Sister’s Caregiving Experience to a Sibling with Cerebral Palsy- the Impact to Daughter-Mother Relationships

Family-oriented practice in disability Services in Hong Kong: A cross-sectoral social work perspectives in the fields of intellectual disability and mental illness

Supporting the families of people with disabilities has become a crucial aim of disability services. In disability services, where people with disabilities are usually positioned at the centre of service provision, family-oriented practice implies practice directions to work with clients' families in service delivery. The study aims at exploring how social workers in intellectual disability services and mental health services deliver a family-oriented practice in Hong Kong. We performed a qualitative analysis, using in-depth interview data collected from two broader studies about social workers' experiences in the fields of intellectual disability and mental illness respectively. Thirteen participants in intellectual disability settings and another 13 participants in mental health settings shared their understanding of and concern with family-oriented practice. Four themes were identified in the participants' accounts regarding the importance of family connectedness, family members' constructions of clients' identity, the scope of activities and the intervention space between individual and family. These findings reflect that family-oriented practice was jointly shaped by clients' family systems and disability service system, and shed light on the strategies for future service development at the broader systematic level.

Experiences of primary caregivers of children with cerebral palsy across the trajectory of diagnoses in Ghana

BACKGROUND

Cerebral palsy (CP) is a non-progressive disorder of posture or movement caused by a lesion to the developing brain that results in functional limitations. The diagnosis of CP can vary from one child to another, causing family stress because of vague and unknown outcomes of the disorder. Although there are negative attitudes in Ghanaian societies towards primary caregivers and children with disabilities, fewer attempts have been made to understand their experiences.

OBJECTIVES

The main aim of this study was to explore the experiences of primary caregivers across the trajectory of the diagnosis (before, during and after) of CP in the setting of a tertiary hospital.

METHOD

Using Social Capital Theory as framework, 40 primary caregivers of children with CP, who were receiving treatment at a major referral hospital in Ghana, were interviewed about their experiences before, during and after diagnosis.

RESULTS

The results that emerged from the thematic analysis were discussed as follows: experiences before diagnosis, experiences during the diagnosis and experiences after the diagnosis. Particularly, participants discussed their inability to access essential services such as education for their children with CP.

CONCLUSION

In light of systemic challenges faced by participants and their children with CP, the need for health policymakers to prioritise the public education about CP, promoting the well-being of caregivers and other implications of the study have been discussed.

'There is family tension, but they understand…': familial and sibling relationships following the diagnosis of cerebral palsy in children in Ghana

The challenges faced by parents raising children with cerebral palsy (CP) have been well explored in the literature. However, little attention has been paid to the experiences of parents raising children with CP in low-income countries, such as Ghana.

OBJECTIVE

Therefore, the objective of this study was to explore parents' experiences of raising children with CP, specifically focusing on the relationships between spouses and between children with CP and their typically developing siblings.

METHOD

Qualitative semi-structured interviews were conducted with 40 parents, who were purposively selected from the largest tertiary hospital in Ghana.

RESULTS

The results revealed that typically developing children accept their siblings with CP as their equals and even take up domestic responsibilities to lessen the burden on their parents. However, the parents reported experiencing marital and extended family conflict, financial burden and negative attitudes from spouses, resulting in family tensions.

CONCLUSION

The implications of these findings for policy-making have also been discussed.

Women's Experiences Caring for Their Husbands' Siblings With Developmental Disabilities

A phenomenological method was used in this study to examine the experiences of women caring for the husband’s sibling with developmental disabilities (DDs) with the aim of establishing how and why they came to care and continued to care for them. Three themes emerged after drawing on stories shared by seven women: for the sake of my husband, powerlessness, and trade-off between cost and rewards. The findings of this study show that Taiwanese women accept the cultural norms, thus accepting the caregiving responsibility. Reciprocity did not help determine whether women started caring for the husband’s sibling with DD. However, when an imbalance in reciprocity is present, women experience negative emotions that often result in tension within the family. Positive factors contributed by the husband and parents-in-law can facilitate the work of caregivers by ameliorating physical pain and psychological distress that can occur during the caregiving process.

Brothers' Experiences Caring for a Sibling With Down Syndrome

I used a phenomenological method to examine the caregiving experiences of Taiwanese men with their siblings with Down syndrome (DS). Four themes emerged after drawing on stories shared by 7 men: taking responsibility for the caregiving, adjusting to an unfamiliar caregiving role, and counting on help from women and reframing. The results of the study show that the Taiwanese brother caregivers were raised according to the cultural norm, because of which they accepted the caregiving responsibility, even though they had rarely been included in the early life of their sibling with DS. These brothers thus encountered chaos in the process of transferring into the role of main caregiver. Greater attention must be paid to the promotion of earlier involvement of brothers in the life of their sibling with DS, and the special challenges surrounding a brother giving care to a sister with DS.