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Robyn Powell, Parents and Children with Disabilities, in Child Welfare Law and Practice: Representing Children, Parents, and State Agencies in Abuse, Neglect, and Dependency Cases (Josh Gupta-Kagan et al. eds., 4th ed., NACC, 2022)Clicking on the button will copy the full recommended citation.
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Robyn Powell, Justice for Parents with Disabilities and Their Children (2021)Clicking on the button will copy the full recommended citation.
The child welfare system disproportionately harms families headed by parents with disabilities. The only way to achieve justice for these families is to abolish the child welfare system and reimagine methods of providing non-punitive supports and resources. Such efforts must recognize and respond to the needs of parents with disabilities and their children, such as by ensuring economic well-being, investing in accessible supports, ending surveillance of families, and providing high-quality legal representation for those entangled in the system. Most importantly, all legal and policy responses must be led by those most impacted by the current child welfare system, including parents with disabilities. The goal must be to create a world in which the child welfare system is no longer deemed necessary.
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Robyn Powell, From Carrie Buck to Britney Spears: Strategies for Disrupting the Ongoing Reproductive Oppression of Disabled People (2021)Clicking on the button will copy the full recommended citation.
In June 2021, Britney Spears made news headlines when she testified to a judge that she was being prevented from having children because her conservator would not allow her to stop using contraception. Britney Spears’ dreadful experiences are a glaring reminder that nearly 100 years after the infamous Buck v. Bell decision, reproduction is still weaponized to subjugate people with disabilities. Indeed, the reproductive oppression experienced by Britney Spears and other people with actual or perceived disabilities is deeply entrenched in our laws, in our policies, and in our collective conscience. Confronting these persistent inequities will require us to radically transform our laws and policies. This Essay responds to the ongoing reproductive injustice experienced by disabled people by proposing a vision to assist activists, legal professionals, scholars, and policymakers conceive of and articulate the basic contours of a paradigm shift that supports the coalescence of the reproductive justice and disability justice movements. The guiding principles set forth herein are intended to advance a long-overdue conversation about reproductive justice for people with disabilities by providing a starting point for activists, scholars, legal professionals, and policymakers to use, critique, and improve upon. The need for action could not be more timely or clear.
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Robyn Powell and Sasha Albert, Supporting Disabled Parents and Their Families: Perspectives and Recommendations from Parents, Attorneys, and Child Welfare Professionals, 15 Journal of Public Child Welfare 529 (2021)Clicking on the button will copy the full recommended citation.
While it is well-established that parents with disabilities and their families are over-represented in the child welfare system, no known research has described the parents,’ child welfare professionals,’ and attorneys’ perspectives on the system’s capacity to support them or their recommendations for improvement. This qualitative phenomenological study involved semi-structured interviews with 15 disabled parents, 15 child welfare professionals, and 15 parent attorneys. Respondents agreed that the child welfare system lacks expertise on disability and adequate services for disabled parents, and holds negative attitudes about them. Respondents recommended robust training for professionals on parents with disabilities, and individually-tailored services for disabled parents.
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Sasha M. Albert et al., Passing State Legislation to Protect the Rights of Parents with Disabilities: Lessons from Interviews with Advocates, Attorneys, and Legislators, 33 Journal of Disability Policy Studies 15 (2021)Clicking on the button will copy the full recommended citation.
Parents with disabilities experience discrimination within the child welfare, family law, and adoption and foster care systems. In response, there have been increasing calls for states to pass legislation prohibiting discrimination against parents with disabilities, and as of 2020, 28 states have passed or are considering such legislation. This qualitative study explored the perspectives of 19 advocates, attorneys, and legislators on barriers and solutions for passing legislation to protect the rights of parents with disabilities. Participants identified three barriers: (a) legislators’ pejorative attitudes toward parents with disabilities, (b) external opposition, and (c) legislative barriers. Participants also identified eight solutions: (a) cross-disability advocacy, (b) education, (c) relationship-building, (d) bipartisanship, (e) support from state and national organizations, (f) strong sponsors, (g) incrementalism, and (h) model legislation. Study findings should help to inform ongoing legislative advocacy to protect the rights of parents with disabilities.
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Robyn Powell and Joann Nicholson, Addressing Risk Factors Among Parents with Serious Mental Illness: Commentary on Ostrow et al., 72 Psychiatric Services 466 (2021)Clicking on the button will copy the full recommended citation.
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Robyn Powell, Confronting Eugenics Means Finally Confronting Its Ableist Roots, 27 William and Mary Journal of Race, Gender, and Social Justice 607 (2021)Clicking on the button will copy the full recommended citation.
In September 2020, a whistleblower complaint was filed alleging that hysterectomies are being performed on women at an immigration detention center in alarmingly high rates. Regrettably, forced sterilizations are part of the nation’s longstanding history of weaponizing reproduction to subjugate socially marginalized communities. While public outrage in response to the whistleblower complaint was swift and relentless, it largely failed to acknowledge how eugenic ideologies and practices, including compulsory sterilizations, are ongoing and deeply entrenched in ableism. Indeed, a conversation that recognizes the ways in which eugenics continues to target people with disabilities is long overdue.
This Article contextualizes how eugenics has targeted people with disabilities over time, the ways in which these ideologies and practices persist, and why analysis and advocacy concerning eugenics—including the current abuses at immigration detention centers—that do not center the experiences of people with disabilities, especially people with disabilities who are also members of other socially marginalized communities, are inadequate. First, the Article explores the evolution of eugenics and its harmful effects on people with disabilities in the United States, including contemporary examples of eugenic policies and practices. Next, it describes ableism and its relation to eugenics, highlighting how eugenics is deeply rooted in ableism. Finally, the Article concludes by suggesting a path forward that addresses the role of ableism in eugenics, specifically discussing normative legal and policy implications. It also considers opportunities for collaboration across communities.
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Robyn Powell, Applying the Health Justice Framework to Address Health and Health Care Inequities Experienced by People with Disabilities During and After COVID-19, 96 Wash. L. Rev. 93 (2021)Clicking on the button will copy the full recommended citation.
The COVID-19 pandemic has been especially devastating for people with disabilities, as well as other members of marginalized communities. Indeed, an emerging body of scholarship has revealed striking disparities experienced by people with disabilities. In particular, scholars have shined a light on issues relating to triage policies that allow for the rationing of critical health care and resources, such as ventilators, for people with disabilities if resources become limited and hospitals cannot treat all patients during the pandemic. These injustices are a deserving issue that urgently warrants extensive consideration by policymakers, legal professionals, and scholars.
At the same time, however, it is crucial to elucidate the ways in which the inequities people with disabilities are experiencing during COVID-19 are the result of deeply rooted injustices that have endured over time. To do so, a comprehensive analysis of the inequalities experienced by people with disabilities before and during the pandemic is needed, focused on understanding how law and policy affect these disparities. This Article, therefore, builds on, incorporates, and extends the existing scholarship about COVID-19 and disabled people by positioning it within the health justice framework and proposing normative legal and policy solutions to address deeply entrenched inequities that will affect people with during the COVID-19 pandemic and beyond.
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Robyn Powell et al., Experiences of Breastfeeding Among Disabled Mothers, 31 Women's Health Issues 82 (2021)Clicking on the button will copy the full recommended citation.
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Robyn Powell and Sasha Albert, Barriers and Facilitators to Compliance with the Americans with Disabilities Act by the Child Welfare System: Insights from Interviews with Disabled Parents, Child Welfare Workers, and Attorneys, 32 Stanford Law & Pol'y Review 119 (2021)Clicking on the button will copy the full recommended citation.
The Americans with Disabilities Act (ADA) was passed thirty years ago with the promise of “equality of opportunity” for people with disabilities. Notwithstanding, a nascent body of scholarship indicates that parents with disabilities experience substantial and pervasive inequities within the child welfare system, and that the ADA is often disregarded or misapplied by child welfare agencies and courts. Yet, despite extensive legal and social science scholarship about child welfare system involvement among parents with disabilities, no studies have empirically examined why the ADA is not effectively safeguarding the rights of parents with disabilities.
This Article responds to that scholarly void and offers novel and critically needed data on the barriers and facilitators to compliance with the ADA by the child welfare system. This Study draws qualitative data from forty-five in-depth interviews with parents with disabilities, child welfare workers, and parents’ attorneys. Three themes emerged from the data indicating barriers and facilitators that affect compliance with the ADA by the child welfare system. First, knowledge, training, and information about the ADA by parents with disabilities, child welfare workers, and legal professionals impede or enable ADA compliance. Second, institutional support—especially well-defined agency policies and procedures about the ADA, agency culture and leadership, and resource availability—impact compliance with the ADA. Third, factors related to the legal and social context in which cases involving disabled parents occur—particularly tensions between children’s rights and parents’ rights and issues relating to the intersection between disability and child welfare law—are barriers or facilitators to ADA compliance. This Article concludes by identifying critical areas for further research and discussing the policy and practice implications of the findings.