Parents with learning difficulties/disabilities
There is a very limited amount of research on the life experiences of parents who have learning difficulties and even less on the lives of their children. Researchers Tim Booth and Wendy Booth wrote “Growing up with parents who have learning difficulties” (2 ) using the “life story” approach in 1998 and were active in supporting parents with learning difficulties, but there has been very little else and virtually nothing about the educational experience of the children of parents with learning difficulties.
There is a similar lack of official data about such families. It is not possible to be certain of the number of adults with learning disabilities in England, either from information held centrally by government departments or from large-scale population based surveys. Emerson and Hatton were commissioned by the Department of Health in 2004 to derive “robust estimates of current and future numbers of people with learning disabilities in England.” (3)They estimated that 985,000 people in England have a learning disability (2% of the general population), but it is an estimate and I have seen other estimates ranging from 985,000 adults to 1.5 million. The Government produced “Disability Facts and Figures” in 2014 and gave a figure of 11 million, but this included all those with long-term illness, infirmity or disability. (4)
There are many reasons for this lack of statistical evidence: changes in the definition of “special needs” over time, the reluctance of people to identify themselves as having special needs, a lack of interest or motivation in collecting the information and so on. A consequence of the lack of general data around special needs means that information about those adults with special needs who are parents, is even harder to find.
My interest in this area started from a personal experience and became a professional one. Around ten years ago my daughter became friends with a girl at primary school and as we got to know her, I became aware that both her parents had special needs. As we all got to know each other better I became an informal advocate for her mother, helping her with reading letters, writing replies and reminding her of school-based things. This has grown into a much greater commitment, resulting in the establishment of “Parents need”, a support service for learning-disabled parents, their children and the professionals that support them.
The organisation Best Beginnings, “a charity working to give every child in the UK the best start in life” (5) gave the following statistics: around 7% of adults with learning difficulties are parents and around 40% of parents with learning difficulties do not live with their children. If we look at the two figures together, around 2% of the population have learning difficulties and 7% of those are parents. Of the children, around half are living with their parents and half will be in care, fostered or adopted. It is suggested that those living with parents are most likely to be living within an extended family where the parents are being supported by their own parents.