Learning Difficulty

Healthy start uses the term ‘learning difficulty’ to refer to a need for education of skills that most people learn incidentally and that enable them to participate fully in the community, without supervision. Other terms that are commonly used include ‘learning disability’ and ‘intellectual disability’.

Healthy Start defines the following groups of mothers and fathers as having a learning difficulty: 

• parents with a diagnosed intellectual impairment
• parents who self-identify as having learning difficulty
• parents who are identified by a practitioner as having a cognitive impairment that affects their learning

Learning difficulty can affect independent participation in daily life to different degrees. Services that focus on helping parents find solutions to problems and who work with parents’ existing strengths support them to succeed in the parenting role. Programs are most effective when they have the following qualities:

• family-centred
• involve parent participation
• focused on strength and ability
• involve parents in goal-setting and decision-making
• focus on performance rather than knowledge