Disability, Pregnancy, and Child Protective Services: Experiences of Birthing People in Ontario, Canada

ABSTRACT We explored disabled birthing parents' fear of, and involvement with, child protective services in the perinatal period, including how such experiences impacted their prenatal, birth, and postpartum care. Birthing parents with a physical, sensory, and/or intellectual or developmental disability were recruited in Ontario, Canada, and completed semi‐structured interviews about their perinatal care experiences. Using an interpretive phenomenological analysis approach, the following themes were constructed among 11 participants. Participants described being labelled as an ‘instant red flag’, with assumptions from perinatal health care providers about their parenting impacting their perinatal care experiences. They remembered ‘jumping through hoops’ to prove themselves as parents, describing unrealistic expectations from child protective services and noting that such services often hindered their early parenting abilities. Finally, they identified that ‘no one helps us’, pointing out a lack of tailored support to facilitate parenting and newborn care and scepticism towards perinatal service involvement. Our findings show the need for systemic reform in the practices and policies of child protective services, enhanced disability training for perinatal health care providers and social service professionals, and tailored services and strengthened informal support networks for prospective and new parents with disabilities.