Health Visitors supporting parents who have a learning disability

[GinaB123]

Hello eveyone

I am a studnet Health Visitor, I am completeing a project on how Health Visitors can support parents who have a learning disability. I would love to hear your views and experiences of this.

The project is going to be looking at parenting capacity, we use a stadadised model of assessment for all parents. All parents are assessed the same, we look at these areas:

Basic Care

Ensuring Safety

Emotional Warmth

Stimulation

Guidance and Boundaries

Stability

We do the assessments to see if anyone needs extra support and to make sure all children are well cared for.

I would love to hear you thoughts on this. What experiences you have had with being supported to be a parent. What you would like your Health Visitor to do for you. Anything you share with me would be great! I might use your comment in my work but just your words, I will not show your username or the name of the forum. Thanks for reading!

Take care and best wishes

Gina

[petejmarshall]

Good afternoon GinaB123

Firstly I wish you every success in your chosen profession it is a worth while Job. I personally don't have learning difficulties but I have a 20 year old son who does. I know he's not a parent but I can tell you what a parent might feel if they have learning disabilities or issues. It's hard enough for parents who don't have learning disabilities or issues to get the help for people who have learning difficulties. So I am sure that it must be really hard for them to get the help that they need to care for there loved ones. There are a quite a few families on here who have children who have learning difficulties and they have there own children and because of them not being able to get the help that they need social services are going into their homes and removing them children of the parents who have learning difficulties but there own children don't just because of the parent has learning difficulties and can't express themselves to what the help that the parent needs. Most social workers can't do matakon sign language which if they did there wouldn't be so many learning difficulties parents heart broken because they have had there Children removed for no reason which is discrimination against the parent who has learning ddifficulties. I honestly think that if Health visitor's were there to help parents who have learning difficulties to act as a go between if you can call it that it would help them to get the right decision made for them instead of a jumped up person who hasn't a clue what they are doing to the parents who have learning difficulties. I have seen it a lot when I have worked in Nursing and care work but a blind eye is usually used for what is happening and I personally think that it is very important that the learning difficulties parents need someone else to help them to be understood. It's usually put down to lack of resources that these things happen. You will no doubt will see things during your professional career that you don't agree with the parents need people who will say hold on a minute that's not right and do something about it because until someone else does this thing will carry on and it shouldn't. Anyway I wish you every success in your chosen profession. Take care and stay safe always Peter