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.
My partner went through exactly the same thing, it took six months to get their baby back. The child is still under the parental responsibility of the grandparents, that’s the only way the courts would allow the child be returned. We now want a child of our own but we aren’t sure if that baby will then be taken into care like the first was. All because the parent has autism, yet is a fantastic parent and has not put a foot wrong. Discrimination is exactly what it is, and ignorance of what autism is.