Working with parents with learning disabilities and learning difficulties

Shifts in terminology occur over time through changes in societal values, awareness, and movements aimed at achieving greater equality, social justice and promoting and protecting marginalised groups’ human rights.

The Working Together with Parents Network is on this journey alongside parents with parenting support needs. We are proud to be the new home for the UK-wide network, following 18 years at the School for Policy Studies at Bristol University. With over 1,000 members, the network aims to raise awareness of the issues that parents face and improve ways that parents with learning disabilities and learning difficulties are supported.

Different language and terms used by the network and the wider sector, and how they are defined by those with lived experience and professionals with direct experience working with people, have evolved over time.

Our team at Research in Practice and wider specialist members of the National Children’s Bureau have carefully considered terminology. We currently use the following terms:

Some older Working Together with Parents Network publications use the term learning difficulty as an umbrella term to include people with a diagnosed learning disability, as well as those with a milder impairment with similar parenting needs. Where this is the case, we have tried to acknowledge this on webpages and/or where a resource is available to download.

IQ level is used to differentiate between parents with a learning disability and parents with a milder impairment (learning difficulty), due to the UK diagnostic criteria of a formal learning disability diagnosis being determined by overall level of IQ.

However, the network acknowledges that IQ level is not a predictor of parenting ability, nor is it evidence of a lack of parenting ability (Tilbury, 2024). Parents with learning disabilities and learning difficulties have similar needs around parenting support regardless of their differing overall IQ levels and their needs are likely to fluctuate. Research highlights that these parents need the right support, at the right time, in the right way, and scaffolding so they can learn and develop the skills they need to successfully parent (Tilbury and Tarleton, 2023).

Research also highlights that time, trust, tenacity, truthfulness, transparency and a tailored response facilitates parents to confidently and successfully parent their children (Tarleton, et al., 2018). These factors are important for parents with a learning disability and parents with a learning difficulty. Find out more about the six T’s.  

We recognise that these constructs are imperfect and, as such, the network’s position on these terms is part of an ongoing conversation, one in which we welcome people’s views.