Chronic Neglect and Services Without Borders: A Guiding Model for Social Service Enhancement to Address the Needs of Parents With Intellectual Disabilities

Child neglect has negative effects throughout the life span. Although an argument for a link between intellectual disabilities and neglectful parenting can be made, this article argues for a more fine-grained view of the cognitive problems that underlie child neglect perpetration and provides evidence for a social information processing model of it's etiology. Based on this model and what is known about the efficacy of behaviorally based interventions, implications for enhancements to the social service system to adapt to the needs of parents with intellectual disabilities are presented. The areas covered include improvements to screening and assessment of parents, provision of adapted services, and changes in selection processes and training of staff. Future directions for integrating social information processing elements into interventions are discussed with examples from empirically supported treatment and prevention programs.