Impact of Caregiver Attributes on Education of Young Children with Hearing Impairment

Abstract

Education and training of young children with special needs is a challenging task. In a country of limited rehabilitation resources like India, the onus of this Himalayan task rests primarily on the shoulders of the primary caregivers of these children. Researchers have proved beyond doubt that early identification, timely intervention accompanied by diligent, motivated and perseverant partaking of caregivers in the rehabilitation process result in successful outcomes. This study attempted to investigate the impact of caregiver attributes like motivation, perseverance & diligent involvement in special preschool programmes for children with hearing impairment on their meaningful contribution to the training process, as well learning outcomes in their wards. For this purpose, caregiver characteristics and their contributions to the training programmes were rated using teacher-made rubrics on regular monthly intervals across an academic year. The same had been correlated with their wards’developmental and academic progress appraised periodically through monthly performance tests. The results indicate that positive traits in parents like high levels of motivation, perseverance and diligence had resulted in their concrete contributions towards their wards’education and training in the form of parallel teaching and preparation of material resources. Positive caregiver characteristics and contributions, in turn had brought about positive developments in their children with hearing impairment.