An Extension of the Parent Community Project: Ongoing Support for the Chinese Immigrant Parents of Children with Disabilities

 

Lusa LO, University of Massachusetts, Boston

 

 

http://dx.doi.org/10.12796/caise-review.2015V3.005

Abstract

 

Community involvement has been considered as one of the crucial factors of increasing parent involvement in schools. This is especially true for culturally and linguistically diverse families who have children with disabilities in the U. S., since schools do not have sufficient resources and bilingual staff members to support their needs. This longitudinal study focused on a community project that was designed to prepare Chinese immigrant families of children with disabilities to be school partners and their children’s advocates. The initial project focused on parent education training, which was a success (Lo, 2012). Parent participants gained knowledge about special education and their roles as their children’s advocates and decision makers. Due to the needs of the community, the project was expanded and included a combination of information sessions and monthly meetings to address the challenges parent participants continued to face when working with schools. This paper focused on the development of the extension of the project and its effectiveness in preparing the Chinese immigrant families to become school partners and their children’s advocates. Evaluation results suggested that, although the series of training provided the parent participants with knowledge about the special education system and their parental rights, the ongoing information sessions and monthly meetings were needed. These sessions and meetings not only allowed the participants to discuss the current issues they faced when working with schools, but they also obtained support resolving the problems.

 

 

Keywords: Community involvement, special education, culturally and linguistically diverse, disabilities, parent training, school partners, disabilities

 

 

 

 

​CAISE Review 2015 Volume 3, pp 49 - 59

Special Section: Collaboration between Schools and Families of Children with Disabilities