Engaging parents of students with disabilities: Moving beyond the grief model

Abstract

Educators in many Western nations have used the Kübler-Ross stage model of grief for five decades as a lens to explain parental response to disability. A recent article in Improving Schools, representing this deficit model, asserted that the grief lens is useful in understanding parent's response to learning that their child qualified for special education services. Implicit assumptions in such a perspective unintentionally undermine parent-educator relations. This article describes that phenomenon and notes an emerging 'transformational', empowering model of parental response to disability based on a social-ecological conceptualization of disability. Educators' intent on improving 21st century schools must confront belief perseverance regarding the grief lens and adopt a more empowering strength-based approach in order to effectively engage parents of students with disabilities in strong collaboration relationships.

The experiences of Dutch fathers on fathering children with disabilities: ‘Hey, that is a father and his daughter, that is it’

“…Understanding the importance of this new life perspective can inform fathers of children with disabilities and those who support them, suggesting an approach that focusses on the benefits associated with having a child with a disability. By providing an alternative and more empowering perspective, negative contextual factors, such as the pitying that the fathers in our study experienced, can be countered (Allred ; McConnell et al . ).…”

2018 Janson Piloting a novel capacity building tool with early intervention practitioners ADVANCE PRE PROOF.pdf

“…A new balance needs to be stricken: on the one hand, to implement family-capacity building best practice, professionals must critically reconsider their role, embrace a family's expertise and perspective, and forgo some of the power they have wielded until now (Allred, 2015). On the other, families must build capacity to grow their agency and self-confidence and form partnerships with practitioners, on the other.…”

A review of parent–professional partnerships and some new obligations and concerns arising from the introduction of the SEND Code of Practice 2015

“…While parents are credited with having the best interests of their child at heart, they are frequently seen as unable to promote those interests because of their own emotional needs, and as being either too limited (in terms of their personal, social or economic resources) or too demanding and unrealistic. The traditional stages of grief model held by many professionals may have 'directly contributed to dysfunctional' (Allred, 2015) parentprofessional relationships, as professionals habitually assume that SEND is seen as a tragedy by parents, with grief as the inevitable response. Hodge and Runswick-Cole (2008) also point to professionals focusing on 'impairment effects and intra-family and intra-psychic aspects of parenting a SEND child' to explain parental stress, rather than ascribing that stress to the challenge of maintaining positive relationships with professionals: parents 'feel that they are categorised as well-adjusted only if they acquiesce with professionals' decisions'.…”

“…Hodge and Runswick-Cole (2008) also point to professionals focusing on 'impairment effects and intra-family and intra-psychic aspects of parenting a SEND child' to explain parental stress, rather than ascribing that stress to the challenge of maintaining positive relationships with professionals: parents 'feel that they are categorised as well-adjusted only if they acquiesce with professionals' decisions'. The traditional stages of grief model held by many professionals may have 'directly contributed to dysfunctional' (Allred, 2015) parentprofessional relationships, as professionals habitually assume that SEND is seen as a tragedy by parents, with grief as the inevitable response. This, rather than justified dissatisfaction with services, then explains parents' anger or disengagement in the minds of professionals.…”