Utfordringer når foresatte skal medvirke på tjenestetilbudet til eget barn.

The purpose of this study is to investigate the challenges faced by parents when participating in cross-disciplinary teaching plan teams which are to support children with disabilities. The overall theme of this article is the co-influence of parents.

The results show that the requirement that parents must prepare for team meetings is a challenge, and that co-influence is about more than being able to influence their child’s options for support. Co-influence requires special efforts from the parents. In order for parents to become equal partners at team meetings, they have to help set the agenda, be familiar with the papers of the case, be present at meetings and engage in discussions, the authors conclude. Parents have to prepare for team meetings in their spare time . At the same time, many parents have full-time jobs and are responsible for bringing up a child with disabilities. However, the study shows that such challenges are partly invisible at team meetings, and that the parents are therefore alone with their problems in this context. Moreover, the study illustrates how the need for respect and neutrality of power in the relationship between parents and professionals is challenged, as the professionals in the two cases do not fulfil their professional responsibility. This is expressed by the professionals’ resistance to undertaking specific tasks in the teaching plan team, or by the professionals being disloyal or failing to be respectful to the parents. Thus the authors indicate that the ideals for an equal and power-neutral relationship between parents and professionals can be difficult to meet. Moreover, the study shows that it is necessary to systematically discuss issues arising when parents and professionals are to realise the co-influence of parents.

The study includes two cases selected from a larger project. The overall project includes six cases focusing on six children belonging to six Norwegian daycare facilities and cross-disciplinary teaching plan teams. The first of the two cases, which constitute the data material in this study, is about a five-year-old boy. The boy has mental disabilities, but has been in daycare full-time since he was two. Semi-structured interviews were carried out with the boy’s mother and father, an early childhood educator, a special-needs assistant and the coordinator of the boy’s teaching plan. The other case is about a four-year-old boy. He has multiple disabilities and is in ordinary daycare as well as in special-needs daycare. In this case, interviews were carried out with the boy’s mother, a special-needs assistant, an employee from the boy’s ordinary daycare and the coordinator of the boy’s teaching plan. A meeting between the two teaching plan teams was observed prior to the interviews. The interviews were recorded and later transcribed. The analysis strategy is based on grouping data in which text sequences were extracted using the NVivo 8 software.

Tveit, A.D. & Cameron, D.L. (2012). Utfordringer når foresatte skal medvirke på tjenestetilbudet til eget barn. Nordic Studies in Education 32, 321-332.