From the moment Sara entered the ward that day, the Gordons felt that the hospital staff disapproved of them. Sara Gordon is not like most of the young women who give birth at this small-town hospital. She takes little care of her appearance, preferring large, baggy T-shirts with wiseacre slogans (“I’ve stopped listening. Why haven’t you stopped talking?”) over clothing that might flatter her more. Her speech is flat, her enunciation imprecise, and she has a hard time paying attention in groups because too much chatter whizzes past her brain. Sara has an intellectual disability, a condition that until 2013 was listed in the DSM as “mental retardation.” Her IQ is around 70. She can read, but it’s a chore and something she frankly prefers not to do.
A federal appeals court has given two Connecticut residents a chance to prove the state child protection agency trampled on their rights by removing two children at birth based on "perceptions and stereotypes" of the parents' mental health.
Mindi has never harmed her daughter and is capably raising a son, but authorities took her daughter under a concept sometimes called “predictive neglect.”
New federal guidelines aim to protect parents and prospective parents with disabilities from discrimination, the latest milestone in disability rights advocates’ fight to keep families together.
Despite all the rights Americans with disabilities have gained in the last 25 years, the right to parent remains elusive
The Obama administration is warning state and local officials not to discriminate against people with disabilities who have children or would like to.
We are concerned about comments made in the article “Screening, training part of foster system” (Page A1, Aug. 18). Matt Rocheleau lists factors that the state considers when evaluating someone’s fitness to be a foster parent.
Laws designed to protect people with disabilities are failing to maintain the rights of disabled parents to take care of their children
A report from the National Council on Disability finds that parents with physical or mental disabilities have a greater risk of losing custody of their children. The study says that the U.S. legal system needs to provide more support for these parents.
A mother with ‘mild intellectual disability’ had her two-day-old baby taken away and placed in foster care. Now the federal government says the move was illegal and discriminatory.
People and policies must continue to topple barriers of discrimination against the disabled.
School district must provide interpreter for deaf parents, students
When Sarah Kovac watches her son, Ethan, crawl or grab objects, she feels proud, but also has mixed emotions. Already, the 8-month-old has abilities Kovac never had.
A Massachusetts mom with a "mild intellectual disability" won a two-year historic legal battle Monday and was reunited with the baby who was taken from her at 2 days old and placed in foster care.
A little over two years ago now, state child welfare officials took an infant girl and placed her in foster care, saying the mother’s developmental disabilities made her an unfit parent. As first reported by the Associated Press, federal officials are now telling Massachusetts this mother has the right to prove she can care for her daughter — and the state has a duty to help her try.
BOSTON (AP) — She was 19, a brand-new mother with a developmental disability. Two days after giving birth to her daughter, the state took the infant away and placed her in foster care.
The last time Doris Freyre saw her 14-year-old daughter, Marie, alive was around 1 p.m. on April 26. She watched helplessly as the disabled girl was strapped to a stretcher and sent by ambulance to a nursing home in Miami -- five hours away from their home in Tampa, Fla.
BBC video segment
Most expectant mothers get their first glimpse of their baby during the ultrasound. However, if you're a mom-to-be who can't see, the ultrasound experience might be a less profound experience.
My Dear Son,
You aren’t born yet, but you will be here any day now. Your dad and I are thrilled at the prospect of your arrival because, honestly, it still seems surreal. When I was a young girl, the doctors told me I would never have kids because of my cerebral palsy.
Millions of Americans with disabilities have gained innumerable rights and opportunities since Congress passed landmark legislation on their behalf in 1990. And yet advocates say barriers and bias still abound when it comes to one basic human right: To be a parent.
"She's the reason I am successful in anything," Ms. McGrath said.
I will carry the pain of rejection for my kids, like my own mom did for me. And I will teach them strength, and love, and one day when we’re all older, maybe we will laugh, too.
By requiring parents to tap into their Social Security benefits, Republicans would put the well-being of disabled parents—especially women and those of color—in jeopardy.
Jean Searle never forgot the newborn who was taken from her in 1981 when she was a 19-year-old resident of an Allied Services Facility for youths...
This not only affects our sisters, brothers, and non-gender conforming friends who are both LGBTQ and disabled, but could also allow for adoption agencies to discriminate against prospective parents with disabilities more broadly.
Stromondo explains that "the biggest difficulty of being a little person isn't our bodies, but it's other people's response to them."
If having a physical disability has infringed on my right and ability to be a parent to him, I fear that other disabled people may lose their right to be a parent too, to get the care they need while being with the families they love.
As parents, how we frame these conversations can have a lasting impact on how our children perceive disability and how they interact with other people with disabilities. In talking to fellow parents in chairs, I learned they had similar advice when it came to discussing disability with their children.
“Being a parent is a wonderful thing. It’s arguably one of the most rewarding, unpredictable, exciting, meaningful and challenging jobs of a person’s lifetime,” says Kristina Rhoades who is a long time wheelchair user with a spinal cord injury. She gives the following six tips for parenting as a wheelchair user.
"Talking about parenting is the last taboo around disabled people," says Laurence Clarke.
Three comedians - Chris McCausland, Steve Day and Laurence Clark - take over the BBC Ouch podcast to talk about their parenting skills, wins and fails as disabled dads.
“My biggest fear as a blind parent is that my kids will go to school with a bruise and someone will assume it’s from neglect,” says Terri Rupp, a legally blind parent of two.
Her fears are justified.
In the eyes of my child, my disability was little more than a notable, if ultimately uninteresting fact among many. Which is just how I long to be seen.
A look at the research of the Accessible Care Pregnancy Clinic at Sunnybrook
"People need to be cared for like human beings, at home ….they should not be warehoused away in facilities."