Disability, Care and Family Law

This book explores the series of issues that emerge at the intersection of disability, care and family law. Disability studies is an area of increasing academic interest. In addition to a subject in its own right, there has been growing concern to ensure that mainstream subjects diversify and include marginalised voices, including those of disabled people. Family law in modern times is often based on an "able-bodied autonomous norm" but can fit less well with the complexities of living with disability. In response, this book addresses a range of important and highly topical issues: whether care proceedings are used too often in cases where parents have disabilities; how the law should respond to children who care for disabled parents –and the care of older family members with disabilities. It also considers the challenges posed by the UN Convention on the Rights of Persons with Disabilities, particularly around the different institutional and state responsibilities captured in the Convention, and around decision-making for both disabled adults and children. This interdisciplinary collection – with contributors from law, criminology, sociology and social policy as well as from policy and activist backgrounds – will appeal to academic family lawyers and disability scholars as well as students interested in issues around family law, disability and care.

Introduction Part I Care relations in policy context 1. Disability and care: Theoretical antagonisms revisited Beverley Clough 2. Mothering, disability and care: Beyond the prison wall Chrissie Rogers 3. Children care Jonathan Herring 4. Ageing, disability and family life Kirstein Rummery Part II Disabled children: Interacting with institutional and legal settings 5. Children’s understanding of disabilities Siân E. Jones 6. Deprivation of liberty, parental consent and the rights of the child Camilla Parker 7. Transforming family responsibilities: Children with disabilities, parental responsibility and family life Jo Bridgeman Part III Adults and family relationships 8. The examit isimpossible to pass: How disabled parents are at risk of having to prove the impossible in care proceedings Mark Higgins 9. "He got down on one knee": Intellectual disability, intimacy and family law’ Rosie Harding 10. Protecting disabled adults from abusive family relationships: Mental capacity, autonomy and vulnerability Jaime Lindsey 11. Law and dementia: Family context and the experience of dementia in old age Margaret Isabel Hall

Beverley Clough is Associate Professor in Lawand Social Justice at the University of Leeds. Jonathan Herring is Professor of Law at the University of Oxford.