Family Relationships and Functions of Families with Disabled Children by Kelsey Bradford

Do you or someone you know have any type of

disability such as a.

D. H.

D. Epilepsy or down syndrome.

The prevalence of disabilities and Children is on the rise.

In fact, there was over a 16 increase of disabilities

in Children, Which was in 2011 and 2017.

I myself have a disability and this study started off

because I was interested in learning if my family's experiences

matched up with the experiences of other families.

After reviewing current research on family relationships, needs and functions,

I decided this is what I wanted to focus my

study on.

To look at family experiences.

I decided to Measure nine different categories.

Using a couple of established measures of family functioning.

I expected there to be a difference in for responses

between participants with a disabled family member and participants without

a disabled family member.

However, they scored very alike in many categories, such as

family cohesion in family satisfaction.

Even in the categories with the more drastic differences, these

differences were still not statistically significant enough to support my

hypothesis. I also discovered that participants who had a disabled

child and participants who had a disabled sibling answered the

survey quite similarly.

This makes sense as current research shows that those with

disabled siblings often tend to take on a secondary caretaker

role, which has been true in my own life as

well. My unexpected findings could have been a result of

the fact that this is my first research project, and

I might have had some measurement issues.

For example, I picked out only some items from each

measure. Instead of using the whole measure, which could have

impacted the reliability and validity for future research, I would

also suggest having a larger, more diverse sample, so it

would be more generalized able to the population.

I believe that even though my hypothesis was not confirmed,

this is still a beneficial study.

Councillors could potentially use this study when working with clients

of disabled family members or even clients who have a

disability themselves.

This research could also be used by family live educators

to further understand how certain disabilities can impact family functions

and relationships.

This research is especially prevalent for professionals working in a

family context.

As more and more Children are receiving diagnoses, please feel

free to stop by and see my poster if you're

interested in learning more.

Thanks.

Family Relationships and Functions of Families with Disabled Children by Kelsey Bradford

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