Strategies for Supporting Parents with Disabilities when there is Child Protection Involvement
Date: Thursday, January 30, 2025 | Panelists: Drs. Liz Lightfoot & Kara Ayers
An overview of ableism and discrimination within child protection and strategies for addressing these injustices. Presenters are Dr. Elizabeth Lightfoot, Distinguished Professor of Social Policy and Director of the Arizona State University School of Social Work, and Dr. Kara Ayers, Associate Professor at Cincinnati Children's Hospital.
Living with Anxiety as a Disabled Parent
Date: Wednesday, October 23, 2024 | Panelists: Judith Brown & Jenny Senda
This webinar recording discusses the anxiety of new parenthood from the viewpoint of two disabled mothers. Both generalized anxiety disorder among disabled parents as well as the day-to-day anxieties of parenting with a disability when parents often experience stigma and ableism at both a structural and personal level are discussed.
'I challenge them a bit': Encounters between parents with disabilities and the medical institution
Date: Wednesday, March 6, 2024 | Panelists: Florencia Herrera and Andrea Rojas
In this lecture, Florencia Herrera and Andrea Rojas explored how barriers, particularly those of an attitudinal nature, are reflected in concrete encounters between parents with disabilities and medical personnel and hamper care for their children or during pregnancy.
People with disabilities face particular additional barriers of access to health care. Drs. Herrera and Rojas explored how these barriers increase when parents with disabilities require medical attention for their children. Using the small story research technique, they analyzed 38 interviews with disabled parents conducted as part of a qualitative-narrative study in Chile. They identified stories in which the participants describe encounters with the medical institution in which they are invisibilized and disempowered. A medical model of disability, which actively ignores how to interact with people with disabilities, prevails among health personnel. Parents with disabilities irritate the medical institution because they do not have ‘standard’ bodies and are in the position of the carers of others (their children), rather than that of people who require care. These parents develop strategies to resist the way they are treated, making extra efforts to obtain medical attention for their children.
The Role of the HHS Office for Civil Rights in Advancing Rights for Disabled Parents
National Research Center for Parents with Disabilities hosted a webinar on how the Office for Civil Rights in the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) can apply safeguards in child welfare cases and protect the rights of disabled parents.
Panelists: Carla Carter of the HHS Office for Civil Rights and Robyn Powell of the NRCPD
Access the recording of The Role of the OCR in Advancing Disabled Parents' Rights
Strategies to Support Parents with Psychiatric Disabilities with Child Welfare Involvement: Perspectives from Staff Providing Legal Services
This webinar explored the experiences of parents with psychiatric disabilities with child welfare involvement, including barriers and facilitators to positive outcomes. Researchers from the Lurie Institute for Disability Policy provided background information about the disproportionate representation of parents with psychiatric disabilities within the child welfare system, and issues that these parents frequently confront. Through a conversation with staff providing legal services to parents, we identified how legal staff and other service providers can meaningfully support parents.
Panelists: Robyn Powell, Ron Ayler, and Alex Dutton
Moderator: Miriam Heyman
Multiplying the Challenge: Parenting as a Disabled Immigrant
Parents with disabilities are a diverse group. In this webinar, our panelists are disabled immigrants and will talk about how citizenship and immigration statuses affect their lives when they take on parental roles, a topic that is less discussed and heard in public spaces.
Panelists:
Jennifer Senda
Angelica Garcia
Facilitator:
Luanjiao Aggie Hu
Reproductive Health and Perinatal Care Needs of People with Intellectual Disabilities
Many clinicians have little experience caring for people with intellectual disabilities (ID), particularly in addressing their needs regarding reproductive health and pregnancy. In this webinar, Drs. Susan Ernst and Melanie Ornstein described the reproductive health and perinatal care needs of people with ID. They discussed how to approach issues such as communication, preconception counseling, and specific considerations for pregnancy, labor and delivery and postpartum care.
Disabled Parenting within Multigenerational Families
January 31, 2023 at 12 p.m. EST
Multigenerational households are defined as three generations or more, living together. Common throughout time, and across different cultures, the number of multigenerational family households in the US has been on the rise since the COVID-19 pandemic. Due to service gaps in home and community-based services and other factors, many adults with disabilities, including those who are parents, may continue to live with their families of origin.
This webinar explored the experiences of disabled parents living within multigenerational households. Our two parent panelists, Judith Brown and Jennifer Senda, shared the successes and challenges they have experienced while living in multigenerational households with their children. The policy implications of this type of living arrangement were also discussed.
Disabled Parents in the NICU
June 7, 2022 at noon EDT
What can happen when a parent with a disability faces a lengthy stay in the neonatal intensive care unit (NICU) with their baby? This webinar featured two disabled parent panelists (Kristie Lewis and Patrick Cokley) whose babies were born prematurely and were admitted to the NICU. The panelists shared their stories about the challenges and successes they encountered during that time when navigating an environment that is not at all built with disability in mind. Our parent panelists also explored the role that implicit bias and ableism may have had in interactions with their babies' care team, and in parenting their babies in the NICU. Our faculty speaker, Dr. Paige Church of Sunnybrook Hospital in Toronto, Ontario, spoke about the ingrained nature of implicit bias within the NICU, how this can adversely affect families, and how we can better care for families headed by disabled parents during this most vulnerable time.
Black, Disabled, Deaf, & Proud
Date: March 30, 2022
Featuring: Heather Watkins, Morénike Giwa-Onaiwu, and Earl Allen
Facilitator: Linda Long-Bellil
