Human Rights

Rocking the Cradle: Ensuring the Rights of Parents with Disabilities and Their Children

The National Council on Disability (NCD) in the U.S., undertook this ground-breaking study to advance understanding and promote the rights of parents with disabilities and their children. The report, published in late September 2012, provides a comprehensive review of the barriers and facilitators people with diverse disabilities—including intellectual and developmental, psychiatric, sensory, and physical disabilities—experience when exercising their fundamental right to create and maintain families, as well as persistent, systemic, and pervasive discrimination against parents with disabilities. The report analyses how U.S. disability law and policy apply to parents with disabilities in the child welfare and family law systems, and the disparate treatment of parents with disabilities and their children. Examination of the impediments prospective parents with disabilities encounter when accessing assisted reproductive technologies or adopting provides further examples of the need for comprehensive protection of these rights. This report recommends actions that should be taken immediately to ensure the rights of parents with disabilities and their children. Whether action is taken at the state or federal level, as an amendment or a new law, the need for action could not be more timely or clear.

The Report can be downloaded in PDF and Word at: http://www.ncd.gov/publications/2012/Sep272012/

By: The National Council on Disability (NCD) in the U.S.,
When: 7/2/2014

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