Participation of experts with parents of children with special needs

The thesis presents a family with a child with special needs, the relationships between the family members, the ways of seeking assistance and the communication of the parents with various experts throughout the child's life. The basic empirical material used for the thesis is a diary, in which the parents had noted their experience of the birth of their child with special needs, the relationships within the family, and their cooperation with experts etc. The sample is a family of six (father, mother and four children), with the second child born in 1998 being a girl with special needs. The analysis of the above example indicates that a family with a child with special needs can function normally if offered strong support and expert assistance, but a great deal of success depends on the inventiveness of the parents. At a national level, several laws and rules regulate the area of rights and the assistance to families with children with special needs. However, the exercise of those rights is more complicated