Browsing by Subject "children with special needs"

This study examined how children with special needs can be supported in kindergarten if their parents are unwilling to receive support for their child or refuse it. Another aim was to examine why parents refuse support according to kindergarten´s teachers. In the kindergarten it is not exceptional phenomenon that parents are not willing to cooperate with the professionals and refuse support. According to the National Core Curriculum of Early Childhood Education and Care: “In early childhood education for every child should be given support for the development and learning if the child needs it although child´s parents won`t commit to cooperation”. This is contradictory to the fact that often getting the resources to support the child requires a diagnosis. In order to get the diagnosis, however, parental permission is needed. The study was carried about as a qualitative study. There were 27 early childhood teachers who responded to the questionnaire that was published on a Facebook-group. Children with special needs were mostly supported with pedagogical support if their parents refused supporting. Structural support, with some more resources, was only given a few cases. Emotional and behavioral disorders and speech and language impairments were men-tioned the most often in the responses. There were many different reasons for the parents to refuse the support. The most mentioned was that parents didn´t think that their child needed any support. Parents were also afraid of the stigma associated with support. In conclusion the reasons for the parents´ refusal of support included attitudes of surroundings, contextuality of the child´s behavior and matters such as the parents´ own wellbeing. When parents refuse supporting, children are supported in pedagogical ways without added resources. However, multi-professional cooperation is utilized.