”An Examination of the Role and Responsibilities of Kindergarten in Multidisciplinary Collaboration on Behalf of Children with Severe Disabilities”.

The purpose of this study is to examine role and responsibilities of Norwegian preschools as participant in a cross-disciplinary collaboration about children with severe special needs and their families.

The results show that the preschool staff are considered as the most important players (apart from the parents) in the support of the children and the families. The preschool staff were especially valued in relation to three factors:

1)   The staff’s close relationship with the child and the intimate knowledge which they gain through their work makes them important sources of information to both the child and the other players surrounding the child.

2)   When the child is at the preschool, the staff offer the parents a sense of security and relief and this reduces the parents’ experience of stress.

3)   The staff act and function as a driving force in the necessary cross-disciplinary collaboration among the many players involved in the daily life of a disabled child.

The results are discussed based on two overall ways in which the players in the cross-disciplinary collaboration can view the staff’s role in regard to the disabled children:

1) The preschool teacher as an expert in early childhood. This role focuses on the fact that the other players in the collaboration consider the preschool teachers as experts in early childhood.

2) The preschool teacher as the empathetic caregiver. The empathetic caregiver can also be viewed as an extension of the parent role.

The study concludes that the role as caregiver dominates the understanding of the staff’s role by parents, specialists and municipal coordinators. The staff’s potential expert knowledge about children in general and specific children is thereby overlooked in the cross-disciplinary collaboration.

The study takes its point of departure in six children with significant physical and/or mental disabilities and the adults surrounding them. The children were selected from two municipalities. The municipalities’ social services department helped recruit the parents of the six children who participated in the study. The children themselves were not interviewed. The focus was on family members, preschool teachers, assistant teachers, specialists and coordinators who were all in contact with the children. A child with severe special needs is assigned a coordinator who is often linked to the healthcare system. All these players are engaged in a cross-disciplinary collaboration. The different players’ perspectives were viewed across the six children involved in the study. The children were aged between 2-5 and the group comprised five boys and one girl.

Cameron, D., Tveit, A., Midtsundstad, J., Nilsen, A. & Jensen, H. (2014). ”An Examination of the Role and Responsibilities of Kindergarten in Multidisciplinary Collaboration on Behalf of Children with Severe Disabilities”. Journal of Research in Childhood Education, 28(3), 344-357.