Jordanian parents of young children with disabilities: Perspectives on care, coping and service provision.

Researchers in the field of special education have devoted increasing attention to establishing effective programmes for children with disabilities as early as possible which would meet the needs of these children’s families and involve mutual partnerships between families and service providers. This has resulted in greater awareness of the necessity of seeking input from parents when planning, delivering, and evaluating such services.This qualitative study examines the experiences of Jordanian parents of young children with disabilities regarding the provision of services for their children, and explores parents’ perspectives on caring for disabled children in Jordan.A qualitative design was employed to achieve the study’s purposes. 53 semi­structured interviews were carried out with 64 parents of young children with disabilities. Thematic analysis techniques were used to examine the data collected from these interviews. Four major overlapping themes emerged from the analysis, namely: parents’ experiences of health care services, access to special education services and support, kindergartens for children with disabilities, and parenting disabled children in Jordan.The study found that the position of Jordanian parents has many similarities to that reported for parents in Western countries. Parents generally had negative experiences with health care practitioners from the time that their children’s disabilities were first suspected. Parents struggled with the availability, accessibility, and affordability of educational services and support offered for them and their young disabled children. With regard to kindergartens, although parents were happy that there were designated places for their young disabled children to receive educational services, several negative comments were made relating to kindergarten staff and environments. As a result o f caring for disabled children, parents encountered challenges such as unstable family relationships, fears for the future, financial burdens, stress, and stigma. Additionally, parents felt that they received insufficient support. These factors all suggest that parents’ needs were not being m