Challenges Faced by Malaysian Parents in Caregiving of a Child with Disabilities

Abstract

Objective - Caregiving of a child with special needs can increase the cost of raising the child and parent’s stress. These two issues are commonly experienced by a parent who care for their special needs child themselves and the thought of challenges are different based on the disability of the child. Methodology/Technique – The challenges of raising a child with disability make it necessary for parents to work harder to to meet the cost of treatment. Meanwhile, levels of stress among those parents are understandably increased. Finding – Parents caring for a child with disability need to place greater emphasis on achieving a balance between their work, caring for their child and stress. Further, this paper includes a discussion on the cost of raising a disabled child and the increased levels of stress experienced by these parents. Novelty - The findings of this paper contribute to conceptual model on the challenges faced by Malaysian parents in caregiving for a child with special needs. Type of Paper: Review

Perceived fairness and marital satisfaction: The role of the presence of children with disabilities

“…In addition to caretaking demands, many studies suggested that financial demands in caring for children with disabilities are significant stressors for parents (Chen et al, 2020;Ren et al, 2020;Vonneilich et al, 2016). Compared with children with normal development, children with any disability tend to need special medical treatment, education, and equipment, resulting in a significantly higher financial burden for the parents (Bahry et al, 2019).…”

Parental Stress among Parents of Children with Learning Disabilities

“…(Babic & Leutar, 2014). Parents are also often concerned and worried by the density of caring responsibilities that been required time and a lot of work and energy and parent also must be available most of time to cater the need and meet the daily needs of the child which this might affect their career (Bahry et al, 2019).…”

“…Therefore it is also proved that having special need children in the family, parents social life is affected or disrupted due to the amount of time spend catering and monitoring the children. Some may avoid going to social gathering due to the disturbing and uncontrollable behavior of their children (Bahry et al, 2019).…”