How does having a child with profound or multiple disabilities affect the home/school relationship?

This study explored how having a child with a profound or multiple disabilities affects the home school relationship in a multi-cultural Special School for Primary aged children. Research has highlighted the impact upon the family in terms of coping strategies and how families with good and poor coping strategies differ. The purpose of the study was to consider how a model of systemic thinking called the Family illness systems model (Rolland 1994) might be used to understand the context in which a family might be operating, informing how the school might appropriately foster the home/school relationship. The study took a phenomenological approach using Interpretative Phenomenological Analysis (IPA) to explore the impact of having a disabled child upon the family; how this affects coping strategies of the parent, family functioning, and how this feeds into the expectations and experiences with school. 5 mothers were interviewed using semi-structured interviews. Interview data was analysed using IPA and three superordinate themes emerged: ‘making sense of life changing events’, ‘impact on family dynamics’, ‘impact of a child needing a special school’. These finding were discussed in relation to relevant literature and the initial research questions. Strengths and limitations of the research were acknowledged. Finally the findings of the study were considered in relation to educational psychology practise and for further areas of research.