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.
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.
I did not say that they do not happen, I said that it is not a blanket experience of all autistic parents, hence why I feel that it is fear mongering.
It is a good idea for anyone in the social care system to seek independent advice, whether from legal professionals or an advocacy service so their voice can be heard.
Social workers don't work in isolation, they work with other types of professionals and they alone don't make the decision to remove children. There are so many factors that come into deciding to remove a child and they have to jump through so many hoops.
I'm not going to keep posting in this thread because I'm not here to change the mines of people who are unhappy with their experience, I just want other autistic people to know that being an autistic parent doesn't automatically make people concerned about your children's wellbeing.
it is a statutory obligation that Sw work with wider agencies when situations outside of their expertise arise not many sw do this due to that I know it all attitude if this was the case and peoples perceptions due to limited lived experiences and unwillingness or incapability to recognise a asd needs would be a blatant form of abuse and then to manipulate this due to their lack of qualifications is what's puts questions around the profession on a whole
again manipulative but have not answered are Sw allowed to comment outside of their areas of expertise about secondary care issues that only a specialist can comment on due to their qualifications. its not about changing minds its about stating facts not opinions unless willing to have those opinions changed with knowledge but can see your unwilling to gain any knowledge or debate your opinion as a Swe probably will say argumentative again lack of conflict management skills this is where a Sw would put don't understand my concerns failing to engage cuz unwilling to accept responsibility for her lack of knowledge training or discriminate opinions reason why there is still racism and such going on easy to see