Families and children with disabilities

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Families and children with disabilities Coping
strategies and empowerment
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• We are ...?
• From practice to theory to practice
• Families move and change
• Parents and professionals
• Family systems framework
• Challenges and Empowerment
• Working for Change
• From Marginalization to Inclusion

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Deffinitions of Kompetence
Com med og petere at stræbe samen med
(andre) Compete konkurrere at stræbe samen
efter samme udelelige gode Competence
overenstemmelse mellem en stillet opgave og
evnerne hos den person, der er sat til at löse
opgaven. Kompetence er modbegreb til
Kvalifikation Kvalifikation innebærer at udföre
en veldefineret opgave paa en veldefineret
maade Kompetence innebærer mere ubestemmelige
disposition hos en person, der sætter ham eller
hende I stand til at löse en opgave, der netop
ikke er veldefineret, hverken som maal eller som
fremgangsmaade, ja som maaske slet ikke har
foreligget för. (B. Karpatschof Psyke Logos
1998, 19. pp 353-354)
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From practice to theory to practice

• From the Medical model to the Social model of
  Disability

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Families move and change
Birth child 1 - 2-3
Leave home grandchild 1-2-3
Teenage 1-2-3-
Aging parents
Senior Citizents
Death of husband of wife
Courtship-Marriage
--Work--
Different needs different challenges and
coping mechanisms

• To be acknowledged
• To participare
• To include

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Parents and professionals Unequal power
relationships?

• Parents Professionals
• as clients as experts
• as paraprofessionals as transplanters
• as consumers as service providors
• as depowered as empowering
• as negotiators as negotiators

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Family systems framework
Partnership an agreement and a degree of choice
Supports Doing what it takes Continual Coping
to minimise (public) discomfort Empowerment
increasing control ower ones life and
taking action to get what one wants
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• Challenges and Empowerment
• It is not just
• individual challenge
• a family challenge
• a special educators challenge

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• Working for Change
• schools
• systems
• communities

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From Marginalization to Inclusion