Disabled Child and Adolescent Counseling

Cultural Considerations. It has been observed that professionals cannot offer effective support for families without understanding the systems within which the families exist and function (Enwefa, Enwefa, & Jennings, 2006). Given the great importance of support systems for families affected by IDD, it is necessary to consider cultural factors which may affect such systems in either a positive or negative manner. Across cultures, people tend to have varying beliefs about disability (Kayama, 2010), which at times may function as barriers, preventing access to supports and services (Cagran et al., 2011; White, 1987). Kayama (2010) asserts that systemic change may lead to revised perceptions and beliefs among families, moving them from segregationist and negative views, toward a perspective of inclusion.

To find that a member a family has learning difficulty is a huge shock for the rest of the family and brings emotions and new challenges. Living with a disabled person can have profound effects on the entire family–parents, siblings(brothers and sisters).For parents, having a disabled child

I believe that the parents of children with disabilities play a pivotal roll in the educational and social development of their children. When a child is diagnosed with a disability it leaves the parent with a lot of responsibility and difficult decisions to make. When parents start planning to have children, most of them do not expect to have a child with special needs. It is the parents’ responsibility to provide everything that they are capable of to give the child what they need to succeed regardless of what those needs may be.

Research suggests that regardless of IQ, a majority of adults with ASD remain dependent upon their families or other services for support in adult life (Howlin, Goode, Hutton, and Rutter, 2004). In 2011, an estimated 71% of individuals with a developmental disability lived with a family caregiver (Braddock et al., 2013). Despite a this large percentage of individuals depending on their families for lifetime support, more than half (51%) have begun making plans for the long-term care of their son or daughter with a developmental disability in the event of a family crisis such as the failing health or death of a parent (Kaufman, Adams, & Campbell, 1991). Given the growing prevalence of ASD, the aging of adults with ASD, along with their continued reliance on caregiving support, it becomes important to not only identify the needs of this population but also how parental caregivers experience the task of permanency planning for their adult child with ASD. Permanency planning is the process of procuring long-term services for a person with a developmental

Hauser-Cram P, Warfield ME, Shonkoff JP, Krauss MW, Sayer A, Upshur CC. Children with disabilities: A longitudinal study of child development and parent well-being. Monogr Soc Res Child Dev. 2001;66:i–viii.

My first goal was to learn more about how to work with, support, and help people with disabilities. Along with this goal, I wanted to become more familiar with the experience of working with this population. I am studying to become an occupational therapist and am currently interested in working mainly with disabled children. I am also interested in the elderly population, but through this experience at Windsong Equitherapy and some shadowing at Children’s Mercy Hospital in Kansas City, I am leaning towards working with disabled children. Aside from this goal, I also wanted to learn how parents and families with disabilities cope with having a child with special needs and the effect this has on the

Having a child with disabilities dramatically impacts the parent 's role in their life. Disabled children require more attention because they face daily challenges

In the video, When Concerns Arise: Learning from Families’ Experiences, parents discussed the feelings they had when they discovered their child was going to have disabilities. Doctors informed them their child would never be able to walk or talk and the child would become a burden on the family. With this being said, many of them felt alone with little support. After the initial shock of learning about their child, and not wanting to believe the doctors, they began to learn and understand their child’s disability. They began to seek help and support from head start programs, teachers, advocacy groups, family members, friends and other families who have children with disabilities.

Parenting is a feat all on it's own, but do most people ever stop to acknowledge the true difficulties underlying the day to day challenges of parenting a disabled child? For most of us, becoming a parent means making selfless sacrifices in order to make time and to simply grow up. Some aren't as lucky to get off that easily. Raising a child with a disability varies in difficulty, but regardless of the case, each parent is required to go above and beyond the average role. More education, more patience, and more attention are just a few of the "extra curricular" duties that go along with raising a disabled child. Unfortunately, the seemingly never ending list of additional responsibilities isn't necessarily the only obstacle for these parents. Certain medical conditions aren't covered by insurance companies due to lack of awareness or simply the state's disinterest in funding a non-profitable cause, leaving these families to fend for themselves.

The first article that I read was Sibling Cooperative and Externalizing Behaviors and Families Raising Children with Disabilities. The article starts off by explaining how more caregivers are taking care of their children with disabilities inside the home as well as taking care of their children that are typically developing. This article covers the effects on how the typically developing sibling or TDS is coping with their sibling with a disability inside the home, the burdens that the caregiver experiences, and what kind of parenting style works inside the home. Press article also covers family systems it stated that "family systems are interdependent and the family member's behavior is related not only to one's self but also to the behavior and interactions of other individuals and subsystems within the family." (Platt, Roper, Mandleco & Freeborn, 2014). This article also defined that a "care burden refers to the physical emotional, financial, mental, and

In the proposed study, we seek to investigate the relationship between positive social support and cognitive functioning in parents of a child with a disability. It is hypothesized that an intervention of positive social support will reduce the accelerated decline of cognitive functioning in nonnormative parents, especially among parents who report the highest levels of chronic stress. The between-subjects factor will be whether or not a participant received the social support intervention. A longitudinal design will be used for this intervention study. There will be four different time points: baseline, 1 year after baseline, 5 years after baseline, and 15 years after baseline. It is predicted that a family support intervention will

It is hypothesized that parents of a child with a disability will show fewer declines in cognitive functioning with age if they received a social support intervention, especially among parents who reported the highest levels of chronic stress. Implications of this finding would include the necessity for providing interventions to new parents of a child with a disability. It would be understood that positive social support would be a protective factor against a higher rate of cognitive decline among parents of a child with a disability, which would emphasize the need to provide positive social support to new parents, especially to parents of a child with a disability with lower reported social support.

If SLPs understand the impact of having a child with a disability has on the family, they will be able to more optimally engage parents in the therapy process. Parents can be critical partners to the therapy process; however, sometimes SLPs underestimate their potential role. It is common for parents to get the reputation of being pushy or disinterested but this is a true depiction. Often SLPs’ own perspective on the situation clouds how they view a family.

One of the main key ideas of having a child with a disability is communication, not having a stable relationship with parents and siblings. It accurate to see that people get along with another person that have the same taste as one does, which make the kids with the disability the outlier because he or she is the one that doesn’t match up with no one so you tend to leave him or her behind. All of this lead to lack of carness and lack of communication. If a child with a disability doesn’t get the appropriate attention she needs, she tend to be isolated and leads to disaster. In the article “‘We’re just that sort of family’” “ Intergenerational Relationship in Families including children with disabilities” by Brigit Mirfin, Anne Bray, and

Having a child with a disability can cause various hardships on a family. Families with a child with a disability can cause strains on finances, parental employment, and relationships within the family. After analyzing research done by a variety of sources the following essay should convey the findings in regard to the affects raising a child with a disability has on a family. One idea to keep in mind is disabilities have a variety of different impacts on a family, not all will impact a family the same way.