Professor Eilion?ir Flynn:

The lack of linkages between maternity services and disability services was a very clear finding of our research. We have one very clear example, which we included in our opening statement, of a woman with a physical disability living in a residential service who is a single parent. When she became pregnant and disclosed this to the service she discovered it would not be possible for her to remain living there once the child was born. A litany of problems occurred between the housing side, the disability support side and the parenting support side and made things very difficult for her. She was required to go on the homeless housing list once her child was born. As a result of having to go on the homeless housing list, she had to put her child into voluntary foster care shortly after she was born. Then she had to enter a mother and baby residential placement and undergo a parental capacity assessment. This was done solely for the purpose of guaranteeing her access to housing. She then moved to a family hub before she got suitable accommodation from the local authority, where she is still living today.

Imagine going through all of these hoops simply to find a place to live with your child as a disabled person. None of the systems intersect or speak to each other. The disability support services were trying to support her to get access to the housing list. Even though each organisation or system was doing what it could within its remit, there was no joined-up thinking in how they were able to address the situation. She had to become homeless and go through all of these intensive processes of having her parenting questioned before she was eventually provided with the only thing she actually really needed, which was housing to be sorted.

As Nem alluded to earlier, this indicates the extent to which disabled parents are afraid to ask for the support they may need due to the risk of having children removed from their care. That is clearly a significant issue.

Article 23 can definitely have a more prominent role in the next iteration of the national disability inclusion strategy. I look forward to seeing it and assessing to what extent these things have now been addressed. This will be a key area on which Ireland will be questioned by the UN Committee on the Rights of Persons with Disabilities. Trying to address the issues in the maternity strategy and in Tusla's strategic approach will be key. For example, the child protection and welfare practice handbook from 2018 maintains that parental mental health and parental disability diagnoses are key risk factors. These things are not necessarily key risk factors. If people receive the support they need in their parenting goal, why do we describe these factors as inevitably being a risk that needs to be assessed? We can certainly have more joined-up thinking in service delivery, but it might need to start with strategies. If we can start to develop a more disability-inclusive approach in our maternity strategy, parenting strategies and child protection and support work, we will have a better chance of ensuring disabled parents' rights are respected throughout the process.