of us are autistic parents with absolutely no involvement with social services. I'm even a qualified social worker but not working in children's services, and my autism is declared to the regulator.
Autism isn't a reason in itself to remove children from their parents, behaviour/actions are. I'm sure there are cases where processes haven't been followed properly BUT the social workers don't get involved for no reason in the first place. They don't just appear one day because they've found out that you are autistic.
Dear M,
I would like to challenge your comment relating to your claims about 'fear mongering in this thread'. Fear mongering is not a fair comment for this thread in particularly when parents are sharing their own lived experiences of the discrimination they have received from Local Authorities. Like I have raised many times this is a real issue, you might have not personally experienced it but that doesn't mean it does not happen. A lot of parents are too frightened to speak out, not only that Family Court puts all cases under gagging orders to prevent case's being spoken about, this law was originally made to protect the child however the problem is if the case was unlawful society doesn't hear about it unless the judge decides to wavier the gagging order, which is unusual. Hence why the general public aren't aware that this is a problem. The most important thing is for this to be a place where autistic parents who have had similar experiences to be able to share them without fear that they won't be believed. The more people who come forward the better.
I research this area, I train professionals about how to work with autistic parents, I work with many other professionals including independent social workers who have seen case after case of autistic parents having their human rights violated.
I am working with a group of people trying to raise awareness and make MPs aware that this is happening. It takes time, but watch this space, it will come out eventually.
I am sorry but unless you have experienced having your human rights violated by social services then you will not understand. Some local authorities are better than others, that said there are many autistic parents falling victim of unlawful removal of their children. I work with a team of independent professionals dealing with these cases. It's not public knowledge because the family courts are secretive. There's a catalogue of research which sheds more light on the extent autistic parents are having their human rights violated by social services.
Just because you have not experienced it doesn't mean it isn't happening nor does it mean people are fear mongering. I would like to say many of the cases I work on the parents involved simply asked social services for help and support and unfortunately this was not what was given. Social workers involved use the deficit model of autism to ensure children are removed, they also don't meet the needs of the autistic parents which essentially is setting them up to fail.
Autistic people haven't been treated as they should and this is slowly becoming exposed for example Winterbourne scandal and the school scandal etc. These things do happen and they need to be exposed.
my first question would be should a SW who has no secondary care qualifications or professional experience be making any judgements that are based of stereotypes and stigmas and outside of their areas of expertise.
Do professionals upheld vulnerable adults rights. as mine were not I had SW and contact staff force me to wear a face visor at a contact centre then because of their lack of training and only NT awareness do not know how to deal with distressed behaviour to which they make out ASD individuals like my self are nt engaging or understand professional who win reality its the professionals failing to accept responsibility for their behaviour lack of conduct not raising unjust policies, not empowering service users these are statutory obligations to which SW are held to they appeared cuz as an autistic black individual I am classed as aggressive when I am articulating myself with facts not opinion as I have 35 qualifications professionals only qualified find it hard to debate with me only qualified in the limited areas telling me about my behaviour when I am conflict management and negotiation changed to which I then comment on ego, personality clash task interpendence these things Sw and professionals don't even know of due to lack of training so in your perception it is scaremongering but reality is Its fail to accept and draw attention to impacts on different ASD people.
What support is put in place for different ASD individuals
what training is done so Sw know the difference between a ,meltdown and a tantrum
what extra training are LA doing with the autistic society to stop this discrimination, torture and coercive power of organisations go unaddressed