Parent Googling material and contributing ideas (qualified in close field) as well as grammar etc. Thanks everyone for your comments.
It’s normal to get support with grammar, usage etc. in an academic context and for someone with diagnosed reading difficulties it seems like an obvious, even essential thing to do.
Something like a PhD thesis is often professionally copyedited/proofread (in practice the level of intervention is generally somewhere in between, a kind of “proof-editing”), quite openly and with the blessing of the supervisors. A candidate who can’t afford to pay might well get a friend or parent to do similar. Given that it’s fine for a thesis, why would it be unfair in the context of a less significant project?
”Googling material and contributing ideas” — again it’s far from certain that this is a problem. It would depend on the type of assignment, the extent of the collaboration and the degree to which the parent’s ideas actually persist, unchanged and without further refinement, in the final version of the material. You can’t realistically judge that unless you’re privy to all of the initial parent-child conversations and the actual completed work.
Anyway, nobody’s academic work happens in isolation. Conversations about research and discussions in which ideas are exchanged are a normal part of student life.
Isn’t that how we all get ideas? They don’t only come from our own analysis of source material, taking place entirely in our own heads, with anything anyone else says being strictly “fenced off”. They also come from things other people mention or suggest.