The usefulness of community support resources from the perspective of parents of children with disabilities

Abstract

Presence of a child with disability determines a family functioning in all dimensions and child care is a source of stress and burden for all family members. The optimal social network, which is the source of social support, greatly eliminates stress and improves adaptation of the parents to the disability of their child. The aim of study is to define how parents of children with disabilities perceive the usefulness of formal and informal source of social support. A quantitative research strategy has been used in the study, more specifically a standardised questionnaire Family Support Scale (by Dunst, Jenkins and Trivette (1984)). 493 parents of children with different types of disabilities were enrolled in the study. The results show that informal support in the form of a partner and close people has been perceived as the most useful. Programmes and organisations have been estimated as the least useful source of support in the parents' viewpoint. A significant difference was detected in the perceived usefulness of formal and informal source of support in terms of housing, marital status and education.