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.

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

Introduction Part I Care relations in policy context 1. Disability and care: Theoretical antagonisms revisited 2. Mothering, disability and care: Beyond the prison wall 3. Children care 4. Ageing, disability and family life Part II Disabled children: Interacting with institutional and legal settings 5. Children's understanding of disabilities 6. Deprivation of liberty, parental consent and the rights of the child 7. Transforming family responsibilities: Children with disabilities, parental responsibility and family life Part III Adults and family relationships 8. The exam it is impossible to pass: How disabled parents are at risk of having to prove the impossible in care proceedings 9. "He got down on one knee": Intellectual disability, intimacy and family law' 10. Protecting disabled adults from abusive family relationships: Mental capacity, autonomy and vulnerability 11. Law and dementia: Family context and the experience of dementia in old age