Special Needs Child

Introduction

The birth of a new baby in the family and diagnosis as a child with special needs, sensory or mental disorders, begins to change the perceptions and understanding for the family members especially the parents. Responsible parents try to explore appropriate solutions for helping their children at an early age because the biggest concern for these parents is what will happen to their children in the future. For instance, parents are always wondering about the social and professional life of their children.

Fortunately, the education policy in the United States of America provides equal educational opportunities regardless of race, color, age, sex, disability, doctrine, ethnic background, national origin, and citizenship status. For

Essentially, the parents of special needs children are significant members that improve the special education system because they are the most affective members in their children’s lives. In addition, there is a need to study the relationship between parental rights under IDEA and the quality of life for their children. These kind of issues can create better situations for the parents and children. Also, increasing the parents’ knowledge about their rights can be reflected on the whole society's awareness, which may affect these children’s lives in some way. Unfortunately, despite public acknowledgement of the importance of parent’s rights, there is a misunderstanding about how that can cause different implications for children with special needs. As a result, these children should be given opportunities to be in a satisfied

The study attempts to explore the nature of support networks and services that parents of special needs are receiving and the effectiveness of those servicers in their lives. The sample of this study included 74 participants who are parents of special needs children and primary caregivers of preschools and schools. The responses of sample were collected via online and paper survey. The researchers spent one year to collect this data. The second part of collecting data was one extensive audio-taped interview with a parent of a child with disabilities who participated in the survey. The participants were selected by snowball sampling with assistance of a professional who works with special needs children in public schools. The researchers collaborated with local organizations for family with special needs in order to choose the remaining of the sample. All participants were chosen from Midwestern states. This study assumes that difficulty of seeking helpful resources reflects negatively on the life of parents of special needs children because there is a gap between education and professionals in applying the system of special needs’ services. In fact, this study is restricted by several limitations in the sample and the method of collecting the data. As a result, those limitations reflected negatively on the reliability and generalization of the findings.