Navigating disability and related services: stories of immigrant families

ABSTRACT

Cultural beliefs, values, language differences, and unfamiliar educational infrastructures and practices can impact immigrant parents’ capacity to support their children with disabilities in their new country. This study presents perspectives of disability and experiences with special education services based on interviews with eight immigrant parents of children with disabilities from four countries. Results indicate that the process for accepting, or not accepting, that their child has a disability differed across cultural contexts. Additionally, immigrant parents encounter diverse labelling practices and have varying levels of participation in special education services. Moreover, immigrant families who are refugees have differential access to services and a more limited cultural perspective of their heritage country than families who came to the USA directly from their heritage country. These results can assist professionals in rethinking policies and practices to more effectively establish partnerships with culturally and linguistically diverse families.

KEYWORDS:

• Disabilities
• cultural awareness
• special education

Acknowledgements

We would like to thank the Coalition for Diverse Language Communities at the University of North Carolina at Greensboro for its support of this study.

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the authors.

Notes on contributors

Katrina P. Cummings, research interests are developing learning environments for the promotion of positive outcomes for underrepresented groups, especially for high risk populations.

Belinda J. Hardin, PhD, research interests are inclusion and international early childhood education practices, EI/ECSE services for English language learners, and family involvement in EI/ECSE services.

Notes

1. The name Burma is used in this study to reflect the ethnic heritage adopted by participants in this study.

2. Montagnard is used to refer to an ethnic population from the mountains of Vietnam.