Opinions of parents and professionals on the participation of parents of children with special needs in the process of individual assistance and support

It is empirically proven that the active involvement of parents in the child's school environment and the related collaboration with professionals influence the child's schoolwork and success, behaviour, personality, and interests. The most appropriate model of cooperation is the partnership model, which is based on mutual respect, trust, shared responsibility and the associated equal role of both partners. The active role of parents in their child's school environment is particularly important for pupils with special needs who require even more help, encouragement, and understanding to cope with everyday challenges. A high-quality individualized program based on agreement between parents and professionals is needed to ensure optimal education and progress for pupils with special needs. This can only be achieved through a process of continuous involvement of parents and professionals in a partnership relationship in the process of assessing the child's current abilities, planning, implementing and evaluating the individualized program. The main objective of the master's thesis was to investigate the involvement of parents of children with special needs in the process of individualized program (IP), where we were interested in the active participation of parents of children with special needs, providing the program with adapted implementation and additional professional support in the planning, implementation and evaluation of an individualised programme. We compared parents' and professionals' experiences with the interaction, their satisfaction with the IP and their opinion about parents’ involvement in all steps of the IP (planning, implementation and evaluation). Data were collected through a survey technique using two non-standardized questionnaires (for parents and professionals) developed for the purposes of the master’s thesis. We used descriptive and causal non-experimental method and a quantitative research approach. The sampling was non-random. The first part of the study included 66 parents of children with special needs from different elementary school in Slovenia and 127 professionals, and the second part of the study included 52 parents of children with special needs and 105 professionals. Survey results indicate that while parents are familiar with the content of the individualized programme, only slightly more than half of parents indicate that their child's IP includes certain technically and legally required elements common to all groups of children with special needs. Parents are involved in the planning, implementation and evaluation process, but most do not actively participate, although both parents and professionals are aware of the importance of participation. It was found that parents of children from small schools are more likely to belive that an individualized program is a team effort than parents of children from large schools. Parents emphasise that they would like to cooperate more with professionals in the future and receive more information about sources of help, while professionals would like to maintain the level of cooperation with parents but would like parents to pay more attention to tips for working with children. The results show that both parents and professionals have a positive attitude towards team relationships and communication. They see the responsibility for the individualised programme on all members of the expert group, in which parents should be an important and equal member, but professionals are not sure whether parents should be equal members of the professionals. We found that parents were most likely to work with the provider of additional professional support, according to parents two to three times a year and according to professionals once a month. Both parents and professionals are quite satisfied with the content and process of the IP, but parents of children from small schools are more satisfied with certain items than parents of children from large schools