Rehabilitation of Special Needs Children at Pre-school Level: A Study of Attitude of Integrated Child Development Services Functionaries and Parents

Abstract

The Integrated Child Development Services (ICDS) is a significant scheme that works for rehabilitation of different categories of children including special needs children at pre-school level in India. For rehabilitation of special needs children at pre-school level, the ICDS functionaries and parents (of the children) play the vital role. For developing the favorable attitude of ICDS functionaries and parents towards rehabilitation of special needs children at pre-school level, it is important to study the attitude of ICDS functionaries and parents towards rehabilitation of special needs children at pre-school level. Hence, in this study an attempt was made to study the attitudes of ICDS functionaries (Child Development Project Officers, Supervisors and Anganwadi workers) and parents towards rehabilitation of special needs children at pre-school level. The study was a descriptive survey-cum-comparative type research. 36 Child Development Project Officers (CDPOs), 108 Supervisors, 108 Anganwadi workers (AWWs), and 216 parents under thirty six ICDS projects from nine administrative districts of Assam were taken as participants of the study. A self-developed attitude scale was used to collect data from the participants. Mainly quantitative data analysis techniques were used to analyze the data of the study. The major findings of the study indicated that all the ICDS functionaries and parents have shown high attitude towards rehabilitation of special needs children at pre-school level; and CDPOs possess better attitude than the supervisors, and parents possess better attitude than the supervisors towards rehabilitation of special needs children at pre-school level. And from the study, it is also found that the background variable ‘experience’ of the supervisors acts as a determining factor in determining the attitude of the supervisors towards rehabilitation of special needs children at pre-school whereas no other background variable of the supervisors and none of the background variables of the CDPOs, AWWs and parents acts as a determining factor in determining their attitude towards rehabilitation of special needs children at pre-school level.