Fair position. But the issue was whether she did indeed have the necessary familial support to care for a child, DCF seemed to think she didn’t, despite the available evidence.

A profound ignorance of the particular disability. The social worker is no mental health expert (except when it comes to declaring that the care of the mother endangers the child), so they will say that close supervision is required to prevent Mom from hitting the child, yelling at the child, swinging the child around…

I’m a juvenile dependency attorney (“parent’s-side”) in California. This sort of thing happens in our progressive, civilized society all the time. On good cases, my client will have a lot of support from family who are familiar with Mom’s disability and are around to help her out. But even then, the courts sure do…