Adoptive Parents Not Welcome Here?

I read a lot of Children's Aid cases in my current work. A lot of them are older decisions that I am helping to de-identify, which means taking out the names and anything else which might serve to identify the children and families involved.

While doing that, I have noticed a fair number of decisions where the parents had special needs (sometimes physically, often intellectually challenged) and the question facing the court was whether, given the challenges faced by the parents, they could still be 'good enough' parents to their children.

Sounds like an interesting research study to me; how do the courts treat parents with special needs in a child protection context? I'm not sure if anyone else has ever taken a serious look at that issue so if anyone reading this knows of any such research that has been done, please let me know.

But today, while completing my daily spin through the blogosphere, I came across another, more or less related issue.

We have touched on the issues of whether or not obesity should be considered a disability. So how about obesity (with it's related health issues) being used to exclude perspective adoptive parents who have otherwise passed on all the tests and screening mechanisms?

Ashley's Mom, at Pipecleaner Dreams, tells of two different cases, one in the UK and one in Australia, where perspective adoptive parents were denied that right opportunity due to their weight.

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