Upholding parents' rights

Ella Callow JD is the Managing Attorney for the Legal Program and Custody Advisor for the National Resource Center for Parents with Disabilities at Through the Looking Glass, Berkeley, California, USA. Here she describes how she assists parents, advocates and professionals in the legal and social service systems when they are involved in custody litigation involving the child of a parent with a disability.

As a family law attorney on the staff of the National Resource Center for Parents with Disabilities at Through the Looking Glass, my job is to try and make the legal world accessible to parents with disabilities and prevent the unnecessary removal of their children to the state’s custody or the custody of the non-disabled parent.

Inexcusable traumatisation

I believe that removal of a child from a safe and loving home, on the basis of a parent’s disability, is an inexcusable traumatisation of children and a violation of parents’ rights. What I have found is that whether the caller’s disability is physical, sensory, mental or cognitive, unnecessary removal occurs too often.

Although we are not a legal services office, I am able to provide an array of services to parents and professionals that can make this outcome less likely.

Four primary services

I provide four primary services for parents with disabilities.

First, I help parents translate legalese into plain English, so they can grasp what is going on in their case.

Second, I endeavour to find parents local legal representation, protection and advocacy services, experts and courthouse-centred resources.

Third, I often refer clients to our continually updated collection of legal precedents, law review articles and annotations concerning parents with disabilities. It is an invaluable resource whether parents end up with counsel or if they represent themselves.

Fourth, I encourage parents to utilise the experts at Through the Looking Glass in two ways:

• If parents are to be subject to evaluations or investigations, they can ask for our experts to evaluate the evaluations.
• If parents could benefit from an occupational therapist assessing their parenting, our occupational therapists can sometimes conduct the assessments and are always willing to confer with the occupational therapists who conduct the assessments.

Isolation and hostility

For many parents with disabilities, the sense of isolation and hostility in the legal process causes them to feel helpless. So sometimes my job is just listening and empathising. In addition,

I will often know of another parent in a similar situation and can recommend parents to contact each other through our Parent-to-Parent Network.

I welcome all calls and enquiries relating to legal issues of parents with disabilities and their children. It is important that parents, advocates and officers of the courts have access to information related to parents with disabilities. It increases the odds that litigants and courts will become educated on this issue, court decisions affecting children will be better informed, and families that include a parent with a disability will remain intact whenever possible.

New resources

Several new Through the Looking Glass guides are now available: they cost US$35 each.

The child protective services/dependency court experience: a guide for parents with disabilities and their advocates

The family court experience: a guide for parents with disabilities and their advocates

These guides help parents with disabilities to understand the typical and atypical challenges they will face in the family and dependency court systems. Based on the experience of Through the Looking Glass and the National Resource Center for Parents with Disabilities, the guides outline the laws, actors, stages and preparations that parents with disabilities will need to understand to maximise their chances of keeping their family intact or maximising contact with their children.

To order these publications, as well as our newly updated Summaries of legal precedents and law review articles concerning parents with disabilities (US$25), please visit our website at www.lookingglass.org or give us a call on (510) 848 1112.

Legal issues: some resources for parents in the UK

The DPPI publication Legal advice and family support agencies is a useful guide containing information for disabled parents who need support about legal issues. The guide includes the following:

• details of various organisations which may be helpful to disabled parents seeking legal advice or support, such as those providing general legal advice to disabled people
• information about solicitors and how to get the best out of their services
• organisations providing legal advice on children and family issues
• organisations providing information and support on lone parenting, adoption, education and other parenting issues.

This guide is free to disabled parents, or is available for £3.50 to professionals. To obtain a copy contact DPPI on 0800 018 4730 or info@dppi.org.uk For full contact details please see back cover of this journal.

Disabled Parents Network (DPN) also produces information for disabled parents on legal issues. Its set of information briefings for disabled parents includes the titles What the law says and Advocacy, advice and legal help. These are available to order via the DPN website at www.disabledparentsnetwork.org.uk, or by calling 0870 241 0450.

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