engleski

OPINIONS AND ATTITUDES OF PARENTS ABOUT EARLY INTERVENTION FOR CHILDREN WITH HEARING LOSS

Outcomes of early intervention for children with hearing loss are related to parental involvement in their children's communication habilitation. At the same time, the parental experience of the intervention is important because early negative experiences contribute to the formation of negative attitudes about experts and the intervention, lower and lower-quality parental involvement, and stress and feelings of incompetence. In contrast, a positive parental experience of the intervention is associated with better parental support for children and with faith in one's own abilities to cope with the challenges of parenting a child with special needs. Therefore, insight into the parents' experience of early intervention is valuable for its planning and implementation in accordance with the parents' possibilities and needs. This paper presents the opinion of 20 parents of deaf children about early intervention by analyzing their responses to a specially created survey. Parents rated the start of the intervention as late, and the information about habilitation, the roles of experts in the team and the amount of professional support as average. They highlighted the compulsion to independently seek additional help, insufficient explanation of the professional activities carried out, an insufficient insight into the child's progress, and feeling of inequality when participating in the intervention. However, most parents believe the intervention had a medium-to-strong impact on the child's achievements, that it contributed to positive emotions and to a sense of well-being for the child. Support in upbringing and education was rated as high- on-average, and satisfaction with the intervention as medium-to-high. The presented results point to the need to adapt certain professional activities of early intervention for children with hearing loss.

early intervention ; hearing loss ; parental opinions

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