Parents’ perspectives on inclusive practices in early childhood education and care: facilitators and barriers for children with Cerebral Palsy

ABSTRACT

Children with cerebral palsy frequently experience challenges and barriers to inclusion in early childhood education and care. However, there is limited research exploring the experiences of children with cerebral palsy and their families. Understanding family perspectives on their experience is likely to provide insights for professionals to improve inclusive practices. Using Bronfenbrenner’s bioecological theory, this study evaluates online survey responses of factors that parents believed facilitated – or created barriers towards – inclusive early childhood education. Ninety-eight parents shared their levels of satisfaction and perspectives regarding the importance of inclusion practices involving their child in Australian settings. Parents reported overall high levels of satisfaction, highlighting the importance of positive educator attitudes, communication between home and settings and partnerships between home, allied health practitioners and early childhood education and care settings. Concerns related to children’s psychological wellbeing were raised, particularly regarding children’s experiences and challenges with anxiety including separation anxiety.

KEYWORDS:

• Early childhood education and care
• parental perspective
• cerebral palsy
• inclusion
• inclusive practices
• disability

Acknowledgments

We gratefully acknowledge the parents who participated in this study and the Victorian Cerebral Palsy Register (VCPR) who invited many families to take part in this survey.

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the authors.

Supplementary material

Supplemental data for this article can be accessed online at https://doi.org/10.1080/09575146.2022.2096571

Additional information

Funding

The AllPlay Learn platform was developed in partnership and with funding from the Victorian Department of Education (DET). However, DET does not have any role in any of the research studies conducted by the authors including data collection, analysis and interpretation; writing of manuscripts and the decision to submit this article for publication.