Research carried out over a number of years provides a consistent picture of the experiences and needs of parents of disabled children. Recent studies, based on models of stress and coping, have identified factors which relate to high or low levels of parental distress. Whilst this research can provide useful information for service development, there appears to have been little change over the...

A survey of 70 registered occupational therapists was conducted to determine the therapists' performance of tasks related to the sexual development of disabled children and the therapists' attitudes toward sexual habilitation issues. The questionnaire used in the survey was developed after a review of the literature on sexuality and disability. Respondents indicated which of the nine tasks list...

BACKGROUND Families of children who have disabilities experience multiple stressors. "Sense of coherence" (SOC) reflects a person's view of life and his or her capacity to respond to stressful situations. PURPOSE The purposes of this paper are to (I) introduce the concept of SOC; (2) review the literature on the stresses experienced by parents of children with disabilities; and (3) discuss ho...

own area of expertise, and treat just one aspect of a child’s health. For the typical community eye worker this focus is, of course, on providing eye care. In reality, most children and their families will have much broader needs and priorities. Without addressing these other issues, or at least referring families to other services, your work may have less impact. In this article we share some ...

Inclusive education has become more common in schools, and children with developmental disabilities have had greater opportunities to interact, and hopefully establish relationships with their typically developing peers. While the quality of friendships between typically developing children has been examined in detail, relatively little comparable data is available on children with developmenta...

Many of the instructional practices that have been used with preschool-aged children with disabilities are predicated on the belief that children with disabilities need adult direction to engage in meaningful learning activities. This study investigated the effects of directiveness and other elements of teacher style on the participation of children with disabilities in dyadic play and instruct...

PURPOSE The objective of this study is to develop a culturally relevant community-based intervention for children with communication disabilities in Kenya through a community/researcher partnership. The resulting intervention is for use in a randomized control trial which will be reported at a later stage. METHOD Using a qualitative approach, initial data was collected through focus group dis...

The article discusses the role of the parent-child interaction in the development of a young child with disabilities. It mentions possible distortions of the said interaction. In addition, the submitted material contains the results of an empirical study on the structure and content of the image of a child and perception of oneself in the role of a mother by women parenting children with disabi...

Recent modeling of language development and intervention for children with disabilities has increasingly focused on the interactions between adults and children. These models have resulted in a number of recent advances in the behavioral treatment of language abilities in children with disabilities. Because these interventions are associated with substantial growth in a number of skills includi...

OBJECTIVE To compare the prevalence of psychiatric morbidity among mothers of mentally disabled children and mothers of non-disabled children, and to identify the determinants associated with psychiatric morbidity. METHODS A comparative cross-sectional study was conducted in Qatar from January to June 2005 to compare the prevalence psychiatric morbidity by using the General Health Questionnai...