Judicial Reliance on Parental IQ in Appellate‐Level Child Welfare Cases Involving Parents with Intellectual and Developmental Disabilities

Abstract

Parental IQ scores are routinely relied upon to judge parenting capacity in custody cases where parents have intellectual and developmental disabilities. The present authors recommend more comprehensive assessments examining a broader range of contextual variable that may impact on parenting abilities.

Child Maltreatment Investigations in Canada: Main and Moderating Effects of Primary Caregiver Cognitive Impairment

“…As Budd and Greenspan (1985) observed, “few generalizations can be made about the parenting abilities of mentally retarded (sic) women,” and therefore “each family deserves to be examined on an individual basis for specific child-rearing strengths and weaknesses” (p. 488). A diagnosis, or the results of cognitive testing cannot substitute for observation-based assessment of how parents, children, and families function together in their environments (Budd et al, 2001; Callow et al, 2017; Feldman & Aunos, 2010). CPS caseworkers are also encouraged to actively consider plausible alternative explanations for any perceived parental deficiencies so as to avoid the mistake of false attribution.…”

Recent Trends and Future Directions in Research Regarding Parents with Intellectual and Developmental Disabilities

“…This simplistic view argues that parents with IDD are inherently incapable of adequate parenting and would not benefit from parent education because of their low intelligence. The overshadowing of parental cognitive disability over other factors that may better predict parenting abilities, such as parent history of trauma [13•,14], parental mental health, and social support [15,16], has contributed to discriminatory child protection decision-making and legal outcomes regarding child custody when parents have IDD [17,18]. As can be seen in Fig.…”

“…Assessment Research The research on assessment practices involving parents with IDD suggests the system is fraught with bias and invalid methods [17,18]. The comprehensive, contextual parenting assessment approach [40] based on the contextual-interactional model is now recommended as best practice [41••], but more research is needed to evaluate the validity and impact of these assessments.…”

“…This topic could be embedded into social work curricula and CPS in-service training [70] so that workers become more comfortable interacting with these parents and are aware of evidence-based practices. Likewise, psychologists conducting parenting capacity assessments should be obliged to take workshops on adapting assessments for parents who have IDD, using a comprehensive, contextual approach [40] rather than the current emphasis on cognitive disability evaluations as a proxy for direct measures of parenting competence [18].…”

Parents and parenting with intellectual disabilities: An expanding field of research

“…One factor is the continuing (mis)use by child welfare authorities and the courts of formal intelligence testing, in lieu of valid parenting assessments (Feldman & Aunos, ). In this special issue, Sigurjónsdóttir and Rice (Iceland), and Callow, Tahir, and Feldman (USA) document findings from court record review studies. The converging evidence from these two studies suggests that child welfare authorities and the courts continue to make empirically invalid inferences about the parenting capacity of parents with intellectual disabilities (and risk of harm to their children) based on measures of intelligence.…”