Quality of life of families with a young deaf child in the domain of the received social support and social relations from the mothers’ perspective (FQOLS-2006)
Authors
Joanna Kobosko
Małgorzata Ganc
Keywords:
family quality of life (FQOL), FQOLS-2006, deaf child, social support, support from disability-related services, psychological intervention
Abstract
The quality of life of a family with a deaf child is inevitably affected by the presence of deafness. Social support of any kind including support from disability-related services plays especially important role for these families. Families with children with disabilities experience low quality of life in relation to social interactions and limited support from people other than their close family, i.e. distant relatives, friends and/or neighbours. The study included 50 families with a deaf child aged between 6.5 and 47 months. The FQOLS-2006 (Family Quality of Life Survey 2006) was used and completed by hearing mothers. For the analyses, mothers’ responses for the FQOLS-2006 part A in three domains of life were taken into account: support from others, support from disability-related services and community interactions. It turned out that families with young deaf children are involved in local community life to the limited extent, they do not experience discrimination acts/behaviours, and receive more emotional than practical support from relatives, friends as well as neighbours. Distant relatives are more a source of emotional and practical support than friends and neighbours. Few families with a deaf child do not have access to special services necessary for them to fulfil deaf children’s special needs. It seems appropriate to offer various forms of psychological intervention for families with young deaf children in order to help them to cope effectively with social relations and social support.