Social Work with Parents with Disabilities: Historical Interactions and Contemporary Innovations

This article provides an overview of the complicated history of social work practice with parents with disabilities, and then presents contemporary social work practice innovations in this area. First, the article describes several widespread international historical practices of which social workers participated that had harmful effects on parents with disabilities – forced sterilization or forced birth control of adults with disabilities and removal of children from the family based on parental disability. While these activities are less prevalent today, a lingering impact of these practices is that there are few supports or services available for parents with disabilities, and nearly no models for social work practice with this population. The article then presents several contemporary innovations in social work practice for working with parents with disabilities that draw on social work mandates of protecting the rights and safety of parents with disabilities and their family, and promotes their inclusion and well-being. In particular, this article presents the concept of parental supports from a social work perspective that draws on both disability and social work theory. It ends with highlighting an innovative intervention for working with parents with disabilities that social workers can incorporate into their practice that draws on these conceptual developments.


Keywords: disabled, parenting, intervention, social work practice