Family Quality of Life of Turkish Families Who Have Children with Intellectual Disabilities and Autism

Abstract

This study examined family quality of life (FQOL) of Turkish families who have children with intellectual disabilities (ID) and autism. To research the perceptions of FQOL and relevant predictive relationships, data were gathered from 3,009 families who have children with ID and autism. The data were collected by using a Socio-demographic Family Information Form, Beach Center Family Quality of Life Scale, and the Family Support Scale. The FQOL and subdomain perceptions of families who have children with ID and autism were slightly above a moderate level; the highest perceptions were in the Family Interaction domain, and the lowest perceptions were in the Physical/Material Well-Being domain. We computed significant positive correlations between overall FQOL perception and family social support domains as well as between overall FQOL perception and sociodemographic variables. In the prediction of overall FQOL perception, the variable that mostly explained total variance was emotional support. For the covariates of care support, household/income, information support, socioeconomic status, age of child, type of disability, and affiliation support, the ability to predict FQOL was weak. Conversely, age of mothers, employment status of mothers, and material support domain were not important predictors in FQOL.

Quality of Life of Parents of Children with Intellectual Disabilities in Croatia

“…We already mentioned that social supports can play a positive role in increasing one's QOL. Family's QOL is dependent on the supports among family members (Meral et al, 2013), so keeping good relationships between family members is of the utmost importance.…”

A web of gaps: a discussion of research strands concerning Global South families with a disabled child

“…Specifically, the work of Meral, Cavkaytar, Turnbull et al [27] and Giné, Gràcia, Vilaseca et al [28] shows us that in the Global South, economic factors may be of more immediate import to families’ quality of life than in the Global North, and so our interventions, and measurement of FQOL, should take this into account. In addition, although these papers point to poverty as impinging on FQOL for families with a disabled child, the instruments used, and findings yielded, are not nuanced enough to shed light on how this factor and disability interact.…”

“…But in relation to the other work discussed here, omissions appear. As noted, when we consider the types of interventions discussed by Einfeld, Stancliffe, Gray et al [32] in relation to work on FQOL, we see consideration of what is most impinging on FQOL amongst LMICs families of a disabled child – for instance, Meral, Cavkaytar, Turnbull et al’s [27] finding that it is lack of resources, and Yagmurlu, Yavuz, and Sen’s [26] that it is lack of emotional support. This could inform intervention foci, which casts a favourable light on cash-transfer type programmes.…”

“…Yagmurlu, Yavuz, and Sen [26] found that the well-being of mothers in a disadvantaged community in Turkey was closely associated with economic and social factors and stress, not the child’s disability. Similarly, Meral, Cavkaytar, Turnbull et al [27], in a study of FQOL amongst Turkish families with a disabled child, found that perceptions of FQOL were lowest in the physical/material well-being domain. These findings have also been replicated in Catalonia [28], where employment status, and family income, particularly in households with children under 18 years of age, predicted lower FQOL scores.…”

Analysis of Special Education Policy in Turkey and United States: Improving Turkey's Policy for Students with Intellectual Disability

“…There is also a small number of students with ID enrolled in the vocational education programs, relative to the entire population of students with disabilities in those programs (MoNE, 2012(MoNE, -2013. Finally, poverty affects the ability of families to access any services (Dardas & Ahmad, 2014), including education (Meral, Cavkaytar, Turnbull, & Wang, 2013). Like IDEA, SESRT regards the principle as a presumption in favor of integration (Turnbull et al, 2007), but it permits the presumption to be too easily set aside in order to benefit the student.…”